Stake Girl's Camp 2010

I was called on the Stake Girl's Camp board this year and at first I was slightly nervous about the whole thing. We got right to work and with a team of about 8 of us we hashed out every detail of that whole week up there. It only took us 6 months!!! Hours and hours of meetings and projects, it all turned out wonderfully, as I knew it would. Great thanks to our director, Kim. (Pictured below in the hat) Our theme this year was "Anchored in Safe Waters" and we went for everything nautical. And I can't go into something without a whole themed out idea... I showed up at camp with a revamped Tshirt with nautical buttons and ribbon on the sleeves and handmade button earrings of sailboats. A glance at most of our girls...
Stake leaders
This was one of our speakers that we had... he was GREAT! He was a seminary teacher and the kids related to him very well. He did an object lesson shown here about reading in your scriptures with using toothpaste and toothbrush. He contected them by saying that you can't put all your toothpaste for the whole week on at once and expect it to keep your teeth clean for the whole week. You need to do it daily (or more!) for it to work for you. Reading the scriptures is that important too.
Lisa and I were tent buddies and we had a great time sharing the tent with just us two! Check out the earrings...
I was asked (ok, I volunteered!) to make our stake flag this year. I LOVED how it turned out. I worked hard on that thing!
Ok, this is a funny picture! I wish I had more pictures of our skit we did as stake leaders during this night, but none of us passed our camera to anybody while we did ours. I was paired with Mandee and we were the "commercial girls" announcing all our commercials in our skit. You had to be there...
S'more time!
Check out the back of our shirts. They look awesome.
Our guest speaker on the last night was a famous blogger, CJane. Some of you may know her sister Nie Nie from her blog as well. She did great and she was wonderful in person to meet.
I can now breathe!!! Camp took up a lot of time, but was all worth it in the end. We had many spiritual experiences as well up there in those woods. Our faith walk through the woods was an awesome time as well, I wish I had pictures of that because it was so special to see. Thanks to all our leaders! Until next time.

Pioneer Day-July 24th

Pioneer Day this year was on a Saturday. The boys had a blast being in the parade around town here. Our ward had a float and had some kids ride their bikes, that's what the boys wanted to do. They took it very serious and didn't look up once while we were yelling for them on the side of the road. We celebrated by going swimming that day and did fireworks that night. They LOVED all the different fireworks.How safe of a mother am I letting my shirtless kid hold sparklers??!!! He was too cute though. Check out this cool picture!

Dental Trip to the DR

This year Matt and I traveled to the Dominican Republic together to work for a week on a humanitarian dental trip. Matt has gone on several of these before down there, but this was my first time. I was excited to experience this with him and to see the country for myself! We had an early start to the trip and successfully got to the DR with no problems. Here we are waiting for our luggage to come... A sweet picture of what a horrible start of the trip. Right after this, we headed down to wait for our ride and we all put our stuff down to sit and wait. After awhile our ride arrives, I meet Walter (our dentist connection down there) and I walk off without my purse. I get to the van not 3 minutes have gone by and I realize what I had done. I RUN back in there to find nothing where my purse used to sit. Really?! 3 minutes? My trip was off to a horrible start. Luckily Matt had grabbed our passports from me and so I only lost my phone, charger, camera, magazines, sunglasses (2 pair!), and chapstick. Thoroughly annoyed and almost ruined my trip, but Matt got me out of my funk and told me to just let go of it or it would ruin my whole week. I was so mad at those sleezes, I know it was you boys sitting next to us!!!! Oh well.

