Pioneer Trails Workshop, Day 3

Avenue of Rocks. Just another landmark that was cool to me because Jean liked it (but she called it Devil's Backbone).Bessemer Bend. Another spot that looks like a nice field by a bend in the Platte River, but to me this ground is sacred.
To me, October 19th will never be the same again. That's the day "the big storm" hit. An early winter hit hard in 1856 and two hardcart companies and two wagon companies were still out on the plains. My maiden name is Oldham. John and Sarah Oldham were my ancestors that came across the plains with the Martin Handcart Company, which suffered too much for me to even comprehend.



I'm sure no one is still reading at this point, but here is just a brief explanation about the Martin Handcart company. In 1856, many of the Saints overseas didn’t have the money to come to Utah, but desperately wanted to come. The perpetual emigration fund was developed to help the impoverished members pay for the trek with financial assistance, which they agreed to repay after they were able to earn the money in Utah. The cheapest way to migrate was by handcart. It also turned out to be the fastest. They didn’t have to worry about hitching up teams of oxen, or finding places for them to graze. 3 Handcart companies crossed the plains and entered the Valley earlier than expected and in even better shape than expected. Unfortunately, one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Western migration took place in the Fall and Winter of 1856. When the last group of Saints arrived in Florence, the handcarts they were expecting to find there were not ready. They waited in terrible, rainy, muddy, muggy lean-to’s, and couldn’t bear to stay there through the winter, so they decided to leave after the handcarts were finished. That was in late July, which is when they should have been close to entering the Valley. There were 2 wagon trains and 2 handcart companies to leave that late season. The Willey Company left first, and the Martin Company left shortly after them. Of the 576 members to begin the trek to UT, somewhere between 135-150 died along the way.



Their late start was compounded by other problems. The handcarts were made from unseasoned wood, and they were constantly breaking. Then they would have to take more time to wait for those handcarts to be fixed. And that brings me to October 19th, which was the date we were here to remember. All handcart and wagon teams had to cross the wide Platte river a number of times, and the last crossing generally took place here, at Bessemer Bend. The last handcart company, the Martin Company, had no sooner crossed this river on October 19th, when an early, frigid, winter storm hit. The wind, swirling with snow, was blinding, their clothes were freezing to their skin, and they knew they had to wait out the storm. So, they went up into these hills, to try to seek some shelter, and wait it out.



They ended up waiting here for 9 days, hoping for a rescue, which did come. But their food supplies were so low, they had to cut their rations down to four ounces per person per day. We were handed a little sack of flour to see what four ounces looks like. I had to ask myself what in the world I would do with this little flour to try to sustain the lives of my children through the most physically exerting thing they'd ever done in their lives.



Alright, shake it off, Johnson. Anyway, that's what the above (now VERY above) picture is about.

This night we camped at the base of Independence Rock, which is pretty high up there on the list of most-frequently-mentioned-landmarks.

There are a few names engraved on this rock that we know for sure are Mormon pioneers. (This name is J.W. Crosby).

You can climb up to a cave that William Clayton described in full detail. Another place we know church leaders in that first 1847 company hung out in.




There is a spot that Wilford Woodruff described in his pioneer journal, where they offered prayers. We climbed all over this little mountain hoping to find it (it actually was very specific), but no. A few people came with us and we realized there are just too many rocks like the one he described on the top to know where they were.

But we gave it a valiant effort. :)And now to one of my big highlights of the trip: Martin's Cove.
Another place the Martin Handcart Company took refuge from a terrible storm. Many died here, it's another sacred place for me. This is also where they were rescued by rescue companies that Brigham Young had sent from the Valley, looking for them at the beginning of October (before the storm had hit).





