Weekend in the Woods

My family went on our annual camping trip a couple weeks ago. We stayed close bcuz some of us could only go for certain days. We went to Yellowstone, floated the river and played with the dogs in the water, fished, played games, and tried to stay out of the sun!


One of the fish Justin caught-

-Paul "caught" a fish too. He was fly fishing and when the fish bit, he pulled to set the hook. It was a little too hard, cuz out came the line with nothing attached to the fly. You notice I said nothing attached to the fly.......bcuz also, with the line, out came flying, a little fish too. He landed in the bushes and I went and got him and showed Paul his fish, then we put him back in the river. It was hilarious!!

The MINUTE the kids arrived, they began playing in the DIRT!

The Yellowstone Canyon-

(Elk)

Alex's FAVORITE--Dragon's Mouth-

A couple of us hiked to Natural Bridge, something I had never seen after my numerous trips to Yellowstone.

I don't think I had ever seen this before either.....

Gibbons Falls-

Then, the FUNNIEST thing we saw, was the buffalo that GROWLED at us!! He was sticking his tougue out and making a new noise for any of us, we decided that he didn't want us looking at him, he wanted to eat in peace!

"Sister Fibber"

Girls' Camp was July 7-10 at Darby in Wy. It was a Stake Camp with 7 wards. I had no idea what a lack of time one could have when camping! When I was a girl, I always thought that lights out at 10:30 was bcuz the leaders wanted to go to bed. Us Stake leaders, did not go to bed before midnight once (more like 1am) and the latest we slept was 7:30am. The stake YW pres. probably didn't sleep for more than 5 hours even one night. I had no idea so much planning and getting ready could go into CAMPING! It was great fun however! One of our amazing Stake YCLs thought of the idea to play capture the flag, with each ward having its own and the flag having to be hid in each ward's own camp. We decided that as Stake Leaders, we needed a flag too, so Sis. Callister and I naturally became the 'flag hunters'. She was SO good at finding the flags, but I made a good sidekick. Whenever we were searching for flags, we would go and talk to the camp, ask what they were doing or cooking or made up a message to deliver and they would of course know what we were doing and ask if we were looking for their flag, my response was always, "No, I'm just going for a Nature Walk." This is how I got the new name SISTER FIBBER (notice I didn't say nickname, it was my new name, I don't think one girl in camp knew my real name by the last day!). One ward even made their skit dedicated to us, based on the game "Cheater Weater,"this was how they perseeved capture the flag was going. This ward called Sister Callister and I cheater weaters, bcuz we got so many flags.

My higlights of camp also included: The Spirit Trail on the first night where there were stations about each of the pieces of the Armour of God. At each station the girls learned about and recieved a piece of the armor and at the end we put our little knights together. Having a Virtue flag at the top of each hike. Virtue is the New YW value and we wanted to do something special with that. At the top of each hike, bcuz the top of a mountain represents a 'Holy Place', there was a short devotional about Virtue and Standing in Holy Places. The last night of flag tallying. (Each night we counted how many flags each ward had and then started again the next day.) On days 1 & 2 the 10th ward's (MY WARD!) 2 GIRLS (who were TOTALLY adorable and had WONDRFUL attitudes) had not gotten a single flag and on day 3 it was one ward's idea to make sure that they got ALL the flags. So each camp took their flag to this ward who hid them in 10th ward's camp, so they would have them all at flag ceremony. I thought it was an AMAZING gesture of every girl at camp to support these two sweet girls and make them feel loved. (This may not seem so substantial, but you would just have to know my ward-- short and simply put: There is NO parental support for any of the teenage youth in my ward and going to church is a foreign idea, scripture and prayer are virtually non-existent in these girls' homes, the fact that they were even there was amazing!) I loved that this loving act was a YW's idea! Bishop's Night is always a favorite. The Stake Leaders split up and I got the go to my ward. I thought that it would be a 20 minute meeting since there were only 2 girls, it ended up being one of the LONGEST meetings at camp. The Bishop's lesson was simple- WE ARE ALL CHILDREN OF GOD. This was perfect for these 2 girls who had probably never realized that. It was AMAZING seeing the looks on their faces when they GOT IT!! and they did! They each attempted to bare testimony, it was so precious, I knew that when they got home, they would attempt to keep that feeling in their lives. I pray that they are able.

When I got home, I wanted to sleep for 2 days, but I didn't get to..... (ask Justin, I think he thought I looked sick!)

-(some of) The Darby slide-

-We did the skits with our feet (I geuss I should mention the theme was "Standing Together for Righteousness")-

-Cute Crazy Girls! (This is the ward that gave us our nicknames.)-

-One of the Spirit Trail Knights-

Our Newest Highlights

These are our proud new possesions:

NEW (used) couches! Only 5 months old and only for the cost of time and gas to go pick them up! Yipee! We are super excited that we don't have to look at the others anymore and greatful that we don't have to come up with money to buy new ones.

And a spur of the moment buy, that was totally worth the money.......not having to feed the dogs 2-3 times a day or water them 3-4 times a day (i.e. dog feeder and waterer)!!! Now we water them every 2-3 days and feed them every 3-4 days. It's GREAT!! One tiny less thing to do every morning before work.

Our 4th

My favorite holiday is the 4th, and it was grand as usually. Friends and family came and we BBQed and then went to watch the fireworks.

Justin was our BBQ chef and was amazing as usual, everyone LOVES the RIBS!!

Then we went to watch the fantastic fireworks! And Cougar got to join us at the river, for training purposes. He did well with the chaos. But, at first he wasn't too sure of the loud booms and flashes cuz when they started, he tried climbing in Justin's lap.

Baptism

June 27th Alex was Baptized. He chose to have Justin baptize him and Grandpa B. confirmed him. Sydney sang "When I am Baptized" with a friend. I LOVE that song! It was pretty nice. The look on his face when he came out of the water was absolutely priceless, I can't describe it, but it was pure happiness (maybe a mix of recieving the best gift ever and getting off of a rollercoaster). When he and Justin were walking back to change, Justin asked him "How was that?" and Alex answered, "It was the best day ever!"

I like this one! :)

A couple cute Sydney pic.s-

He got his first "Quad" complete with his name!

The first year we had our garden, I made some signs for each row of vegtables, but Gunnar decided that he wanted them to be chew toys and not decorations.......I finally got around to making a new set!

These are the ones that survived from the original set:
These are all the new ones:

And our garden complete with signs:

Silver

This is Silver. His owner is one of our pharmacy customers. Silver is his service dog, there's just one thing different, he's not a dog, he's a WOLF! 100% wolf! He bought him from a breeder who breeds them to release into the wild. He has had him since he was 3 weeks old and raised him with his dogs, so he would act like a dog and not a wolf. (He has been fixed, that was a rule.) And he has been trained like a service dog. I feel a bit bad for this gentleman becuz he can't go 5 feet without getting stopped. One interesting fact about wolves that I did not know.....their coats change contstantly throughout their lives, but only the hairs on the tip of their tail stay the same, whether that be brown, black, gray, white or SILVER......hence this beautiful boy's name!

I like to call him my buddy! I love to pet him and I LOVE his name!!