Be warned... picture overload!Check out the potty stops... umm, not my favorite part of the trip. We had to throw our toilet paper in the trash next to the toilet, no flushing. I got a good workout trying to hover over all those toilets.
We had a body guard down there... Victor. He was a great help with using force to get people to back away when they got too out of control. We needed him!
Lunch break! I felt a little bad taking a break to eat since most of the people waiting for dental work were basically watching us and waiting for us to be done. A little awkward, but I got over by the end of the week.
Matt and I working... it was fun to see how dental work gets done up close. I had fun being his assist for the week. I felt like I could prep that cavity filling myself by the end of the week.
The traffic was driving me CRAZY! Since I was not used to how they drive here in the DR, they made me quite nervous. They make how ever many lanes they want, drive in the middle of two lanes, cut people off like it's nothing, and honk at just about everything and everyone! It was quite the experience.
We were able to take a walk one of the nights down by the Santa Domingo temple. It was gorgeous all lit up at night. We were hoping to do a Spanish session in the temple, but we were giving wrong information and the temple was closed by the time we got there. Next time. But we did meet the temple grounds attendant and he ended up finding us one of the days to get some work done.
A view of some of the lines we had throughout the trip... free dental work creates some craziness in the streets!
Check Haley out! Matt showed me how to give a shot and I gave this girl my first one. Not as bad as I thought it would be, pretty fun.
This was the temple worker we helped. He was such a nice guy, came early and helped us set up and waited around ALL day to get work done. Felt good to help out someone that you knew needed the work done that deserved it.
This was a special trip to the Dominican Republic. Matt usually goes down in January, once a year. But this year the senator (pictured down in the yellow, middle) asked the G3 Foundation (the group Matt goes with each year) to make a special trip for his campaining. He is up for re-election and we basically promoted him. It's a win/win situation for the foundation since he is the one who coordinates transportation for us and lunches while we are down here. If he gets elected he will be running for president in the next couple years... that would be cool to say that we've met the President of the DR! The other people in the picture are Dominican dentists and lab workers.
The trip was never lacking fun times... this is one of the times I helped hold down a kid to get a tooth pulled. I actually think this one ran off after a while and he's probably down there hurting still from a half pulled tooth!
Check out the BEFORE on this one...yikes.
After... much better. So nice to help these people out!!
All and all the trip was a blast!!! I was glad to go and experience the Dominican Republic for myself and know what Matt talks about each time he goes there. He served his mission for our church there and I have a great appreciation for what he lived through those two years, almost.

Water, water, and more water

If you live near us you know you have to go swimming A LOT in the summer! This is a trip we took to Lake Mead with Matt's parents. We found this awesome beach where the kids could swim in the shallow and play in the sand, they thought it was great (and so did we)!
Matt started "throwing" the boys from the boat... again, so much fun!

Cru posing during one of his jumps from the boat... cute kid.
Our future Christmas card... everyone is looking and we all look pretty decent. Ha ha.

Las Vegas Mini Vacation

Matt and I got away for a mini vacation the beginning of July. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and had a blast! We were unaware that the Hard Rock pool was quite the party place and a RIP-OFF for any kind of beverage! We ordered a lemonade and a water and paid $26!!!
It was so nice to get away and not have to worry about children...
We got to experience the Blue Man Group... very interesting and entertaining. Thanks to Jamie and John for taking the kids, we will be returning the favor very soon!

Manti Trip

We traveled to Manti, Utah in June for the pagent that they put on every year. We had tons of fun swimming, hiking, and hanging out with the Aste family. We have become familiar with the Aste family through the dental humanitarian aid trip down to the Dominican Republic each year. Len and his daughter Whitney have gone on most all of the trips.

This is where the pagent is held, right alongside the temple in Manti. Gorgeous! It was awesome to see the pagent and to see the kids enjoy it as well. The pagent is about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and the pioneers crossing the plains.
A fun day hiking!
Thanks Aste Family!!!

Silly Macey

These are some of the funny places I have found Macey asleep at...
I know, I know, she still has a binky! That is next on our "big girl" list.
This one is funny because she climbed up and couldn't figure out how to get down so she just hung out and finally fell asleep! She is so silly...

Hiking in Snow Canyon

We have loved getting out and exploring our "back yard"! Snow Canyon is a state park here and it's literally less than 3 miles from our house. There are lots of hikes there and we want to experience them all. The kids are having a fun time exploring and climbing through these trails and rocks. It's been a lot of fun.

Kindergarten Graduate

Treyson has graduated kindergarten!!! He has thoroughly enjoyed this year and has made many friends. He is a reading machine now and excels in it.

A few stats:

Teacher: Mrs. Moore, AM class

Fav Friends in class: Teryn, Matt, Carter

Good times: MANY play dates, park days, recess

Not most favorite: Being late to school (no tardies though!), gym