Visiting the Past...

How much can you fit into a week?  A couple cabin trips, a fireside, a reunion, football and an Young Women overnight trip, that's what.  I'm just starting to catch up now, 2 weeks later.  It actually started on Monday July 29 with the start of football.  Let the games begin!  Thunder has been very busy meeting with other coaches and completing the play book. The first practice went great, although all the boys were very sore the next day!  On Tuesday I left with the Young Women to head up to the cabin for an overnight trip.   The girls brought up games and we had pizza for dinner so it was very easy.  Well, expect for some men canceling at the last minute who were supposed to stay overnight with us, and we had to spend 2 hours calling to find replacements.  But overall, it was just great.  On Wednesday I was invited by the Heber Stake to present a fireside.  I went with Tanya and it went great!  They fed us Cafe Rio for dinner and Kneaders cookies for dessert.

On Thursday it was time for a long-anticipated roommate reunion!  There were 12 of us who lived in adjacent apartments our Sophomore year at BYU and we loved living together.  One girl has been great at keeping us in touch by compiling an annual "Elms Crew Review" so we can keep up with each other's lives.  We were able to have 11 out of 12 of us come to the cabin and hang out for a few days!  It was wonderful!  On Thursday night a few arrived.  On Friday we went down to the Provo airport to pick someone up and ended up stopping by our old apartment and dorm rooms.  Yes, we knocked on the door and even went in!  Then we drove up to Park City and did some shopping all together.  One girl is now a fashion blogger, so it was fun to get her advice on clothes!  That night we stayed up til 2 am sewing and talking.  We made pin cushions and little doll dresses.  One girl is now the owner of a fabric/sewing and digital scrapbooking company, so she brought a ton of stuff for us crafty girls to do.  It was so nice to not have little fingers trying to get a hold of everything!  On Saturday we stealthily planned a baby shower for one girl who is 8 months pregnant.  She slept in and we got things ready.  Then, surprise!  It was really fun.  We even had a swaddling contest.  Pretty sure I won, though others may dispute that... Later on Saturday we headed over to Olympic Park to do zip-lining and Alpine sliding.  We had earned some free tickets from our shopping the day earlier.  It was a blast!  We stayed up late again Saturday night to finish projects and just hang out.  By Sunday morning our lovely weekend was over.  Everyone went on their merry way, recharged and renewed!  Til we meet again ladies!

A coat of Wayne

At the beginning of the summer we set a reading goal.  How much, you ask?  Well I don't really know.  I filled out a paper with small boxes and said each box was 10 minutes.  So a page full of reading, I guess!  Anyway, they met their goal about 2 weeks ago.  The reward was to go up to the Discovery Gateway museum in Salt Lake City.  We finally had time to go up there on Monday!  We left after piano lessons.  The kids all had a great time playing and using their imaginations.  Unfortunately Thunder and Sunshine couldn't come because they were traveling to Idaho for the funeral of our friend's father.  On Tuesday Tornado had gymnastics and I had young womens that night.  We went to play frisbee golf.  Oh excuse me, "Disc Golf" is the proper term.  Apparently this is a large sport requiring official courses and weighted frisbees....er, discs.  We just had very cheap normal frisbees.  But it was still fun.

Wednesday was July 24, which is a holiday in Utah to commemorate the pioneers arriving.  We spent it with some good friends.  We started off the day by hiking to the Alpine Rock Slide again.  The water was just as cold, but it was overcast!  No sun to warm us up between slides!  I was chilled for most of the day, but everyone had a great time.  After a way-too-long wait to try Popeye's chicken, we headed home to get showered and changed.  Then we went to our friends the Butler's mom's house.  It is a really fun house with a zip line, sprinklers under the trampoline and cool decorations inside.  The kids played and the adults talked.  It was a great day.

On Thursday we met with the missionaries and a family in our neighborhood who are thinking about coming to church after being away for a while.  They are our neighbors and our kids play together.  On Friday Cloudburst had her last day of tennis and we all went and played tennis on the court next to her class.  She was not too happy about our plan to do this.  She insisted she would be very embarrassed if anyone knew the goofy kids playing next to her were her family.  When did she become a teenager??

Saturday began normally enough.  I went to an early morning temple session with the ladies from church.  On the way back I called Thunder to mention I was going to stop at Home Depot and get some paint to paint some baseboards (I have a meeting with a Deseret Book music guy at our house this week).  Well he called me back a few minutes later and said a friend of ours could help us install Wainscoting if I wanted.  So off we went!  The rest of the day until 8 pm was spent measuring, cutting, nailing, caulking and painting.  It took the 3 of us all day, but we finished off the piano room and the front hallway.  It looks amazing!  I am sore today... but it was totally worth it.

Man of Steel!

We had a great week.  It's been hoooot again, in the 100's.  Cloudburst started her first day of tennis lessons.  She bugged us for a while and she's been doing great.  The boys and I get to hang out at the nearby park.  They had some fun riding their bikes through the sprinklers and making an American Ninja Warrior course at the park.  Sunshine had a big day on Tuesday when he got fitted for braces! May I introduce Iron Man, aka Brace Face, aka Tin Man, aka Man of Steel, aka Metal Mouth, aka Tin Tin.  He has done really well with them and I swear he smiles even bigger with them on now.  On Wednesday I had a meeting with some higher-ups at Deseret Book to talk about my music.  They are very interested, but want me to do a little bit of work on my lyrics.  Hopefully we can work out a deal.  It was a great meeting!

