It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Lots of fun going on around our house.

Laurie had her grand opening at the bank.

Can you guess which one is Laurie?We made candy houses together. Stay posted for the finished products.

I need to get some batteries for my camara.

We needed this smile on the next picture.Great Grandpa looks so nice in this picture.

It would have been the perfect picture.

But this one is good too.This is a 4 generation shot.

Jamie graduated Magna Cum Laude from Weber State University.

What a proud moment for us!

This is a great finishing shot.

After the graduation we went to a restaraunt that was packed with people, many from the graduation. They had the graduates sit on a saddle while we yelled for them. Then they gave her a free chocolate sundae. Yum! I'll have to see if I can get a picture of it.

First Day of School

Oh, the excitement! Oh, the dread! What will this day be like? I wonder.

What will my future be? I wonder. I feel a song coming on...let's all sing together.

No, JK!

I've been looking for these pictures on the computer and I finally found them today.

So I thought I better hurry and put them on before I loose them again.I'm already missing our flower gardens.

Happy Halloween

So Halloween was really fun this year. I really enjoyed it.

Katee was a football player. She was a very cute boy.

We got to be with our cousins for a little while on Halloween and it was awesome.

It is so nice to have cousins Katee's age.

Now Jamie and Nick are another story. No, just kidding.

Jamie dressed up as an elementary school teacher. She is

student teaching at the high school and the kids really liked her costume.

One person who was able to guess her costume right off, knew because his mother was and elementary school teacher and he recognized the uniform. Funny!

Oh, the rest of the story. Nick was an elementary school custodian. I let you figure out the rest.

This is Laurie in the process of her costume. They really ratted her hair up high. She ended up being a really pretty 50's girl. I wish I would have gotten a picture of her.

And I was just myself. That is scary enough.

Happy Birthday Katee!

So Katee we love you so much and you are such a joy in our lives. We are so glad you could celebrate your birthday and have so much fun. You are sweet, sensitive and loving. You care very much about others and you ask often if we are okay. Maybe having older parents makes you worry about our health. But we are fine and we are so glad we have you.

The girls who came to your party painted really cute pumpkins. I was impressed with their skills.

Lauries painted the Frankenstein and Katee painted the Joker.
It was nice to have family down to help us celebrate.

We LOVE you Katee!

Pioneer Trek

For Youth Conference this year our stake did a pioneer trek.

This was some of our ward the morning we started.

We loaded up 5 buses and started off.

The first year our stake did trek there were 10 families.
This time, we had 20 families.

This was our family.Laurie and I were not in the same family, but we were in the same company.

So we still got to see a lot of each other.

Here we are showing off the bloomers.

This was taken down in a little valley right after Gene and I did our viniette of a Mormon batallion soldier leaving his wife for battle. Many people told us that that was very touching for them to see. It was a neat experience for us too.

This was how we slept at night. Girls on one side and boys on the other.

Some of my girls from Young Womens. You gotta love the glasses.
We camped right under the needles. We were right on the original pioneer trail at this point. Many experiences took place here.
All we have now is about 3 to 5 miles and then we are done we pulling our handcart!
This is our ward after the trek. We look like we survived, but we were pretty dirty.
Everyone was talking about what they wanted to eat and taking a shower. When I got in the shower you could just see the dirty water running down my legs. It was disgusting. Oh yeah, we went to Lonestar steak house for dinner with a group of us. It tasted soo good.

Happy Birthday Laurie!

Hey you pretty birthday girl!
We think you are so cute. We are way excited that you are no longer a teenager and we can talk to you now. Laurie is busy with school, a new job, institute choir responsibilities and her home ward calling of Beehive advisor. So she stays pretty busy, but she still has time to talk to me and make me laugh. I love that. Keep having fun even while you are working hard girlfriend.

Isn't this the prettiest cake you have ever seen. Casandra decorated that for Laurie. I love it!

Paul's Birthday

So we didn't get to see Paul on his birthday, but we got to see him on Laurie's birthday, so I took a picture of him then. Just because this was back in July doesn't mean it is too late to give Paul his special time in the spot light, right. Right, we think Paul is awesome. He is cute and funny. He's intelligent. He's working on his masters degree in psychology up in Idaho. We really miss him and his whole family. When we have get togethers here, it feels like someone is missing. That's because three people are missing. His whole family! But we know they are where they need to be and they are not too far away.

Earley Park Girls Camp

After we got everything settled with where we were going to camp, I knew we were going to have a great one! It was just rough getting to that point.







We started out with lots of fun and games.

There were several mothers and daughters that got to camp together this year. We missed a picture of Sandy, Britny and Sierra, but oh well.









We decorated journals to donate to the Youth Justice Center and we made these awesome flipflops.


There was lots

of time for singing and dancing.

And plenty of time for being silly!
We worked hard on certification.

We went on a great hike and got to spend some time relaxing after lunch.

Laurie and I worked so hard, we never took a break. We never had time to do anything we really wanted to.

We went to the rifle and archery range. The girls really enjoyed this. The bows are much easier to use these days then they used to be.

Everyone knew how to make their own fun and we had a lot of it.










We did a couple of other service projects that the girls really had to work hard at. But the weeds in the garden and at the benches looked great when they were all done.








We had a very spiritual experience with the Joseph Smith walk. It really helped the girls understand what he went through and sacrificed in his life.



This was my great, great, awesome camp director. She is the one who made it all happen. Thank you, Thank you Sandy!








The YCL's really stepped up and took great responsibility in leadership this year. They were great with the younger girls.

Here are some of the great leaders that helped

pull it off Laurie, JuLee, Sandy, Janelle

and Kollete.

And we sure would have missed our cooks, Bishop and Debbie.

The testimony meeting was a time when all the girls bore their testimony. It was really incredible to hear each one of them talk about what they had learned and bare witness to the truthfulness of the gospel. I wish their were more opportunities to continue that sweet feeling of the spirit and have the girls recognize it.

And here is the big group. We all survived and we still look great!