Brooklyn's First Church Dance

Brooklyn turned 14 a couple of weeks ago and tonight is her first church youth dance. Our stake is also hosting the Best of EFY (Especially for Youth) tonight. Youth from within a 50 or so mile radius come to this event from 4:00 till 11:00 p.m. There are great speakers on spiritual topics, a dinner and then a dance. They are always uplifting, a lot of fun and the kids have fun meeting youth in the church from all over the area. The fun at our house started today around 2:00 with our girls getting ready for their big night!

What a bunch of goof's these girls are! They weren't sure they wanted Steve taking their picture with curlers in their hair and then started hamming it up.

Getting ready!

Because this is Brooklyn's first dance, before they left Mackenzie gave Brooklyn a few pointers on how to slow dance. They were so funny together and had Steve and I laughing.

We hope the boys Brooklyn dances with tonight aren't "DOGS"! If so, no worries - she is used to it.... :-) Steve and I can't wait to pick them up tonight so we can hear about all of Brooklyn's adventures.

Eastern Washington - Trek Prep

This summer our Stake's youth, including both Mackenzie and Brooklyn, are going on a 4-day pioneer handcart trek and guess who was asked to lead the planning of this adventurous activity? Yep, partner, yer right - me and Steve. We were called a few months ago and although the rest of the youth leaders visited the location last year, we hadn't been. It has been hard to visualize how it was going to work out without seeing the location. Well, we were finally able to make time on Friday and drove out to the trek site in eastern Washington after we dropped Mackenzie off at the church for seminary. We got there around 11:00 a.m. and two men, who are taking care of the property and help setup for the hardcart treks as part of a mission assignment, took us on a 3 1/2 hour tour of the property. We took our Sequoia and I had fun 4-wheeling through the sage brush and up and down the hills.

These are the actual carts that the families will use to haul their gear in. They seemed pretty light without four days of gear in them. ...Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked....

This is what the property looks like where we will be treking. It was a beautiful day and in the mid 70's. Our Trek takes place the first week in August and the temperature in August are usually in the upper 90's! Now that's HOT!

During our four days of trek these will be the only bathrooms in sight! These will be at evening and lunch stop spots along the way. The pioneers did not have these luxuries... Oh well, it's either these nice potties or the sage brush along the path!

Steve and I had fun spending the day together. It was a gorgeous drive and after seeing the Trek site we are even more excited about our assignment to plan this fun adventure together.

Vancouver British Columbia Temple Open House

This morning we got up early so we could go to a different country for the day - Canada that is - yes, we drove up to British Columbia to go to the open house for the new LDS temple in Langley.

Mackenzie drove for the first 1 & 1/2 hours up to the border and then Steve took over driving the rest of the way - Mackenzie's learners permit only allows her to endanger those living in the state of Washington :-) JK - she is getting quite good.

Just outside the entrance to the temple.

To protect the floors of the temple, all the visitors were required to wear these shoe covers - they had some youth from the nearby areas there placing them on the shoes of the visitors - kind act of service - reminded me of the Savior washing the apostles feet to teach them how to serve others.

After we went through the temple we went back inside the stake center and enjoyed some cookies and a drink.

Mackenzie and Brooklyn at the cookie table...AGAIN!

Brooklyn, Steve and Mackenzie in front of the temple. It was a fun day together. And being inside the temple reminded us again of how blessed we are as a family.

Spring Break - Camping in Cannon Beach, Oregon

Over spring break we took our new trailer out camping on its maiden voyage to the Oregon Coast.

Our first stop was to Cabela's. This store opened a couple of years ago but it's a 1 1/2 hour drive south of us so we hardly ever get to go. Steve loves that store and because we were driving right by it on our way to Cannon Beach we stopped in for a visit.
Our next stop was to Walmart to buy all the necessities for our trailer. Oh it's always an adventure to shop at Walmart!

We made it to Astoria, Oregon just in time for us to find a church so that Steve could attend General Priesthood Meeting. We pulled into the church parking lot and while Steve was at the meeting the girls and I stayed inside the trailer. We had fun reading, watching the basketball game on TV and preparing dinner.

Our first meal in our trailer was taco salad! Yum!

We stayed our first night in Seaside, Oregon. When Mackenzie and Brooklyn woke up the next morning they were surprised to see that the Easter bunny had found them and filled their baskets with candy and gifts.

Mackenzie with her Easter basket! Easter Sunday was also our church's General Conference and we were able to watch it on the TV in our trailer. The talks were focused on the Savior and what we can do to bring the Savior more into our homes and family. It was excellent.

Sunday was also Brooklyn's 14th Birthday! I baked her a cake in the oven in our trailer and it turned out quite well! Brooklyn had a fun Birthday. Thanks everyone for making it special for her with the fun gifts, phone calls, text messages and facebook messages on her Birthday.

Monday morning it was raining quite a bit so we decided to take a 45 minute drive South down to Tillamook, Oregon to go on a self guided tour of the Tillamook cheese factory.

It was so fun to watch the cheese getting cut up into blocks and packaged. So interesting - well, okay Steve and I thought it was interesting - Mackenzie and Brooklyn got bored with it fast and they wanted to go and observe the ice cream being placed on a cone and placed in their hands instead!

After the tour they had a tasting room where we sampled lots of different kinds of cheese. Here we are sampling the cheese. Our favorite was squeaky cheese or another name for it is cheese curds!

After the tour we all got scoops of Tillamook ice cream. Yes, this was the girls' favorite part of the tour. Yum!

We found this old train in Tillamook so we jumped out of the car while the sun was shining for some photos.

We drove over to Cape Meares and took a short hike down to see the light house. The light house was so pretty sitting up on the hill looking out over the ocean.

View from the light house.

Cape Meares!

Check out Mackenzie resting her arm on the top of Haystack Rock!

While Brooklyn and I were inside the trailer preparing our dutch oven dinner Mackenzie and Steve were outside getting the charcoal ready.

Oh yum...strawberries for dinner!

Brooklyn and Mackenzie sitting on a knarly piece of driftwood in front of Haystack Rock.

The last day we were there we went to a place in Seaside to ride go-carts. Mackenzie was so happy when she realized she was barely tall enough to ride the go-carts :)

Here we are getting ready to race!

Steve passing Brooklyn! Way to go Dad!

We had a great time camping and we love our new trailer. Even though the weather wasn't really that great we made the most of it and enjoyed getting out each day for beautiful drives and to explore the coast of Oregon. It was fun to just relax, play games together, read, watch DVD's and all our favorite shows on TV each night and to sleep in way too late each morning! We can't wait to take the trailer out again. We hope to get away on lots of camping trips this summer as a family.