I'm Back!

I'm Back!

Update

I haven't blogged in a long time! Life has been busy and good. We had a fun summer and spent a lot of time at Seven Peaks. I also had a good time exercising several mornings a week with some gals in my ward hiking to the Mount Timpanogos Cave. I don't believe I've ever had better exercise for my heart and lungs! It is a strenuous but fulfilling hike! We hope to take our kids soon, and actually tour the cave!

We did, however, take our kids to hike Y mountain in Provo a few weeks ago. That also was a strenuous hike, but our kids did great! Of course we did give them the motivation of donuts once they got to the top.

Alyssa went to Clear Creek Summer Camp for a week this summer and Kayla, Kyle and Rilyn went to Grandma Vala's in Montana for a week with Grandma and some cousins. Tyler got to stay home with Mom and Dad.

Laren is working as busy as ever with his job, which he has now been at just shy of a year! That is hard to believe!! He still enjoys it very much. He works with good people and the work is interesting and intense. He has lots of meetings, in fact I can rarely get him on the phone or cell phone most days so I've pretty much quit trying until he comes home. And last night he didn't get home until about 8:30 or so!

Aside from Girls Camp, I also went with the Youth to Youth Conference up to Camp Williams North of Lehi for 3 days. These youth in our ward are a fantastic bunch of kids! I enjoy all of the time that I spend with them!!

A couple of weeks ago we had a Mother/Daughter Enrichment Activity up at Mutual Dell, a campground/Lodge that our stake owns up American Fork Canyon. I have been busy attending BYU Education Week this week, and I finally got my Utah Drivers License (had to take a written test for that, even though I've been driving 20 years - pretty crazy!), and today our kids started back to school!!

I cannot say enough GOOD about Education Week! It beats out Women's Conference by a mile. The classes are more diversified (different subjects) and very informative and educational, unlike Women's Conference where many of the talks are about being a wife and mother and not to belittle it, because it is great, but almost every class has the same topic with just different stories and a different presenter(s).

So far here is a list of the classes I've taken at Education Week:

Mental Wellness: What is it, How to get it and How to Keep it (No matter what hits you!) by: Carrie Wrigley

Coping With Adversity Through Prayer
by: Barbara Barrington Jones

Filling Your Heart & Home with the Irresistible Light of Christlike Love: Enriching Your Marriage
by: Gary and Joy Lundberg

The Plan of Salvation: The Great Plan of Happiness
by: David J. Ridges - the guy who wrote The Book of Mormon Made Easier, one of my favorite books!

Helping Your Husband Preside in Love and Righteousness
by: John Bytheway

Kitchen Organization: Help Your Kitchen Help You
by: Marie C. Ricks

Listen to a Prophet's Voice: The Process of Personal Progression
by: Scott Anderson

Coping With Clutter
by: Marie Ricks ...LOVE these classes by Sister Ricks. She has a great website on helping with all sorts of housekeeping chores, menu planning, budgeting, etc... Her website can be found here.

And a few pictures...

Our puppy Molly, who is now caught up on her immunizations until she is a year old! She has brought a refreshing joy to our family!!

Laren and I at the "Y" on Y Mountain a few weeks ago.

The kids and I resting on the "Y", the kids eating their donuts and me, my rice crispy treats. (Love those Creamery Rice Crispy Treats!)


At the top of the hike to Timp Cave with my hiking buddies!

Laren finally replaced his wrecked Camry with a Nissan Maxima.

Alyssa and Tyler at Temple Square this summer.

Kyle, Rilyn and Kayla at the airport headed to Grandma and Grandpa's!

Alyssa returning from Summer Camp at Clear Creek.

Citrus Chicken Teriyaki, a newfound dinner. Our dinner Sunday night.

This summer I started doing Deals to Meals, a program where recipes are created for you based on the grocery store items that are on sale. It has been fun for our family to try new recipes and get out of our eating rut!

Smothered Chicken, a dinner we had last week.

Me going to get my Utah Drivers License.

Most of the kids and I attempting to hike to the Timpangogos Cave, but we were too early - the trail doesn't open on the weekend until 7:30 am. It opens during the weekdays by 6:00 am. So this is us about 1/4 of the way up, before the gate.

(Front-Back, l-r) Alyssa, Rilyn, Cara, Kayla My daughters and a friend at Mutual Dell a couple of weeks ago.

And finally me helping Rilyn to paint her block up at Mutual Dell.

I hope you all had a great summer too!!

Our new little pet

Meet Molly!

Our new little Shih Tzu pooch.

