Girls camp 2011

I am going to try to do a SHORT version of our girls camp, because really there is so much to tell!! We had so much fun going up to aspen lakes, which is our Stakes girls campground. It is beautiful! They have a lake, canoes, zipline, rock climbing wall, ropes course, rope swing, nice bathrooms, a super nice new pavilion. It was great! I love love love love girls camp. I think it is one of the best parts of being in young womans. I have SO much fun with the girls and all of the other leaders, I feel super blessed to be able to work in this calling.

The stake theme this year was The Road to Virtue, and our wards theme was "cars" and we had a lot of fun with it! What an important thing to teach all of our young woman, to be virtuous!! We had great devotionals every day, the stake did some really cool things and they had all the girls sign a virtue flag, committing to be virtuous all the way to the temple! That is our goal for all of our girls, to make it to the temple someday! I feel especially blessed to be able to be up there with celine, it is so great to see her participating in these things. Of course, the highlight for me every girls camp is testimony meeting, it is a moment of true joy for me to hear the girls testimonies and to know that they are growing and developing their spirituality! I could go on and on, but instead I will just post some pictures of the fun moments! I took about a 150 pix. so this is just a small sampling of them!

Greatest group of woman I get to work with! We had so much fun!!!
My Bed!!

My home away from home.
This was one of the girls favorite things to do!!
This was a trust building activity, you fall and trust the people will catch you. Well.....celine almost died!!!!! ok, not really, but they ALMOST dropped her, her head was scarily close to the ground!!! so much for trust....:)
yes, I tried my best to climb the rock wall, I didn't make it very far. I am a total wuss!!! But hey, at least I tried. :)
Celine made it to the top!
going canoeing!!
I had to take a pix. of me and celine every day!! Day 3.
Day 2. Yes, I am a hottie while camping, can't you tell!!!!!
Day 1. Hat is from my secret sister, LOVE IT!!!!
Look at celine go.
I wish I could post all my pix. and write a few more pages about it, it was that much fun and amazing!!!!

Daddy Day

"Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad..."

Every time I hear this quote I think of Kaleb. He has always been a great dad and he loves kids. I have never met a kid who kaleb couldn't win over in just a few minutes. Not only is he a great dad, but he is a great uncle too. I always think of how lucky my kids are to have him, and how lucky I am to be able to have children with him and parent with him. He balances me out in all the right ways, I think our kids are lucky to have the combination of both of us. He teaches our kids so many things that I probably wouldn't even think of. I am so grateful to be raising our kids together, we are all truly blessed to have him.

Wheres my kids???

ok, I noticed that most of my posts lately have been about ME! How selfish of me! My life definitely does not revolve around myself, it revolves around these 3!

The teenager: celine came to youth conference with me and other than that has had a pretty boring summer so far. Her friends are all gone this week so she has been home. poor girl. We did have one fun day of school shopping and lunch together. I need to take some pix of her, this is a old picture, I havent taken a new one of her in a while! Better get on that!
The princess: um, lets see. this girl thinks if she is not being entertained 24/7 that there is a problem! and that can be a problem for ME! she wants to play play play. what is it about the youngest child that they don't know how to entertain themselves? she did make this very cute crown out of duct tape, one of her better entertaining herself moments.
The crazy boy: yes, he insisted upon a mohawk. as long as I don't have to comb his hair this summer, Im happy! This boy also wants to play 24/7, but is also good about entertaining himself. He has had a soccer camp a few times and he is lovin it. Kaleb has also been paying him to mow the lawn once a week, a good way for him to make some money!
Summer is good, great, awesome, love it!!!! We haven't done anything to great yet, but are just enjoying the days of not having to do ANYTHING!!!I sure enjoy the summer with these kids. Love them!

Lindon 8th ward Youth Conference!

I had the great opportunity to go to youth conference this year with my ward. It was celines first year too and I was excited for both of us! I haven't been to youth conference since I was about 16! We woke up early, early on a thursday morning and headed to manti, where we were able to baptsims for the dead at the manti temple. This is such a beautiful temples. Everything around it was so green and the temple is on a hill. It was such a great experience for our youth! After that we had lunch where we explained our theme for this youth conference. B.O.O.T. camp. It stands for " building our own testimonies." The kids got camo headbands and dog tags and were split into 4 groups. We headed up to a cabin that a couple in our ward let us stay at. The woman leaders got to sleep upstairs in a loft, the girls down in the basement and the boys all slept outside. It worked out perfectly! Friday we woke up and headed down to the town of Mt. Pleasant where we were doing some service for the rodeo grounds there. Our youth got down to work and accomplished a lot in 2 hours! Painting railings on the benches and picking up rocks so that the horses didn't step on them. I was so proud of how hard they worked! We had lunch at a park and then started our "Amazing Race!" One of the leaders in our ward had spent A LOT of time putting this race together and it turned out so great! The kids had so much fun with their groups going from one task to the next and trying to win! We had a "pit stop" in the middle of the race where each group had to sit down and write their testimony in a book of mormon, it turned out to be one of the highlights for all the youth! When we got back to the cabin, all of us tired and hungry, most of the youth shook it off and went off to work some more to do some service for the cabin we were staying at. What great youth they are!!! We had testimony meeting that night around a fire and it was an amazing experience. I am so amazed at all of our youth, they are strong and courageous. Saturday was clean up and go home. I wish I could go into so much more detail of all that happened at youth conference, but it would be a long post. It was such a great experience for me, and definitely helped build my testimony. It is a great blessing to me to get to work with these youth!!

What time is it?

Oh, right, its time for me to blog again! :) Every day I think I should, and I have just been lazy!! SCHOOL IS OUT! So excited and ready for the summer! I am looking forward to long hot days in the sun and warm nights hanging out. Popsicles and slurpees, fires and smores, friends and picnics at the park, kids in the pool and me laying by the pool. I heart summer.

But, its been a great past 2 weeks. The kids had a good last week of school, and so did I, my sister april and her two kids came and stayed for a week! I havent seen them since Christmas, so we were long overdue! I spent as much time as I could with my niece and nephew and of course april. We had so much fun together, it was great just getting to hang out. I heart being an aunt too.

K, this was super cool, a rainbow in a circle around the sun. It was totally bizarre.
These are my laurels from 7 years ago, when I was 24 and had just had aliah I got put into young womans. Me and these girls became super good friends! Even after they graduated and left young womans, we have stayed in touch. Its been over a year since I have seen any of them and we were able to get together this weekend and have lunch. They are all grown up now. College, missions, marriage, babies. They are all amazing woman!! 2 of them werent able to come, but hopefully we will meet up again soon! So proud of how all of them have turned out. This is why young womans is such a great calling!
Coming up in life: youth conference this week, girls camp in 2 weeks, lots of hot summer days I hope.