Thanksgiving

We ate turkey dinner with the Wheelers this year and played Ticket to Ride and ate yummy food.  We feel so blessed to have great family members that we love!

One of the highlights of Thanksgiving break was rollerskating with friends. 

And this is our current living situation as we pack for moving in a few weeks.  AH! 

Labor Day Camping

We went to Cave Falls with the Hansens over Labor Day weekend and had such a great time.  We stayed in a campground right next to each other and enjoyed relaxing in the hammocks, eating yummy food, visiting the falls and a few got to ride the ATVs to Horseshoe Lake.

At Horseshoe Ella caught tons and tons of caterpillars as they were swimming all throughout the lake and climbing on the lilypads.  We also brought about 10 home which only 5 survived and at this moment 4 have made a cocoon.  We will see what happens when they emerge.  The kayaks were so fun to have there and all the kids were so brave at just taking a plunge into the cold water.

My silly posing girls.

Pictures from the campground.  The kids would swing themselves upside down in the hammocks.  They love them and so do I because they are so entertaining for them and so relaxing for me.

Pictures at the falls. 

After the butterfly museum, she's a pro at catching butterflies. 

These girls spent hours down by the river catching minnows.  They caught 2 and a suckerfish of some sort and put them in the bucket to take home.  I wasn't a huge fan, but in the reverse situation I'd feel the same so I agreed.  :)   Man I love camping and being outdoors together like this; building friendships and making memories together.

I didn't want to come home very badly.  I love getting away with my family like this and enjoying the simple things in life without the distractions of any cell phones or electronics.  Just being together.  :)

Ella's Exciting Summer Fun - Madagascar Camp, Girls Camp & EFY

 This is the skit we did at skit night. Ours was a spelling bee and was super fun.

 Every day, beehives, miamaids or laurels would get the Gemma stuffed animal and talk about the values that the leaders taught us.

 We would hang out around the campfire in our comfy clothes and sing camp songs and eat yummy snacks.

 The preisthood and some leaders set up some games for the young women to play to teach us about teamwork and values.

 We made marshmallow guns with PVC pipes and cute duct tape.

 They loaded us up with marshmallows and we shot them at each other. We really liked shooting the priesthood with them.

 We had chalk fights. We would throw powdered chalk at each other and get our girls camp shirts covered in rainbow chalk.

 Braiding hair was a huge part of girls camp! We would do string around them, and put beads in them. It was not unusual to see braid chains during break time. 

 Every day, the young women had assignments to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner, clean up, etc. 

 This picture is right before we left the church to go to the camp.

 I was im madagascar jr. musical. i was a steak, palm tree and a zoo keeper! 

 Here is me and my dad after my performance

 Some of my friends came to watch and it was really fun to go out to eat afterwards.

 Here is the opening scene where I am a zookeeper with all the animals at the Central Park Zoo

 The main characters would sing while we did choreography along with them.

 This is the steak scene where we had to be extra "tasty". We had a lot of fun in this scene.

 I would "take care" of the animals in the scenes.

 We would sing and dance and have a blast on the stage.

 

 I got this note from someone at EFY during on of my classes. My frinds and I thought it was from a boy until we realized it was someone just being nice. ;)

 I made lots of friends in my company and we would take a selfie in every class we went to.

 Here is another selfie.

 and another...

 I love this one. It has most of my company.

 This was after our morning devotionals that the counselors would put on.

 This is me, my friends Aiden, Kyah and Kailee. Kailee came with me and lives in Idaho but Aiden and Kyah are from Utah.

 On the last day, our parents came to pick us up and we all were all super upset because we would miss them all.