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.

Sweet {Tooth Fairy} Dreams

Ella loves leaving little notes for the Tooth Fairy. I thought she had quite high hopes when asking for $10.00!!  I guess she felt flattering her with words such as being the favorite above Santa and the Easter Bunny might help her feel inclined to leave more money.  Hint- she did not get $10.00

Happy Birthday Ella!

While at the pet store, my mom and Ella learned about a horse riding instructor.  It was so funny because her name is Natalie Robbins (my maiden name is Robbins).  Ella was able to take lessons and rode this sweet horse named Sunny.  Natalie (the other Natalie Robbins)  told us they usually call the horse Bubs.  We told her how funny that was because we call Cannon Bubs and we always sing "You are my Sunshine" to him.  Also Sunny is such a beautiful copper horse.  It was a fun connection.  Ella was able to do work in the arena and then go mountain riding up some trails. She was in heaven!

Since my birthday is three days before Ella's, Camille set up a surprise party for the two of us- complete with the whole family and a blow up water slide!  It was so much fun!

I am so lucky to have this big amazing family that is so good to me!

This is how we light candles at our house, doesn't everyone use a blow torch?  

The morning of Ella's birthday we had breakfast out on the sunny patio.  I remember going to California for our summer vacation each year.  Since my birthday is in June, we'd be in California on my birthday.  It was always a treat to have my birthday breakfast on the patio at my grandma's.  I love seeing Ella look forward to the same treatment on her birthdays.  I'm so thankful for this spunky little cowgirl.  She keeps us on our toes and melts our hearts.  We love you, Ella!

Of course Ella wanted to do another horse lesson on her birthday!

This present is a little bit of Ethan, a little bit of Ella. A lego horse farm.

For Ella's birthday celebration we went trail riding up Logan Canyon.  

My friend, and old roommate, Rhonda was in town and came with us. We all had so much fun. The weather was perfect and the views were incredible. 

At the top of the trail we stopped for a sack lunch.

 

 We got up pretty high on the mountain, so coming back down was a lot of work.  It was fun to see how brave the kids were.