My second oldest daughter Alyssa and I were going to the store to get a few essentials for our Fourth of July festivities the next day and took the opportunity to peer at the pooches for sale. We shouldn't have because we fell instantly in love. Alyssa called Laren pleading. He asked me what I thought, of course my opinion was biased toward the dog. (Which is unusual because I am not a huge animal person.) Then we decided no. We hung up and started to do the shopping. Alyssa was in tears. Laren called back, back peddaling. Even he was thinking twice and he had not seen her. That was all it took. We went in the store and bought a can of pet food, got some cash back and went to see about getting us a new puppy!

Now my house is filled with all the neighbor kids on our cul-d-sac, all wanting to hold and play with her. We are trying to potty train her and train her to her kennel at night - doing all those things that dog owners have to go through to have the joyful, cute little pet! We really think pink is Molly's color! After waiting quite a few years, my kids finally have a pet other than a bunny and fish.

5 Temples in 4 Days

Five Temples in Four Days

On our trip to and from Idaho for Laren's Class Reunion, we stopped at all the temples along the way that are North of Salt Lake, since we are a short distance from the temples South of Salt Lake. It was a fun little excursion, and hopefully memorable (in a good way!) for our children.

Our family in front of the Logan Temple.

The temple where Laren took out his endowments. Right before Laren's mission he lived in Nibley, UT - just outside of Logan, with his Mom. He got a job there working for a farmer. And so he took us around to where he lived and worked at that time in his life. It was interesting to see where he'd been. And I had only been to Logan once before, but wow! what a beautiful place and surrounding area that is!!

Our family in front of the Idaho Falls, Idaho Temple (acrossed the river from it, actually).

We took this picture on Saturday Morning, just after the evening part of his Reunion. We stayed the night at the Red Lion Inn since that is where the Reunion was the night before and it is just right next to the river and the temple in Idaho Falls. So when we checked out of the hotel, we got a photo op, with all of the ducks, in front of the temple.

Laren and the kids in front of the Rexburg, Idaho Temple.

What a special place this is for me because when I was a student at Ricks College (back when it was called that), I would go up to a church building not far from the temple and sit in my car overlooking all of Rexburg and pray. It was my "secret" place of prayer. And this temple is just acrossed the street and up the hill a little from the apartments (Hillcrest) that I lived in at Ricks College/BYU Idaho.

The kids and I in front of the Ogden, Utah Temple.

There is a picture somewhere of my Mom and Dad in front of this temple, close to the time I was born (early 1970's). So I had an interest in seeing this temple. My parents were never sealed in the Temple, they had just stopped to visit the grounds and pose for a picture. I was quite surprised by this temple, as it is in the middle of downtown Ogden (or so it seemed) and the area around it was deteriorating with some newer buildings there. The temple has a fence that goes all the way around it and busy streets on every side except for one, where a church building stands. Because of that, we took this picture in the parking lot of a vacant building across the street.

Us in front of the Bountiful Utah Temple

The last temple on our way home (before we got to the Salt Lake Temple) was the Bountiful, Utah Temple. I see it from the freeway as I go and visit my sister in Kaysville. It has the same outside architecture as the Mount Timpanogos Temple (our temple, now). But the Bountiful Temple sits high on the hillside/mountainside in Bountiful. And you will notice, it even sits pretty high above this sidewalk that runs in front of it. As we pulled up to get this picture, a man dressed in a suit approached us and told us they were doing a fireside for the primary children but that we were more than welcome to stay. I think it was his kind way of letting us know they wanted us to park elsewhere or something like that. :) Our kids kind of wanted to stay, after they heard they were serving refreshments, but we got our picture and headed for home.

400th post!

Wow!

I cannot believe this is my 400th post! I need to turn my blog into a book one of these days!!

We just got back from Laren's 20 year High School Class Reunion. It was fun to go and see some of the people that I knew long ago when I went to Ricks College and worked at Arctic Circle, because those were some of the same people who grew up and graduated with my future husband even though I didn't know it at the time! It was also fun to see so many that Laren has talked about through the years.

Laren (in the striped shirt on the right) and some of his old high school buddies at the park in Sugar City yesterday. Not too surprising to learn that many of them became engineers like him.

Laren and I at the reunion yesterday.

While I was in town I got in touch with one of my dear friends, Kris, and we had a nice little visit! (Thanks, Kris, for obliging me and my girls!)

Kris brought her 2 daughters and I brought my 3 and the 5 of them became fast friends playing hide and seek and sardines at the BYU-Idaho Botanical Gardens while us moms visited!