Our Martin's Cove experience was memorable, for sure. We got a SMALL TASTE of the crazy weather conditions that can happen here in Wyoming. It gave me some perspective. And no, I'm not trying to be blasphemous when I say SMALL TASTE, and SOME perspective - I already know that I have NO IDEA what those pioneers suffered! (just a disclaimer)



SO, as you can see, it was a hot day. After not too long pulling the handcart (which was going from the Visitor's Center to the Cove) a couple girls and I gave in and let the boys pull us. Can I just say that handcarts are heavy in the first place, WITHOUT baggage, WITH adequate food and rest, and WITHOUT blinding SNOW in your face.

Within just minutes the sky started to darken and storm clouds rolled in.

It started raining a little and we had to decide if we wanted to go where we had planned, which was fording the Sweetwater River, or if we wanted to just turn around and go back to the Visitor's Center. We were at about the middle of the loop we were taking, so we figured we might as well keep going toward the river, which would take us back around the Visitor's Center.

Then it started to HAIL! BIG HAIL! The OUCH!!!-HOW-LONG-AM-I-GOING-TO-HAVE-THESE-WELTS-ON-MY-ARM?-HAIL!

Ok, I know I'm a wimp, but SERIOUSLY, this hail really HURT!



I can also see what kind of pioneer wife I'd be. I DITCHED the cart and left it for the guys and ran beneath a friend's cart a little further down the path for some shelter.



This is where I learned first-hand that those stupid handcarts provide NO SHELTER. One more time: OUCH!!! Ok, I sort of get the importance of a Cove.

After the hail let up a little we started again towards the river. But lightening started to strike. We got through the river, with the COLD water up past my waist. Then as soon as we got out, the lightening started to strike way way way way way way too close for comfort. I know I sound dramatic, but it was actually kind of scary. So we ditched the carts just after the river and ran through the rain to a little outpost where a couple sweet missionaries squeezed us in with them. Too bad I don't have any pictures fording the river - but we were kind of in a hurry.

I took these pics after the hail, before the river. It's a monument honoring the Aaronic Priesthood and the rescuers of the Martin Handcart Company. These statues depict three young men who carried many of the pioneers across the sweetwater river - which was freezing with floating chunks of ice throughout.

Our "rescuer" came in the form of a missionary on a golf cart who eventually made it out where we were, brought us chocolate, and drove us back to the Visitor's Center.

Where we were given blankets! Although truthfully, I never really warmed up. In fact, I think I didn't get warm again until the next day. Which again (I KNOW it's not the SAME), just made me think of my ancestors in that company. Most likely without adequate clothing also, just one blanket from a rescuer not making enough of a difference, and it was JULY, not NOVEMBER - and by the way, that is one of the coldest Novembers Wyoming has on record.



And here are our names!!!
I love you John Oldham (33), Sarah Oldham (23), Jane Elizabeth (4), and Louis William (six months)!!!

To wrap up the Martin's Cove history, the company waited in the cove for 5 days (November 4-9), left the cove, crossed the Sweetwater for the last time (with the help of the rescue company), and arrived in Salt Lake on November 30th. Although the Oldham's actually entered the Valley on December 5.

More pictures at the cove:

It's hard to see, but in the middle-right section of this picture there is a tree stump. It is really old, and you'll see these old tree stumps all over the cove. Obviously, we can't know for sure, but I have to wonder if these trees were chopped down for firewood by my ancestors. Four hundred and something pioneers here in this cove needing firewood...just sayin....

We made a lot of great friends on the trek. It was nice to be with CES employees from all over the Country. Just this last year I have started becoming really comfortable with our situation of being uprooted from Utah Valley and transplanted in Arizona. Actually, more than comfortable. I feel incredibly blessed and thankful for the opportunity we've had to learn and grow here. It was nice to be able to talk to others who have also found the great blessings that have come to them from working and serving throughout the country, and "blooming where they are planted."

Oh, and by the way, we are standing in a depression caused by the wagons.

Along this depression you will find rust on a lot of the rocks. That rust is from the wagon wheels making contact with those rocks.

Pioneer Trails Workshop, Day 2

"Hey everybody - look at that cool field over there!"
"Oh yeah, I see what you mean. What an AWESOME empty field!"


