I saw a childhood friend the other day. We had not seen each other for about 30 years. We found each other through facebook. It's amazing how I seem to get caught up in my life, in my neighborhood, in my family, and in church. I don't seem to venture too far from those things. I have thought of her often over the years and never done anything about it. She is the daughter of my mother's best friend and we spent a lot of time doing things together with them. As little kids, we thought for sure that she would marry my brother and live happily ever after. Of course, that didn't happen. When she showed up on my doorstep with my brother, we were so excited to see each other. Nathan says we were crazy. Screaming and yelling and hugging. She stayed for a while visiting. We had some good laughs and caught up on some of the things that have been going on in our lives. Mainly just talked about old times together. She just lives in Bountiful and she works in Ogden. I hope that we can keep in touch and not wait another 30 years to see each other again.

Today Nathan, Jason, and Cleve finished pouring the cement driveway on the side of our house. Terry came over and he was the driver for them. He went back for 4 loads of cement. That helped out a lot. It looks good and is nice to have it done. I think Dann will be pleased when he gets home.

As you can tell by Marcella's face the cake was really good.






















Nathan and Amy were the only ones not up so they put it in front of their tent door. They really didn't notice it when they came out.
This is a dead mouse. When David was getting the fire ready to start it was in the fire pit and he picked it up before he realized what it was. During the night it must have jumped into the fire pit, the coals were still hot and it couldn't get back out. Poor thing (not really)


Marcella decided she wanted a drink of pop that was kept in the creek. She went by herself to get it and Jon realized what she was doing and found her there trying to get the drink. Jon told her to make sure she took some one with her the next time she wanted a drink. She is quite the explorer and camper. She loves it.


Our Camping trip - July 31 - August 1, 2009 - South Willow Canyon
We had a fun time camping with the family - minus Jason - he says he wasn't feeling good and decided not to go. We were all able to get to the campground before dark so we didn't have to set up any tents in the dark - I think that might be a first. Nathan, Amy and I were the last to arrive - we had to wait for Nathan to get off of work. We set up the tents, cooked dinner and sat around the camp fire tallking. I don't know the time we decided to go to bed. Marcella wanted to sleep in the small tent with her dad. Kanien, Claire and I were going to sleep in the green tent together but Kanien decided she wanted to be with Jon so the three of them ended up in the smallest tent. Claire and I had the bigger tent all to ourselves. The ground was hard and the night was long but finally morning came. We fixed breakfast - hashbrowns, sausage, bacon, eggs and cheese all mixed together - we used too many hashbrowns though and all we could taste was the potatoes. Nathan wanted to have the contest to see who could stand in the cold water the longest - Rosalee, Kanien and Amy didn't last too long - they gave up within a minute of being in the cold water - they said why stand there and torture ourselves when they knew Nathan and/or David wouldn't give up. We started throwing rocks at Nathan and David to splash them and they started throwing them back. Amy said something along the lines of "nothing good will come from this game - it will only end in tears. She threw the last rock and hit Nathan in the ankle (not intentionally of course) and the game did end in tears (kinda) lots of screaming ow my ankle. So David ended up winning. We also celebrated Davids birthday while we were there. His birthday isn't until August 6th but since we were all together we decided to celebrate it early. We had to be out of the campground by 1:00 or pay more fees so we packed up and left by 1. Jon didn't ever seem to be around while I was taking pictures. They forgot their camera so they took some of the pictures. Claire and William were really good and seemed to enjoy camping. I had a fun and enjoyable time. It was nice to get out of town - it was a lot of work though for the amount of time we spent there. Next time we will have to make it a longer camping trip. Hopefully everyone had fun and will want to do it again - especially when Dann is home to go with us.

Our Relief Society lesson on Sunday was on Charity - the pure love of Christ. We were given this quote from Marvin J. Ashton on charity and I think it pretty well sums up what Charity is.

Charity
Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other,
When we don't judge or categorize someone else,
When we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet.

Charity is accepting someone's differences, weaknesses, or shortcomings,
Having patience with someone who has let us down;
or resisting the impulse to become offended
when someone doesn't handle something the way we might have hoped.

Charity is refusing to take advantage of another's weakness
and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us.
Charity is expecting the best of each other.

- Marvin J. Ashton-

We did the 12 days of Christmas last year for the family and the last gift was a family picture that we would give to each of the kids - I told them we would have them taken sometime in the spring. Dann ended up leaving in the spring and we didn't get it done. He came home in July and Kanien kept telling me we need to get together for a family picture. I really liked the pictures that I saw from Ashlee's blog, simplyashphotography.blogspot.com so I asked her to take our pictures. It was spur of the moment, last minute and she came through for us. We took them the night before Dann left again. I really like the pictures and I am glad we had them done. Nathan and Amy chose not to have individual pictures since they just got married and have fairly recent pictures of them.