Us in front of the Rexburg, Idaho Temple. I cannot believe there is a temple there now, just a short distance (literally) from where I lived when I was a student there 16 years ago! It is a beautiful temple, I'm bummed we didn't have time to do a session there!


And Jaci, this is for you! This is Brother Mike Rasmussen, a counselor from our Bishopric in the student ward when we were students there. (Jaci and I were roommates.) I did not know this, but he is from Laren's home ward in Plano. So when we went to Church today and I saw him, even after all these years I knew it was him. We had a nice conversation. Our old Bishop, Bishop Puzey is a mission president in the Phillipines now. And I specifically asked Brother Rasmussen if he remembered you Jaci and he did! He said he remembered going with his wife and taking you to the doctor and hospital in Idaho Falls. Such a fun reunion!!

Overall it was a great trip, short but sweet. We filled each day with a ton of stuff. Looking back at the 300 plus pictures we took surprises me that we fit everything in that we did! I will say this, Idaho is COLD!! Brrrr, I had forgotten how chilly it gets there - even when it's "warm"!! LOL

Girls Camp 2009

Back from Girls Camp

It was a lot of fun, but exhausting! I loved being there with Kayla, my daughter, especially, even though we were sleeping in different cabins. We went to the new camp the Church has built southeast of Heber City, Heber Valley Camp. It is nice, with a pavillion, 2 fridges (with freezers on top), a sink with hot and cold water, camp stoves already there, a locking kitchen area, 3 cabins per campsite with built in bunkbeds, bathrooms with flushing toliets and HOT showers! It was great!

Inside my cabin, the leaders bunks were behind that wall where the white board is.

Outside my cabin. I was assigned a different cabin than my daughter, so that was a bummer for me - but she was probably happy about that!

The drawbacks: Rain, Rain, RAIN!!! And swine flu. Yes, our camp cook came down with it the first night we were there. We ended up getting quarantined and were unable to do the Challenge Course (zip line, etc...). The girls were SO bummed!

Last night one of our Laurel Adviser's brought us all up masks, after hearing about the swine flu dilemna. So this morning we posed for a few pictures with our masks on. I am in that picture, can you find me? (Hint: I am next to my daughter.)

Kayla and I atop Lookout Point on one of our hikes. That is Legacy Lake, where we went canoeing in the background.

But we did get in a couple of good hikes and some canoeing on Legacy Lake. Last night was the testimony meeting and value walk. It was freezing cold, but the rain held off. I am SO tired! Somehow, it still felt like camping even though we were in cabins. We have the most wonderful group of girls in our ward! I just love them all!!

Canoeing on the Lake.

My friend's Wedding

Tonight was a fun Wedding Reception for my friend Elissa (pronounced Alyssa, like our daughter). When we first moved here, Elissa and I hit it off because her oldest daughter is Kayla just like my oldest daughter and her name is pronounced the same as my second oldest daughter. Anyway, she's so happy and I'm so happy for her!! Congratulations, guys!!!

Elissa and Duane

The beautiful bride and her groom. Funny face!!

Their beautiful cake. Her colors were blue and chocolate brown.

Our little Rilyn posing on the bench outside.

Daddy and his youngest daughter, dancing! Rilyn was SO excited to dance and was just cuttin' a rug on the dance floor!!

Kayla reluctantly dancing with her Daddy. (Alyssa, Kyle and Tyler didn't attend.)

Laren, I and Rilyn in front of the scenic background at the reception.

A New Temple!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

On Saturday, our family went to the Open House at the new Oquirrh Mtn. Temple. Laren was reluctant to go, because we went to the Draper Temple Open House just 3 months ago. But I was determined that we HAD to go, because there are so FEW perfect opportunities to get all your family inside the temple (especially when they are the ages of our young children), and to teach them FIRST HAND about the temple!!

Our family in front of the temple afterward. Yeah, it's nearly impossible to get all seven us looking the right direction and smiling!! :)

After the Open House, there were cookies and water inside the tent adjacent to the temple. My kids were fascinated by this Grand "player" Piano.

Alyssa and Rilyn in the tent eating their grub. You would never know this is inside a TENT, would you?! It was SO nice in there!

Afterwards we took our kids out to dinner.

And yesterday, I taught the combined Young Women's lesson on Temple marriage. So thanks to a website (http://www.mormonshare.com/node/7009) I came up with this handout, made out of cardstock and a white handkerchief. And I put a poem on the back. It was a big hit with the girls. It was my first time ever giving a lesson in YW, not to mention a combined lesson in there. I think it turned out okay.

YW Handout.