To most people it's just an empty field, but this is where "Brigham's Chastisement" took place. WOW, Brigham Young was good at rebuking people! Basically, this is where he called people to repentance and tried to get them to regain their focus on the mission at hand. This was our favorite quote from it:

"If any man had sense enough to play a game at cards, or dance a little without wanting to keep it up all the time, but exercise a little and then quit it and think no more of it, it would do well enough, but you want to keep it up till midnight and every night, and all the time. You don't know how to control your senses."

It's so easy to get fully caught up in anything these days, especially media, it seems. It's so accessible, and so easy. This quote reminds me to keep Christ at the center of my life, and not the computer or TV. Maybe I should embroider a bunch of Brigham Young's calls to repentance on pillows all over my house to help me out a little. :)

At one point, the men all stood up and sang "Ye Elders of Israel." I feel really blessed that Marty gets to work with such good men. The spirit was so strong when they sang this together, and I'm so thankful that I have a husband who treats me like a queen and his children like gold. He tries so hard to humble and obedient and...darn it, he's just such a good guy! :) I love you, Marty.

We were surprised at how much dust 25 cars could kick up. The dust was coming in through the A/C and choking us, and I bet the PIONEERS never had to deal with that.

Just kidding, we couldn't even imagine the dust that must have been kicked up by the oxen and wagons of hundreds of people. That's another thing that pioneer journal entries talked about over and over.

Fort Laramie
The Gurnsey wagon ruts.

I'm sitting in a part of the trail through which my ancestors traveled! How cool is that!?!

This is another place we know the pioneers came through, for a few reasons. Register Cliffs is on the right side, and the Platte River is on the left. In between those two landmarks there is a depression in the land, and we know the pioneers pretty much had to travel there, and that's what caused the depression.
By the way, Register Cliffs is soft limestone that travelers of the Oregon Trail would inscribe their names on. Often that was so that family members or others following behind them could look at the names and know those people had made it that far.

Ayer's Natural Bridge.

It was a really beautiful place to stop for lunch. Yet another place that you can stand on and know for certain that Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and other pioneers were. Heber wrote about it in his journal. I guess he's a lot taller than me or something (surprise), because I sure couldn't reach the top like he could!

We went to a is a visitor's center in Wyoming (the National Historic Trail Interpretive Center, in Casper) that was really cool! They devoted the museum to four different groups of travelers: The Oregon Trail, the California Gold Rush Trail, the Pony Express, and the Mormon Trail!

Here you could climb into a covered wagon with a movie screen in front. While they play the movie, the wagon bumps up and down and makes you feel like you were fording a river.

Same thing, but with a stage coach.

Here, you pull the wagon on sort of a treadmill and the chart on the left will tell you if you are pulling too hard (you'll exhaust yourself before the end of the journey), not hard enough (you won't get there before supplies run out), or just right. And that's me trying to smile while I pull with all my strength to even come close to that middle ground.

There was a pretty sad display here. Behind this snowy handcart, there is a movie about Heber McBride from the Martin Handcart Company. He was a 13 year old who found his father frozen by the side of a wagon. This set the tone for the next day, which almost exclusively dealt with the tragedy of the Martin Handcart Company. I'd been waiting for this day, because I have ancestors that survived the ordeal.

And since I already have Heber's journal typed up for a fireside Marty and I did recently, I just included a portion of his journal entry about that night:

“Father was very bad and could hardly sit up in the tent. . . . I managed to get Father in one of the wagons. That was the last we ever saw of him alive. . . .

"[That evening] the snow was getting very deep and my sister and me had to pitch our tent and get some wood, but there were plenty of dry willows. After we had made mother as comfortable as possible, we went to find father, but the wind was blowing the snow so hard we could not see anything. . . . We did not find father that night.

"The next morning the snow was about eighteen inches deep and awful cold. While my sister was preparing our little bite of breakfast I went to look for father, and found him under the wagon with snow all over him and he was stiff and dead. I felt as though my heart would burst as I sat down beside him in the snow and took his hand in mine and cried, 'Oh, Father, Father.'

