Young Women's Camp

The reason for my blogging hiatus was girls camp. This year I was stake camp director and let me just say it was nuts! Man it takes a lot of time putting something like this together and we are lucky enough to be able to go to a camp that provides a lot of activities.

We have an amazing group of young women in our stake.  They really did plan and put together a lot of it. We just 'made it happen'.

This is where our spirit walk ended - right on the waterfront.  It was so beautiful watching the sun set on the river, listening to uplifting music, feeling the spirit as we waited for everyone to finish.

It was a tensy bit less relaxing for me as I was riding my bike (best idea ever!) all around camp like a crazy person making sure everyone was where they needed to be.

 Some of our ward gals moments before a flash mob.

The stake YW Pres did a remake to the song "All about that Base" I tried to post a copy of the video but couldn't (I don't have it) I will forever refer to the song as "all about that Faith, don't doubt it" it was awesome.

Most of the stake and ward leaders.  Its absolutely amazing what a group of volunteers can put together. I'm so happy I got to meet and get to know more amazing women in the area/stake.

 Our theme was 'Laying up Treasures in Heaven' I was referred to as Captain Allsop and was mostly  seen walking around wearing a giant pirate hat and sequined eye patch. It was great.

 Even the priesthood joined in the dress up fun!

 He seriously wore the patch all day. (most were worn above the eye, but not this brother.)

I learned a lot, mostly about myself. My testimony certainly grew and I saw first hand how when the Lord wants something to happen, He makes it happen. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done differently, but if I'm not taking credit for the good that happened that week I guess I shouldn't blame myself for the bad. It was fun to see all our hard work come together.

I missed my family terribly though.  We counted 10 out of the 12 nights I've been away from my daughters have been for girls camp. That's crazy.

I could have done without the bug bite/sting that sent me into town to get a steroid shot because of swelling with only minutes to spare to get back to camp in time for dinner/flash mob/ testimony meeting. I had a great experience but I think others should get the opportunity before I repeat ;)

Birthday and the Beach

Lucky for us, Michael gets Pioneer day off.  Even more lucky, that lovely holiday is close to my birthday! We decided to make a mini trip of it and headed to the coast! For being the middle of the week it was busier than I expected.

Michael had been down just a few weeks prior and it was perfect. Its amazing the amount of seaweed brought in just a few short days.  The water was so hot, it was almost cooler out of the water. We had a blast reguardless. 

Drip castles are a must:

 People seriously pack rakes to make a path from the seaweed. The girls HATED it the first day but realized it wasn't going away and the freak-outs were less common day 2.

 It was a nice relaxing couple days where I tried to forget about girls camp for a few hours. It *sort of* worked.

My one birthday request was to get cupcakes from a cupcake bakery called smallcakes.
Mission granted, plus much more. They were delicious.

 Michael also got me a new bike! I really wish it wasn't so dang hard to pull two kids in a bike trailor. Unfortunately Kelsey was feeling a little under the weather and threw up all over me in the bike shop. I quickly said, how about the silver 'girl' style. Michael proceeded to also buy me a new shirt and we were outta there.

Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday America!!

I love Independence Day. Seriously, its one of my favorite holiday's (I've tried to list Holiday's in order of which I like most, and I just can't do it)

Anyhow, we heard there was a big breakfast, games and patriotic fireside at the church (put on by the missionaries for all three ward units that attend at our building). They order in which items are listed is extremely important. It was a very long fireside (which isn't bad when its expected) and a few snacks - like one watermelon one meat/cheese tray and two pastry packs. Not enough food to even consider waiting in line for. We were bamboozled.

We sang the star spangled banner and busted out of there ASAP: we had a parade to get to.

So, we headed to Castroville and hit up McDonalds (with the rest of the ward/city) for the old-time parade.

 Surprise! My children didn't want to have their picture taken.

 yea, they are covering their ears from the noise of the fire trucks. . . . that's it.

