Little Hike

For some reason Tom really wanted to go for a little hike to see a waterfall. He found some place called the Grotto up Payson Canyon. So, we headed out after I was done with work yesterday. Unfortunately, the car ride took forever due to rush hour traffic combined with construction combined with an accident. Ah well, at least we had licorice to keep the kids occupied. We made our way up there and hiked up to the funny little water fall area. There was a wet towel and some socks sitting on a rock there, so some weirdo must have been nearby. I was a bit creeped out by that part. We took some pictures and hiked back down the trail a ways and ate the sandwiches we had brought for dinner. The kids had fun and it was a bit of an adventure. Alice isn't great to hike with, but at least she wasn't too squirmy. There were some fun logs to cross over a stream. Sophie was scared of them and tried to fall off once. Maybe we'll try another little adventure sometime soon. :)

First Grade

Abby started first grade this morning!! She was nervous and excited. Hopefully the whole day thing doesn't throw her off too much - I know she was looking forward to eating lunch at school today. Sophie has been a little worried that she won't have anyone to play with, but I keep countering with the argument that she'll get to play with Abby's toys now without Abby taking them away. So far so good!!

Prayers

We have a lot of people we pray for in our daily prayers. We pray for Daddy and Uncle Jeff to find good jobs. We also pray for Grandma Jensen's foot to get all better. We recently added Grandma Ludlow to our list of people to pray for. Today in our breakfast prayer I prayed that Grandma Ludlow's cancer would go away. After prayer Sophie looked at me a little puzzled and asked why Grandma should lose her cancer. She quickly followed up asking, "Is cancer good or bad?" When I told her it was bad she understood. It's fun to see the workings of her little growing brain. For those of you that don't know (I know there aren't a lot of people who read this), my mom's colon cancer reappeared in her right lung. It hasn't spread anywhere else, thankfully, but we need to get rid of this vestige of that awful disease. Please keep her in your prayers too.

Yard Stuff

Our yard is finally coming together. We don't have dirt yard anymore in the front - we have a beautiful lawn!! It's been three weeks since we put it in and it's looking great. Tom's brothers and dad came over and we installed the sod really quickly. The sprinklers are working fabulously and keeping the lawn nice and green. We are now planning out the planters and should get those planted in the next week or so. Whoopie!

We have also been wanting to remove the gigantic pine tree from our backyard. I think it's probably 50-60 feet tall. It was a daunting task and we really didn't want to pay a thousand dollars to have somebody come and remove. In comes the home teacher. He used to remove trees as a job a while back and offered to cut down our tree for us. We said it sounded like a good idea, but we never set a date. Then he called last Saturday morning and said he could do it that day.

Well, down it came, and we were left with a gigantic tree all over the back lawn.

We couldn't figure out a way to haul the pieces away to the green waste dump since we don't have a truck. And Tom's dad (with his truck) were up the canyon all week for Scoutie training. So, we kinda sat on it and figured we'd wait until he was back and borrow his truck/trailer. Then, we get a phone call from a neighbor boy offering to cut it up and haul it away for us if we paid him some money. We agreed and now it's about halfway gone! Hooray again!

So, things are looking better and shaping up to be a little more of what I'd like to have in our yard. There is still much work to be done, but at least a lot of the big stuff is out of the way.

Oh, and here is a random picture of Sophie - courtesy of Abby's photography.

Here's Alice swinging at my parents' house. We were trying to see what kind of plants they had that we'd want to plant in our yard. Isn't she cute?

It won't let me delete this picture for some reason :\

Girls Camp

I had the opportunity to go to Girls Camp this year. (It was in July, but I'm just posting about it now.) It was a great experience, but it was so much more work than I thought it would be. It seemed like we were either prepping for a meal, cooking a meal, or cleaning up from a meal all day, every day. SO much cooking!!! We (as leaders) have since decided that next year will be different. Lunches will be sandwiches and we'll have cold cereal for some of the breakfasts. We just went WAY too big with our meals. They were yummy, but OH so much work. It made it difficult to enjoy the scenery and feel the spirit.

