Explaining my Choice in Background

I felt I should explain why I put palm trees and a beach as my background. The weather out here in Omaha has been so bad, snowy and dreary, that I needed something to cheer me up. End of explanation.

Happy Birthday and an early Merry Christmas!

Well, today was my Mom's birthday.

As many are aware, you don't realize how much you love and need your mom until she isn't around. Living in Omaha, Nebraska, 15 hours away from my Mom in Utah, I have continued to miss her more and more. Now that she is in Hawaii it is even worse, because I can't just get in the car and drive there, I have to find a couple thousands dollars and fly almost an entire day to see her.
I think about all that she has put up with raising 7 crazy kids, and I am still amazed that she is the wonderful, sane! woman that she is today. She has taught me so many important life lessons that can never be learned in a classroom, and she continues to teach me. I miss having her close by for us to lean on, but grateful that she has the same opportunity to serve a mission that she helped give 6 of us. I hope that some day I can accomplish even a fraction of what she has done in her life with the same zeal that she has. We love you Mom, and we miss you!

P.S. we opened our Christmas presents from you, and they are great! Thank you so much Dad and Mom!

Our Summer: Trek

Well, we still have not received any of the pictures that were taken of the Pioneer Trek that we went on for the Stake Youth Conference. So, we will just have to put up our amateur pictures that we took. The Trek was from June 11-13, and it rained almost the entire time. We were freezing cold, and the 20 miles trail was horribly muddy. We would have taken pictures of the mud, but we didn't want to mess up our camera. We know we were being watched over, though,because every time we stopped to eat, and when we stopped at night, the rain would stop. But as soon as we started walking, it started raining again. It was tough, but it was a great experience.

Our Girls. L to R: Tessa, Alyssa, Dani, Jenna

The Guys. L to R: Colby, Paul, and Ryan with our baby Mary.

Ryan lovingly carrying our baby!

Dinner time! We used dutch ovens to cook all of our meals. They were pretty good, especially the cobbler!

Trekking the second day. The ponchos didn't do any good, we were soaked to the bone!

Getting close to the end.

Dinner the second night. Less smiles after such rough 2 days.

Catch up! Summer "09 continued with Camping!

So this summer we have been super busy! We were going crazy with Young Women's Girls Camp at the Little Sioux Scout Camp in Iowa, and the Pioneer Trek that we went on for the Stake Youth Conference. After all of that, we wanted to do something for ourselves, thus the camping trip to the Indian Cave State Park in Southern Nebraska. As you can tell from Mark's picture, we were really excited to go!

Ros was also excited to be at the park.

Mark and the pups checking out the view from this lookout point. The Missouri River is in the background, in between the acres of trees.

Mark loves cooking, and the outdoors, so he loved this opportunity to combine the two! I have to say, we had the best camp food we have ever had on this camping trip!

More cooking. Mark is the king of the fire!

After we returned from Girl's Camp, we had to put all of our tents back together, (for some reason we have several tents) and somehow we didn't get all of the tent stakes back into our tent bag. Of course, we didn't realize that until we arrived at the camp ground, which is 3 hours from our house. We did have a bunch of plastic forks, though. So naturally, the forks became the tent stakes. Mark is so creative!

We went down to see the Indian cave, and when we arrived we found this sign at the bottom of the cave. We found it very funny!

The cave is behind Mark. It isn't really a cave, but more of an alcove. There are a bunch of petroglyphs, that are pretty cool.

Apparently we didn't take any pictures of the petroglyphs, but this is a picture of one that I got from online.

Roslyn loved roasting in the sun. That is what she did most of the time. Isn't she so cute?

In all of these pictures it looks pretty sunny, right? Well, it wasn't all good weather. The second night that we were there a storm rolled in. At first we thought it would pass by and not get us, but then we started to hear really loud thunder and felt a few drops of rain. Suddenly remembering that our tent leaked, we frantically gathered up everything that would be damaged by the rain, grabbed the dogs, and ran for the 4runner.

Just as we got the sleeping bags and dogs in the 4 runner the clouds broke and it began to pour! After laying there for only about 5 minutes we couldn't breath anymore because it was so stuffy in the car. We kept trying to crack windows, but it would let in so much rain, we would have to close it again. In the morning when we woke up Mark had charlie-horses in both of his calves because of sleeping with his legs bent in the same position all night.

When we went camping to Niobrara we bought an inflatable boat to go fishing with Ros. I think I explained then that we never got to use it because it just never worked out. So we took it with us to Indian Cave SP, and once again, we never got to use it. We are rooting for this summer. Hopefully we will get to this year!

I am a Genius! and such

Well, we survived the Youth Conference Trek, which I will blog about later. I am also pretty much ready for camp on Monday June 22nd, which, I must say, is a miracle! I will blog about that also, later.

This week I received a big envelope in the mail, and thought I would blog about it before I forget my special little accomplishment. I opened the big envelope thinking that it was the statement of financial aid that I would be receiving in the fall. To my surprise, it was not a financial aid statement, but a certificate. Recovering from my shock, I read it over and it said that I had made the Dean's list! Amazing! I am in the top 15% of Metropolitan Community College, which means I am one of the smartest in da hood! Yea me! I'll have to treat myself to McDonald's or something.