TREK!!!

This last week was our stake's youth trek.  Our boys got to go on it and Ryan and I were asked to go as a Ma and Pa.  It was such an amazing experience.  It was one of the hardest things I have ever gone through.  One woman said it was harder than childbirth.  We pulled handcarts through Bing Canyon near Umatilla, Washington in sand and 90-100 degree temperatures for 4 days and a half day in Zion. I was told the handcarts all packed were 500 pounds.  We had an average of 8 kids per cart with a mixture of boys and girls.  When I get more pictures I may post them and more details but a blog page is hard to post more spiritual things.
But in the meantime here are a few pictures of us packing up and pulling out of camp on the second day.




I am the person to the right in the red skirt and the pink bonnet.  There were not many here and we weren't ssupposed to bring cameras.  I hope to get some of Ryan and the boys soon

Kids and Company

This last week was so busy and so fun.  I took a nap for a few hours just to catch back up but I think it's going to take much more than that for me.

This last week I had my nephew, Corey who's 18, over and my other sisters 6 kids over one night and we had a house full but it was so nice to have them all there.  The next day some of the neighbor kids came out and played street hockey and some of my kids and nieces and nephews got in on it.  It was so fun to see.  My niece, Kasey, is usually pretty quiet and sticks to the background but she even got out there and played too.  I am very glad my sister, Darlene, moved closer.

 Dominic is in the green shirt in the middle and my niece, Kasey, is in the blue shirt running after the puck.

Lily is in the red shirt, Kasey in the blue in the center by tall Corey in the black shirt by her.  Abby is right next in the picture behind Corey. I love these memories they can make together.

Then on Wednesday night my brother Nathan and other brother, Paul, and his wife and kids came for a visit for the weekend.  It was soooooo very nice to have them here.  We got to see Paul's boy that we haven't gotten to see yet and spend some more time with Breanna and Megan.  Breanna is an amazing sister in-law.  She has only been in the family for 2.5 years but I feel as if she's always been my sister.  So when everyone was here we went to the Oregon Trail Museum, that's closed, then visited the temple and toured the visitors center, we went to the beach on Saturday but my most favorite part was after fireworks on Thursday night we put all the kids to bed and all us adults and my two oldest kids, my boys, stayed up until 2 a.m. playing my brothers wiiU.  We had so much fun.  It loosened us up more and paved the way to a much better weekend.  It's been a long time sine us siblings stayed up late playing video games together.  We played the little mini games where there is a ghost trying to sneak up on you and backwards tag.  So fun. I wish I had gotten pictures of it.  I need to get some from Breanna.  I forgot my camera everywhere.

 Portland Temple

I was sad to see them go but get to be with them next month for our family reunion.  I love family!

Hello Again!

Hello Again!  We have been really out of the blogging loop for a good year and hopefully I can repent of this and get better.
We are busier than ever living closer to the Portland Metro area.  Holy cow!  After a year I still haven't found my groove.  My ward probably thinks I'm the biggest slacker.  Just yesterday I sent my boys off on an all day 10 mile hike pulling handcarts in preparation for our trek in July and I sent them away without a lunch. What kind of mother does that?  Me! And I'm losing my mind!  Good thing for them they took snacks with them.  And they came home the next day so all was good. Kids are resilient.
For fun, here is a picture of each of the kids from this year.  I'm easing myself back into this blog stuff.