"There we were, away from everything, away out on the plains with hardly anything to eat or wear, and father dead and mother sick; a widow with five children and hardly able to live from day to day. After I had my cry out I went back to the tent and told mother and the children. To try to write my feelings is out of the question.

"We were not the only family called upon to mourn the loss of a father that morning, for there were thirteen men dead in camp.”

Saddest. Movie. Ever.

We went to a movie theater last night, and I haven't cried this hard at a movie for a long time. I cried during the opening sequence. I cried durning the entire last 15 or so minutes. I cried all the way out to the bathroom. Then I cried all the way out to the car, and half way to our next destination. Marty made fun of me, but Brynn actually cried during the movie too, only during a different part. To what am I referring? Toy Story 3. Any other moms cry during that? It's so sad!!! Andy grows up and goes to college!!! Again I say, I can't believe I am one of THOSE moms. I don't think I'm cut out for the emotions that come along with mommyhood. It didn't help that earlier that day I had gotten out all of Brynn's winter clothes from last year and almost none of them fit.

And the book I can't stop the waterworks for? Winnie the Pooh. Christopher Robin grows up in that one, too!

At the end of the book, Pooh wants to know if a bear could be a Knight, which of course he could be, so Christopher Robin knights Pooh with a stick and says "Rise, Sir Pooh de Bear". Pooh thanks him and sits down again, and goes off into a bit of a dream for a while.
Suddenly Christopher Robin interrupts Pooh's musings, and tells Pooh that he's not going to be doing Nothing anymore, or at least not so much, because he won't be allowed.
Christopher Robin says to Pooh that when he...you know, when he's not allowed to do Nothing anymore, he would like Pooh to come up to the enchanted place sometimes. Pooh says "Just me?", and Christopher Robin says yes, and Pooh asks Christopher Robin if he will be there with him, and Christopher Robin says that he will really.

Christopher Robin then asks Pooh to promise to never, not ever forget about him, not even when he is one hundred (and Pooh is 99). Pooh promises to never forget. Christopher Robin looks out at the world, and asks Pooh to understand, whatever happens, and Pooh asks what it is he needs to understand, and Christopher Robin says nevermind, and then Come on!, and Pooh says where to, and Christopher Robin says "Anywhere".

And the last line of the book is:

"So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."

Oh all moms I've ever known, I'm so sorry I ever rolled my eyes when you got weepy!

Pioneer Trails Workshop, July 2010

Hee hee, ha ha, I love it when I announce a triumphant return to blogging and then do nothing. So, this trek is old news and I've already talked about it with a lot of people, but I'm still going to post it. Someday I am going to make my blog into a book, and I don't see me scrapbooking these pictures anytime soon.

In July, Marty and I were participants in something called the "Pioneer Trails Workshop," which is offered to seminary teachers. Over six days, we retraced the pioneer trail from Chimney Rock in Nebraska back to Salt Lake City. It really was an incredible experience. I learned so much and gained such a deep appreciation and love for my pioneer heritage.

It wasn't a trek, it was a workshop. By that, I mean that we didn't pull handcarts the whole way or anything, we roughed it in brand new SUVs, donated by the beloved, late Larry Miller - thank you, Larry! We did sleep in tents the whole week. And we used porta-potties the whole week, but man, were they NICE porta-potties! (I'm not being a sass - they had names like "Lilac Breeze" and "Sage Mist" and the background music the crew would play for us at each potty stop made the experience plenty pleasant!)

The workshop experience started in March, actually. That's when we got our first packet of readings to complete. I LOVED the readings! There were a lot of different types of reading material ranging from talks from church leaders about the pioneers, to informative booklets and pamphlets put out by the state of Wyoming about the Oregon trail, to our Day 1-Day 6 readings. Those were my favorite. They were each around 30 pages and they would outline what we'd be seeing that day, give a historical background about it, then give excerpts from different pioneer journals on that particular place.