On Friday we hiked up to the Alpine Sliding Rock.  It's a natural rock formation with freeeezing water.  The kids had so much fun we are going back this week.  I, of course, bruised my tailbone going down.  But it was still awesome to get in the water after the hot hike.  My last note is that Cloudburst has been our own little Betty Crocker lately.  She has started baking all by herself. We've been enjoying the fruits of her labors very much!

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Trek and a Clubhouse

What an amazing week we have had!  We started by wishing a fond farewell to Thunder's parents on Sunday morning.  We all just loved having them here and can't wait until they move to St. George.  That evening we picked up my parents from the airport.  They were watching the kids while Thunder and I got to to be a "Ma and Pa" to a little family for 3 days... on a pioneer Trek!

We were up before 5 AM Monday morning to take off.  We met our "kids" and went through some orientation.  We rode on buses up to Wyoming and soon we were off!  Everyone had brought a 5-gallon bucket with personal items (ie toothbrush, PJ's, etc.) that also served as a seat to sit on.  That is what we carried in our handcarts.  The pioneers had also had similar restrictions on what they could carry, about 15-17 pounds per person.  The handcard could fit about 4 people across the handle and it wasn't too heavy.  The first day, we hiked for a few hours until we made it to the lunch spot.  Those subs never tasted so good as they did that day.  We all drank tons of water and got on our way again.  We stopped every 20 minutes or so for a break.  We each told stories about an ancestor we were walking in remembrance of and got to know each other.  We had a really great group.  Everyone helped pull/push and the girls even liked to sing.  After a few more hours we made it to the Sweetwater River.  We had to cross the river with the handcart with water up to our waist.  Boys offered to carry the ladies across.  On the other side of the river was camp.  We set up our tents (in the strong wind, we managed to damage all 3 of them) and ate dinner.  That night was a fireside where I sang 3 songs and two funny speakers spoke.  After some apple cobbler, we were off to bed.  It was a cold night, but everyone was tired, so the teens all went to bed. 

Tuesday we were up at 7 AM.  We broke camp, ate breakfast, and were on the trail by 9:30 AM.  We had been hiking for a little while (and we were now the lead cart, yeah!) and stopped for our first rest.  Up in the sky we saw a small plane flying low, and then two parachutes floating to the ground! Our neighbor had worked it out with Thunder and dropped us all a little "manna from heaven."  Everyone loved the candy.  We continued to push ahead, taking stops frequently.  At one water break, one of our boys had unscrewed the water jug top for a refill and confusedly stated "uh, there's a diet Coke in here."  Our friend Michelle, who was our "Aunt," knew that someone was looking out for her!  We loved being the lead cart, and got ahead of the stake leaders.  We ended up making it to camp by 1 PM, which was three hours ahead of schedule.  But the kids loved having the free time.  We set up tents and people napped, played football and walked around.  We had some rotations after lunch, which included a cow-pie throwing contest.  I didn't play that game.  Yeah.  We had a speaker come talk about muskets and tomahawk throwing (on our schedule it was written Tom A Hawks, and we wondered who that was) and square dancing!  It was so fun to dance with Thunder and all the kids participated.  We ate dinner, had brownie sundaes, and ended the night with a special testimony meeting with just our little family.

Wednesday we were up bright and early again.  We packed up camp and started walking.  It was a tougher day, going up hill much more.  People were starting to get blisters and sunburns and were just tired.  We walked a little further until we reached the base of a hill.  We were told about Rocky Ridge, where many pioneer men were so spent that the women had to pull the carts up the steepest hill.  The men and boys were instructed to hike to the top of the hill.  We women gathered together and sang "As Sisters in Zion" and then we were quiet.  One by one, we women pulled our own hand carts in silence up the hill.  It was tough but we made it.  It was a special experience to see the men lining the side with their hats off.  Many women would reach the top with their own carts, and run back to the bottom to help others.  I felt grateful for my group of girls, and for the pioneer women who were so strong.  The men joined us and we had some family time to talk about it.  Then we marched on to Philo Dibble, which is named for an army deserter who carved his name in a rock.  We ate lunch amongst more cow pies.  Then Thunder and I were informed that we had both "died" and had to march ahead without our family.  I was not happy to leave our "kids" to pull the cart on their own.  We waited a mile down the road, dressed in white (papertowels, but hey, we improvised) and then got to join our families again.  I gave them all big hugs.  The girls had started singing as they walked to remember their "ma."  That was very cool.  Well, we walked and walked and walked and walked until we reached Zion: the buses home.  All in all, it was a great experience and I was proud to be a part of it.  Except for my giant swollen sunburned lips (see picture below).

When we got home, it was great to see my parents and the kids.  They did just great.  On Thursday we headed up to the cabin.  Grandpa and Sunshine had a project planned and they wanted to get right to work: a platform clubhouse in the trees.  For Thursday and Friday and Saturday morning, we schemed, measured, cut, drilled, weatherproofed, and screwed.  I had a wonderful time working alongside my dad.  We got it finished up on Saturday morning and it is pretty dang cool.  We had a great time visiting with my parents and they got a good chuckle every time the kids started fighting.

We sent them off to the airport this morning with sad faces.  No more family for a while.  But the kids were cute and made a whole "restaurant" for Thunder and I for dinner tonight.  It's called the Sunday Grill.