Camping on the Olympic Peninsula

Last week while Brooklyn was off at EFY - Especially for Youth, Steve and I took off and went camping over on the Olympic peninsula in Sequim, WA. This was the first time in 19 years camping just the two of us.

The first night we made dinner in the trailer and then relaxed and played games. 

 

Everyone morning Steve would get up before me and make a big breakfast. Lucky me!! This morning he made homemade scones.

They were so yummy!

 

One day we went to the Olympic Game Farm. Here's an elk with its head in the car waiting for a slice of bread. This place is a family favorite. 

These bears are so close. Just a small electric fence between the car and them! Scary!

 

Here I am feeding a llama.

Steve feeding a llama.

This bear was my favorite. He'd sit up and wave for a slice of bread!

Is that elk deer a little too close Steve?

 

There were peacocks everywhere and most of them had their feathers all fanned out. So pretty.

Check out this short video clip of Steve feeding a llama. Hilarious...

We had fun driving around Sequim and exploring. We even found a strawberry field and picked our own strawberries. 

One night we cooked steak over the fire for dinner. It was so yummy.

Kia loved coming with us wherever we went. Here she spotted a squirrel and was keeping an eye on him.

One day we rented bikes and rode 9 miles on the Discovery Trail. It was beautiful and Kia had a great time running along side us.

Camping wouldn't be camping without a campfire and s'mores!

We did miss having Mackenzie and Brooklyn with us. But we did have a lot of fun and look forward to many years of camping just the two of us. 

Stake Youth Conference

A couple weeks ago Steve and I had the opportunity to be chaperons at our Stake's youth conference. They held it at Fort Flaggler about 2 1/2 hour drive from here.  The theme for the youth conference - "Stand" - standing for truth, standing in holy places, standing up for your standards, etc. was discussed at different times during the conference.  Great theme.

We arrived Thursday morning at the church at 8:00 for the kick off and then we all piled into cars and off we went.

Steve and I were the adult leaders for a group of 10 youth. Here we are with our awesome group.

As part of the conference the kids attended 5 different workshops that were 40 minutes each. Steve and I taught one of the workshops. It was on "Preparing to be a missionary". 

During our workshop we talked of learning, understanding and appreciating different cultures and perspectives and as part of the lesson, we had them play a game using chop sticks and Trix's cereal. They had to see how many Trix's they could eat in a certain time. It was fun watching them try to use their chop sticks.

Steve planned and ran most of the workshop. I did however have an important job of passing out the Trix's cereal!

This is me with another one of the chaperons...Maria. She is one funny girl and always a lot of fun to be around.

The second day we were there we had the opportunity to do some service. We walked a mile down the road to where there was an old military bunker. The kids got to clean and paint them to get rid of the graffiti and dirt. The kids had a great time while doing a lot of good service.

 

Brooklyn with paint on her nose!

Check out the setting this camp is set in. AMAZING!

Steve with one of our good friend's Howie...who was also a chaperons.

Friday night they had a dance for the kids. Here are Steve and Brooklyn up on the stage dancing to Gangham Style!

There were deer roaming all over the camp. So beautiful and peaceful there.

Steve and I sure enjoyed being with the amazing youth in our stake. And it was fun to get to know all the adult chaperons, cooks and leaders too.

Brooklyn's last EFY - Especially For Youth

Last week Steve and I drove Brooklyn and 2 of her friends down to Tacoma for a week at Especially for Youth (EFY) - a week-long church youth conference. It was held at the beautiful University of Puget Sound campus about an hour and 15 minutes South from our home.

After the girls checked in we helped Brooklyn unpack and move into her dorm room.

Brooklyn shared a room with 2 other girls.

 They even had their own bathroom.

Here are the 3 cute girls that we drove down.

It's always so fun to see where they are going to be spending their week and see some of the kids they are going to be with. We had a small glimpse of what it will be like when we take Brooklyn off to college in the near future. Brooklyn had an amazing experience and was really touched by the spirit as she attended classes, testimony meeting and listened to awesome speakers. This was Brooklyn's 4th year attending EFY. We are sad that this EFY experience has come to an end. But we look forward to a new chapter beginning for Brooklyn next year as she heads off to college.

Backyard Landscaping

The drainage in our upper level in our backyard has been really bad for a long time. Steve has wanted to tear up the yard and fix it so a month ago we began this huge project.  

This is what our yard looked like when we started the project. Steve rented a sod cutter to take out the grass that's why it looks so bad! 

 

 We worked on this project every Friday and Saturday for about a month. We hired a bunch of strong young men from our church to help us with this project.  As there is no wide access to our back yard, they had to haul in and out everything by wheelbarrow. We rented a trailer, which had a power dump on it. We would fill the trailer with dirt and rocks and and then took it and dumped it at a site that took fill dirt. We hauled out 9 trailer loads of dirt - probably about 6-8 cubic yards of soil. 

Each morning we started with a home cooked breakfast. Cynthia took awesome care of us - the breakfasts and lunches were great. 

 

Brooklyn worked so hard - just as hard as the young men we hired! She is being paid with free room and board. :)

 

One day while we were working the fiber optic cable that carries our phone and Internet was damaged - no dial tone - oh, oh I believe the rototiller ran over it! Oops!

We rented all kinds of fun tools. This particular day it was pouring rain and there was mud everywhere! 

 

Chris ran the jack hammer like a pro!  Taking out the concrete pad that used to hold the basketball standard. We also took out the concrete around the red post in the background that used to hold up the gymnastics bar that was part of the play structure. Jack hammers rock!

Steve and Austin working the trench digger. 

Steve taught these young men how to use all kinds of cool tools. 

Steve laying the big pipe for our french drain. He also put in a drain to take the rain water from the rain gutter downspout off the patio.

Brooklyn and Austin filing up a wheel barrow of rocks for the french drain.

Here we are having a lunch break.

Steve and Austin leveling the yard. They look like a pair of work mules pulling this thing Steve made that helps to level out the yard!

One day we rented our very own mini cement truck so we could pour our cement mow strips. 

It was so fun to pour the cement mow strips all on our own.

Steve did a great job making the forms and doing the finishing work.

Steve would wheelbarrow in the cement and then Brooklyn and I would shovel it into the forms. We had to work fast before the cement set up. 

 

Brooklyn and Steve pouring a cement ramp by our side gate. Hopefully that will make it easier to get the lawnmower from the backyard to the front yard. 

The next step was to pick out 4 large rocks to use in our landscaping.

This huge crane picked up our rocks that we had picked out and put them into our trailer. It was like a huge claw! So cool to watch.

Each of those rocks weighed from about 200 to 500 lbs. each. Here are Steve and Austin moving the first and largest rock into the backyard. It was quite intense moving those big rocks.

Getting ready to lay the sod.

 Sod layers!

 Laying the sod by the stepping stones to get to the pool.  You may wonder, "Where are the pictures of Cynthia? Didn't she help?" Well, in addition to making sure we all stayed fed and hydrated, she worked on the backyard as well - picking up and returning the rented tools, trailers, etc., pouring the concrete, helping with picking out the plants and giving "feedback" or "quality control" directions on how everything was going. Yes, you may not see pictures of Cynthia here, but her finger print is on the project. Thanks Cynthia Kay.

 

We layed the sod yesterday and then planted a couple of trees and some grasses.

Finally our yard is looking like a backyard we can play in!

We still have to fix the fence on the right side of our house. But this humongous project is just about finished. And just in time for our summer BBQ and swim parties!