Now to the trail! Day one was a lot of driving. We had to make it all the way to Nebraska in good time. So we snapped a couple pictures at the Lincoln Highway:

And a Butch Cassidy display at a Visitor's Center (did you know he was Mormon?):

But here's where the trip to a turn. Literally, because that is where we turned around and started heading West. And spiritually, as well. We talked about Wee Granny Murdoch and had a little memorial service for her. She was this amazing, strong elderly woman, who came from Scotland. She wasn't even 5 feet tall, weighed 90 pounds, and still had the faith to begin the journey. She died of cholera near Chimney Rock, and told her family to give this message to her son John, waiting for her in Utah, "Tell John I died with my face toward Zion."

Here is a landscape picture of Chimney Rock. It's the most frequently mentioned landmark in pioneer journals, and after driving through nothing but flat fields for so long, we can see why. We read one journal of a poor little kid who asked his parents, "How are we ever going to get to Zion if we keep camping in the same place every night?"

P.S. Chimney Rock was a lot taller back in the 1800s. Our theory is that Johnston's Army used it as target practice when they were bored, but no one will comment on that at the Visitor's Center! :)

Scott's Bluff:

Here we talked about the weight on Brigham Young's shoulders as he climbed to the top of the bluff and looked East, imagining the thousands of Saints that were about to follow in his footsteps, and then to the West, imagining the miles and miles of wilderness he still had to trek through. Here, all the participants raised a banner to the nations. Also, it was a fun spot for me because Jean talked about it in her journal. Who is Jean?

Jean and I are tight. She is an ancestor who came from England, sang at concerts there, and brought her grand piano all the way from England to Utah in it's own covered wagon! That piano (and a movie about her!) is in the Church History Museum in Salt Lake. I never went for long at all without going up to Salt Lake to visit that piano and think about her. Dumb as it sounds, I get homesick for that piano down here in Arizona. She is also incredibly articulate and left a beautifully detailed account of her journey. That journal is as worn out as it can be, I LOVE reading it. ANYWAY, she mentions clamoring to the tops of some bluffs, and these seem to be in just the right spot, given the landmarks she mentions before and after them. Reading Jean's journal in correlation with the workshop sites was one of my favorite parts of the experience.

The last thing we did that day was to visit Rebecca Winter's grave.

As quickly as I can tell it, she was the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero. She and her husband and children joined the church, started West, and she died along the way. A band of Indians came by demanding food, and became hostile when the pioneers refused to give the Indians the food. Rebecca's husband pulled the blanket off his deceased wife's face to show the illness in the camp and the Indians fled. Everyone acknowledged the fact that although Rebecca's death was tragic, it probably saved a lot of their lives. Her husband and a few others worked all through the night digging a deep grave and inscribing her name on an iron tire rim. They shaped it into an oval and used that to mark the grave.

Later, some good people bought and homesteaded that piece of land, but always made sure to keep the grave undisturbed, even though they didn't know who she was. Generations later, a railroad was put in near the gravesite, too close for descendants to safely visit it. It was decided she would be exhumed and moved to a better resting place. The family was apprehensive because most pioneer remains have never been recovered (wolves), and they hoped she was really there. She was! Five and a half feet under the ground, and the tire rim stood even taller than that. They moved Rebecca Winters to a new resting place, and that's where we had a little memorial for her.

So here's a better idea. If I write this much about every day, maybe I should just post the days separately, as I get a chance to blog a little. Enjoy Day 1!

