Girl's camp

I got back from our ward's girls camp last Friday. It was a great week. We have a wonderful group of girls and the other leaders are fantastic as well. The calling of camp director has gone from one of my least desired callings to one of my favorites.

The lake at the end of our hike.
The hike was rated easy to moderate and we decided that is all relative to who is rating the hike. It proved to be uphill about 2/3 of the way. All the girls and leaders stuck with it even though it was somewhat difficult. Our theme was Rise to the Challenge and we did just that.

Playing on the "beach teeter-totter" at Deception Pass
Other fun activities:
yoga, boating, duct tape crafts, ropes course and of course campfire time.

Dress up time

Ashlie dressed up one day and did a ballet performance for me. Then she proceeding to direct me on making this crown for her. After we got her all dressed up she said "now let's go take a picture". She planned out where the picture should be...here she is making her debut...Ashlie the ballet princess -

Today's summertime fun

Today we attended a science presentation called Radical Reactions. The topic was all about various chemical reactions. We learned that a reaction in science has to produce at least 1 of these 4 elements: heat, light, color change, gas.

We got to see a variety of different reactions. This one included different colored flames. Very neat.

After that we headed off to a lavender festival at a small farm.

The thing I was looking forward to the most was the lavender ice cream I had heard this farm had. The flavors were Lemon Lavender and Dulce de Leche lavender. It was really good ice cream but we couldn't taste any lavender in them. We decided since we have a lot lavender plants ourselves were going to have to try our hand at making our own lavender ice cream. We'll see how that turns out.

Eating the ice cream.

We did see some beautiful dried lavender floral arrangements that gave the girls and me some inspiration to make some of our own.

We also got to see a colony of bees on display making honey at one of the honey vendor tables. That was really neat. Unfortunately we didn't snap any pictures of that.

Summer Trip to UT

Happy 4th of July

We hope your 4th of July celebration was a enjoyable as ours. We spent our time in UT with family and doing lots of fun activities.

We loved going to Grandpa and Grandma's neighborhood pool each day. We would go first thing in the morning and have the pool all to ourselves for awhile.
Madelyn, cousin Courtney and Alia riding the alligator.
The first activity as part of Ahren's extended family reunion was a talent show for whoever wanted to participate.
My girl's sang the song 50 Nifty United States.
I talked my sister Lisa (who has an awesome voice) into doing a karaoke version of the song "My Guy" with me.
Here's a part of our fabulous performance. We each are holding a picture of hubbies

The highlight of the night was hearing my mom recite her famous "The Peach". It is a short, humorous poem that she recites 6 times mimicking the recitation style of a preschooler, first grader, third grader, 7th grader, high schooler and college student.

Here is the first grader. (The sign she is wearing says "first grade")

Here is the college student (the sign says "college" now)


The next day we had a picnic in the canyon with Ahren's extended family.

Wading in the creek up in the canyon
My awesome Aunt Christie with some of her nieces

Grass Weaving

I forgot to post this from a couple of weeks ago.
Alia decided to make a horse out of things she found outside. Here is her finished creation...