 Of course we had to make a few patriotic foods:

 And drop a few dollars on fireworks: This was almost half of what we set off. We hosted again this year and it was AWESOME! I love being surrounded with friends, laughing, eating and celebrating

 Miss Kelsey enjoying the show:

 Just one corner of the counter, about a 1/4 of the cups we cleaned up.

Happy Birthday America! We love our freedom!

Farwell Dear Friends

While living in Texas we've been blessed to have great friends we consider family. And although we live in a fairly transient "military ward" and move in-outs are fairly common one family we became especially close to moved this summer which was much hard reality to face. Rylee's first best friend. She (still) talks about her constantly.

 see you later sweet friend. tear jerker right there:

 We definitely should have done the photo session before it was an hour past dinner time.

 It took a loooong time to convince Kelsey to sit by her friends instead of taking their fake picture.

 In other news Rylee has taken up nail biting. ugh.

 And in the 4 years we've been friends I think this is the first picture I have of the two of us. lame.

Good thing we have another reason to visit Wisconsin (not in the winter). Miss you dearly sweet friend.

Random Happenings

Here's a few random photos over the summer:

Sea World!

I have a love/hate relationship with that place. Aquatica was awesome though. My girlies love riding the rides and I'm usually the only parent that will ride with them.

"look Mom, we're holding hands!"

After a fast/testimony meeting Rylee was playing with her dolls and I overheard their own little testimony meeting "I'm Snow White. I know I'm a princess.  I know the Prince loves me." haha. So funny.

swim suit. sunscreen. water. goggles. princess kick-board. perfect.

This one was from the spring. Rylee's little pre-school group made fires and roasted "marshmellows" over them (tp roll with crepe paper, skewers and cotton balls:) )

princesses in "time-out" courtesy of our resident "nose in the corner" gal: Miss Kelsey (Rylee did this a lot too)

Clearly I let my children dress themselves. Even when we go out in public. Rylee is getting much better. As if we didn't look enough alike already, we cut bangs on Kelsey furthering our twindom look. It really is like watching myself grow up. Since then I decided if they are going to get less than perfect hair cuts it may as well be by me. 

A family trip to Home Depot. Kelsey insisted on bringing Anna and heaven forbid she not be buckled. The child of a car seat activist right there :) safety first.

Picking Peaches

We had so much fun picking strawberries in Fredricksburg earlier this year that we headed back during peach/blackberry season.

 Rrrreach!

 Miss Kelsey preferred to play in the dirt.

 They were probably fighting over who got to hold the berries.

We made blackberry syrup (a first, which is quite tasty) canned some, then froze the rest. Tasty! Its funny that we pay to go pick and 1400 miles away Grandpa is begging the Grandkids to come get peaches off their trees.

Go Spurs Go!

In case you didn't know- the Spurs did awesome this year: winning their 5th NBA title. And, yes, we caught the fever.

Its hard to live in a city that gets so excited to back up their team to NOT. After they won the conference final making it into the play-off Academy (a popular/local sporting goods store) re-opens to sell shirts. Its like Black Friday! Huge lines wrapping around the store in the dark to get the latest and greatest to support their team. 

Then, fandum was bumped up a notch after they won the final. We were watched at home and kept the tv on long enough to hear the actual journalist report that the traffic was so busy with cars driving down town to celebrate that they had to close 4 freeway exits for safely. "There were so many people walking around, parking their cars all over the street to get out and high-five each other. No fights, just a lot of people out side celebrating and having a good time." A little further away from the 'action' people just get in their cars to drive around and honk their horns. I can't make this stuff up.

We bought ourselves some shirts (we gave up on waiting for them to come back in stock and visited a roadside stand) and watched the celebration a few days later: which included a televised river parade. While attending a river parade is on my SA bucket list, and this was actually a free event I couldn't bring myself to brave the crowds.

 Who likes the Spurs?

Rylee even made up her own special song.