To blog, or not to blog

That is the question. For some reason I always lose motivation to blog in the summer. When we came home from our trip to Utah in July, I couldn't get myself going to post it. Then the pictures kept building up, further discouraging me from blogging, and then I decided I actually didn't miss it. Here were some of my gripes about blogging:

1. It's unrealistic. I often read a version of this on people's blogs: "A lot of people only blog the good things, and never the hard times or the trials, but I want to blog the good and the bad." I agree that when people only blog about the wonderful things in their lives, sometimes it's easy to try to compare yourself (the realistic, good-but-flawed version of yourself) with the Internet version of other people (when often they are putting their best foot forward). Alas, I am one that tends to blog when I am in a good mood and things are going well. By nature, I'm a pretty private person and I have a hard time putting my struggles out there for all to see. For me, that's what my private journal is for. So yeah, I'm that blogger.

2. Wasted time. When I stopped blogging, I spent most of my computer time on a gigantic family history project I'm working on and that's been pretty fulfilling. I started thinking that maybe blogging was a monumental waste of my time.

3. Most of my friends aren't blogging as much as they used to either.

I've resolved these issues the following ways:

1. It's my blog, I can post happy things if I want to.

2. Last week I read through a couple of my recent posts. Then I got hooked and started reading farther and farther back, and I was so grateful that I had journaled so many details to go along with my pictures. It's ridiculous, the things I had already forgotten about in just a couple of years. I try to write in my notebook journal a few times a week, and sometimes I scrapbook, but really the only times the captions go along with the pictures is on my blog. So, in just a few days I have gone from thinking blogging was a big waste of time to thinking that it is the ultimate journaling experience.

3. Meh.

So here we go. Months worth of blogging going in one post (maybe 2 or 3). This is where I tell friends and family that they are respectfully invited to oblige their first inclination, which is to X out of the blog right now, and invite Mom and Dad to enjoy. :) I'm going to blog everything this weekend if it kills me, and not let it happen again.

P.S. After spell-checking this, the computer has informed me that I have made "journal" into a few new words that didn't previously exist. I knew that.

First of all, kids change so much in 3 months, so here is what they look like right now.

Next up: my last post was innocent enough at the beginning, when it was true that I was dealing well with the summer heat. But now that it's October and still 104 degrees and still not cooling off, well now it's just obnoxious. I did pretty well until September. So if we're counting June through September, I'll say it's Emily - 3, Summer - 1. But if October doesn't start shaping up, and FAST, I'm going to lose about a bazillion points. I'm as homesick as I ever get when October doesn't cool down and feel like Fall. Anyway, here are a few pics of us TRYING to enjoy the summer months.

San Tan Splash Pad

They have so much fun together.

AJ Library

Bowling. This was for Marty's 29th birthday, which was on Labor Day this year!

And speaking of annoying, blistering, night-time heat, Brynn had a pretty exciting night Friday. Marty has a bunch of students on Spirit Line, so we participated in a fund-raiser where they taught the kids a little dance to perform at the half-time show during last-night's football game. It was pretty cute, but I got a taste of how very, very little it takes to feel like a horrible parent. We got her there way late, Bryce screamed the whole time, we forgot to bring water for her the kids, but the kicker was that I thought I had plenty of room in my camera to record the whole performance, and I didn't. I recorded about 5 seconds of it. My mom assures me that I still have plenty more times to mess up ahead of me, but much better ones as well.

(all the pics are so dark)

Marty and I have been planning to make a relatively substantial expense this month (more on that later) so we've been trying to save up for it the last couple of months. We decided that we weren't going to eat out AT ALL, which shouldn't be that hard, but we haven't been perfect at it. Most of the times we eat out are because I didn't prepare ahead of time and we find ourselves out and about doing errands with starving children. Well, one thing that has helped us is to try to find something really FUN to make together on the weekends, after the kids are in bed.

This week we make sushi (with canned salmon) and we couldn't believe how good it turned out, and what a fun date it was! Other weekends were:

-Chili Verde

-Chicken Mole

-Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches

-Cafe Rio Salads with sweet pork and tomatillo dressing.

Now that I look at this list, a few things are evident: We like SPICY food, and Mexican food. We are almost a food-match made in Heaven, except that Marty doesn't like anything vinegar-y and that's just WEIRD. If anyone wants the recipe for the Cafe Rio salads, just e-mail me. It cost less to make it than to buy it there, but then we had enough pork and dressing to freeze for three meals. So, WAY cheaper.

