Basketball

Ethan is still going strong with his basketball pursuits and Kent is still coaching him.  It is a lot of fun to watch Ethan play and I am thankful for the bond he and Kent are building.  It is wonderful to know that my husband is so involved with Ethan's activities. It's reassuring to know that Kent knows the kids that Ethan spends most of his time with.  I'm thankful to have an activity that keeps Ethan active and out of trouble.

Ethan was able to play in a 3 on 3 tournmaent with the Prosser team.  They had a lot of fun.  It was a super hot day and playing on the asphalt made it even hotter for the players, as you can see by their red faces!

Suncadia "Glamping"

Kent's mom, Laura, came out to help with the kids while I was at girl's camp.  Once I got home, we took everyone up to our favorite mountain resort called Suncadia.  We had a great time.  Some highlights were biking the trails, scooter rides, swimming, playing chess in the lobby, hiking the mountainside, roasting marshmallows, and just enjoying the fresh air along with the beautiful views.

Bubs is such a trooper.  He just goes right along with us and has a great time.

 We rented bikes and a trailer to hit the trails on this beautiful summer day.  Ella doesn't know how to ride a bike yet and they didn't have any bikes with training wheels.  Kent "sacrificed" and rented a scooter to take Ella on.  I had the privilege of pulling Cannon up and down the hills.  All in all we had a great day!

 

 Grandma Laura and I took turns carrying Cannon.  He loved being outside but he sure gets heavy after awhile.

 They have a few fire pits around the grounds for you to warm up near as the sun sets and the crisp mountain air gets cooler. They had a table set up with ingredients to make your own s'mores.  Yum!

 We started out eating at the nice restaurant in the hotel.  We waited for our food for nearly two hours.  TWO HOURS! We finally asked them if they could deliver it to our room so we could get Cannon to bed.

Once they brought it up to our room it had taken so long that they offered us their most expensive bottle of wine.  Since we don't drink, we respectfully declined.  The next morning the manager called us and apologized about the inconvenience and offered us spa passes and free paddle boarding. It was worth it!

 They have fun activities throughout the resort grounds.  Here we were able to make our own ice cream.

I love my calling

At my church I have a calling to help the Young Women in our ward. The Young Women's program is an inspired program for girls between the ages of 12-18 to come together for spiritual instruction and to bond socially and serve others.   We have a lot of fun together.  You can click on this link to learn more about this program: https://www.lds.org/callings/young-women?lang=engI was able to be a guest speaker at a conference for the Young Woman.  I was inspired by this little book called "Be The Chocolate Chip".  

It is more of a booklet, so it is a quick read (which I highly recommend).  Here is a link to see more details about the book: http://www.amazon.com/Be-Chocolate-Chip-Jen-Brewer/dp/0983514003

Each year, the Young Women go to "Girl's Camp".  We have so much fun going to the mountains and camping out for the week. In order to pay for camp, we do a fundraiser. This year we decided to make cinnamon rolls.  One of the women in our church, and also a mother of one of our young women, has connections to the high school cafeteria so she helped us make them at a professional level.  It was fascinating to watch the process.  As you can see here, she's a pro- no measuring needed!!

 That is a huge vat of brown sugar and butter to roll out on the dough.

The girls created an assembly line of rolling dough, spreading dough with "goo", rolling up the rolls, slicing them, putting them on the pans in the steamer  and finally putting them in the ovens.

That's not where the work ends!    This is not even all the boxes that needed to be assembled to fill our cinnamon roll orders

  

 After the rolls were baked, another assembly line was created to assemble boxes, fill them with the baked rolls, then finally wrap them with saran wrap.  A third assembly line was created to fill containers with frosting.

 Finally the work in the kitchen was done and we hit the roads to do door to door deliveries!

All that hard work from our fundraiser paid off when we all had a great time at Girls' Camp! We cook on our own meals on top of a fire we started on our own.  We sleep in a tent that we put up ourselves.  We have devotionals, skits, song practice, testimony meetings, hikes, canoeing and so much more!  It is such a fun way to feel the love of our Heavenly Father by being surrounded in nature.  The beauty of the earth reminds us that we are known and our Father in Heaven wants us to be happy.  I always come home feeling such a spiritual high.