It seems like the girls were touched, though. And since camp is all about the young women, then our efforts were successful. I *did* get to have some fun while I was there, though. Silly me, I chose to go on the difficult hike. I didn't know if I'd ever get to hike up to the Lone Pine, so I figured I should take the opportunity while it was there. (It's a Camp Shalom landmark.) The hike wasn't really too difficult, but it was certainly an adventure. The man leading our hike decided not to take the trail for part of it and lead us up a steep hill. I'm glad nobody slipped, cause that person would have fallen all the way back down. We were much happier when things leveled out and it wasn't quite so treacherous. Then the rain came. It felt good and helped to cool us off. Unfortunately, it also made the trail into a mud pit. We slipped and slided back along the trail for quite a ways before things were more easily navigated. The hike ended up going 1-2 hours more than it should have, but nobody got hurt - just VERY dirty.

The girls at Lone Pine

After we climbed the treacherous hill. And, yeah, my eyes are closed. Lame.

The YCLs also put on a Legends hike on one of the nights. They wanted me to come along so they wouldn't get too scared. (They make up scary legends and take you on a hike in the middle of the night through the camp/surrounding woods.) Little did they know, I get scared too. I was pretty good at hiding it - I tried to laugh instead of scream. I'm afraid my laughter got a bit maniacal sounding for some of it, though. Ah well, it seemed to help the girls not wet their pants or anything.

Some more of the girls - after our relay races

One of the girls got indigestion on Wednesday night and threw up in our cabin. Not cool. Then she had to get up twice in the night to pee. (No unchaperoned biffy visits, so everybody needs a buddy.) Luckily, I only had to walk her to the biffy for one of them. The next night she also had indigestion, but we loaded her up with various remedies and gave her a bag to puke in just in case. No puke this time - hooray!! But still a middle of the night biffy run. I didn't get much sleep despite the gigantic and relatively comfortable cot I borrowed from my in-laws.

So, it was a fun week - but certainly not a vacation. I enjoyed myself and got to know the girls a little better. Oh yeah, it also rained every day. We had to cancel a few things because of it, but it didn't spoil things too badly. Anyway, girls camp is highly recommended. Hopefully we learn our lessons from this year and do better next time. There is so much more to say about camp, but I'm pretty sure nobody wants to read about it. Ah well, I just didn't want to forget to post.

Vacation

I'm a little slow on updating, but I'm getting to it now!! We had a great vacation to Lake Tahoe last month. The drive was long, but the kids did awesome. It sure helps to have a tv for Abby and Sophie to watch movies on all through the trip. It's been too long now, so I'll probably just post a whole bunch of pictures most people won't want to see. We had lots of fun hiking and relaxing and splashing around in the pool. Laura and Jeff were finally able to join us (it's been several years) but AJ had to go and move to Texas, so we didn't have everybody with us. Maybe one of these summers we'll all go together again!!!

Sophie and Abby took turns being sick a couple of days - we were lucky they each only lasted about 12 hours. There was much puke to be had, but we managed much better than I would have thought. I was VERY grateful Alice didn't get sick. I'm pretty sure babies don't give much warning before they puke all over you.

My parents were at their usual place up at north shore and the rest of us had a couple of condos on the south shore. We did a lot of driving back and forth, but we got lots of fun time together.

We got an awesome view of Lake Tahoe from really high up on some mountain courtesy of Uncle Paul. It was pretty cool, even if it was a little bit of a scary car ride trying to get there before the sun set.

We took the obligatory photos at the Emerald Bay Vista Stop off place.

Alice really wanted to join Sophie in the bath. She dove in with all of her clothes on!!

I let Abby take some pictures and these three were her very favorite subjects.

I had a hard time keeping these girls apart. (Mostly I couldn't get my kids to stay in our condo!)

The girls LOVED their beach time.

Thankfully, Alice did some good napping in the car. We were in the car a lot.

Playing games with the family is a rare treat - but always fun. (As long as I win)