About every other Saturday morning, Brynn goes on a date with Daddy. She makes sure to bring all the essentials.

Surprise, surprise - pictures of Bryce making a big mess (or I guess in the case, Bryce actually is the big mess). This particular marker only took one day to come off!

And this muddy mess wasn't his fault. Sister was the one caking on the mud. As you can see, he's very upset about it. I'm sure this game wasn't any fun at all for Brynn.

He thinks he doesn't need two naps anymore, and then sleeps through lunch.
Most of the time, it's a pain when I give Brynn the camera because then I have to delete a million pictures of the carpet. But this day she got a picture of me loving my boy. I like this picture because it's a representation of all that I haven't blogged the last few months. This is pretty much what I do all day, every day. Play, play, play!

Up next: Our pioneer trails workshop trip.

Emily 1, Summer 0

The month of June is over, and I have emerged good-natured and victorious! Of course, it's going to be unbearable until October, so I still have a long way to go. But I think this is the best June I've ever had here in AZ. It's also technically the coolest June we've had since we've been here - haven't even hit 115 yet! We've checked a lot off of our "summer to-do list," and here's how we've been keeping cool:

***Lunch-time at Daddy's work. The kids run from one end of the gym to the other and wear themselves out. Then they crash when we get home and I lay down under the fan for a few minutes with an otter pop.

***We've been swimming at the Apache Junction pool and a few friends' pools. We haven't been using ours the last week. Since I have to be out there constantly with Bryce, but don't want to constantly sit in the little kiddie pool (which I pretty much fill up), I've been just sitting out there and feeling heat-strokey (you heard me). I think we'll invest in a slip n' slide where I feel better about watching them from the window of my nice, cool house.

***Camping in the mountains.

***The library's summer reading program. Brynn reached her goal within a week or two, but since Bryce would rather die than sit still for a book, it's taken him a little longer and we've been going to the library every couple days.

***Other things we've checked off the list are tea parties (obviously), dates with Mom/Dad, the play place at the mall and Chick-fillet, making forts, and reading lots of books together.

***Things we still need to check off: Basha Waterpark, Peter Piper Pizza, Heber, Boulder, D-Backs game, a sleepover party in the loft, Mesa Museum of Natural History, and playing out in the rain for our first monsoon. But who knows when that will be? Monsoon season officially started June 15, but it's been 101 days since it last rained.

Not too much to report

Just life. We are all enjoying Daddy's low-stress summer. Seminary teachers are on 12 month contracts, so even though Marty is still working during the summer, it's usually just an 8 hour day with no 4:00 a.m. alarms.

Here is the incredible karaoke duo blastin' out hits from High School Musical. That little girl loves to sing. I'm always coming down the stairs to find her belting out her own composition and accompanying herself at the piano. When we tuck her in at night, she has decided she would rather sing us our favorite songs, rather than the other way around. She's probably figured out that Mommy is a sucker and will stay up just as long as she keeps on singing.

And as for Bryce: Huh? White footprints coming out of the bathroom?

Oh. Good thing it was just baking soda. Makes me glad I threw out all my harsh cleansers and started using home-made, non-toxic stuff. Thanks for the idea, Lindsay! (Here's the link to the cleaning recipes: http://thecreativemama.com/clean-with-green/) What a typical picture of my climbing/mess-and-mischief-making boy.

Marty was called into the Young Men's program a couple weeks ago. I panicked for a very short time until I was assured that I'd be able to stay in Young Women's and we could work it out. I've never lived in FEAR of being released before until I got to be with those girls, and now I am so attached to them and I can't imagine being released! On Tuesday morning the young men came to our house to make Hershey kiss flowers and posters to hang on the doors/garages of the young women, who were all returning from camp that afternoon. That's a nice welcome home, eh? I forgot, have I mentioned that Marty and I really love the youth in Queen Creek? :)