Trek

Tylissa had a great time on trek she was glad when it was over and all she wanted was a taco. Here are some great pictures.


Most of the youth from the ward, getting ready to head out.



The cutest pioneer ever!


Pa loading up the handcart.


The "Porter" family Riley, Haley, Abby, Billy, Sierra, Tejia, Pa, Tylissa, Ma, Kylie, and Sam. A great family and a young family. They only had two boys who were 14 and two 17 year olds, the rest of the group was 14-15 years old but they did great!

Safe and Sound

They survived - we weren't worried about Val surviving cause he does this all the time but Keston came home alive, in great shape, and smelly from the 50 miler. They even made it home a day early and surprised us. So no one won the bet of when they would be home because we thought it would be late Saturday afternoon - evening.


Keston crossing the river.



Never let the kid hold the camera - this is what comes out of it. Who wouldn't love this face?


Taking a much needed break.


Hiking in the bear grass and vetch.



The grand suite in the mountains.



The whole group at the top - they had to split into two groups because there were so many, so the Priests started at one end and the Deacons and Teachers started at the other end. They met in the middle.



What happened to using a leaf - give it up for Charmin On the Go. And it's not what you think in the blue sack - thats the shovel. Again leave the camera in the hands of the kid and this is what you get.


At the end they had fun on the swinging foot bridge. Notice Keston's lovely attire. He forgot his pants so the whole time he wore his swimsuit over his long underwear.

They made it to the end. Always beautiful in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Val would live there if he could.

Wasa 09 . . . Wet

Another summer, another Wasa - although this one will go down in history as the year of wet. It is always fun to get together as family, visit, eat, and just have fun but this year it was interupted frequently by rain. I guess I can't complain too loud, in the 5 years we have been meeting at Wasa this is only the second summer of rain.

MONDAY

We woke up to rain and it stopped just long enough to get the boat in the water and once the fun started so did the rain. Becky kept trying to abort mission - abort Abort ABORT! So we headed back to camp. Luckily we have men with high tech toys and they found a rec center in Cranbrook with a hot tub, wave pool, water slide, and diving boards so we got to warm up and still had a great time.

The gang in the rain.

Kids have no feeling!

Tuesday

Started out great - nothing like pancakes, bacon and eggs to get you going. We had a good morning at the beach - kneeboarding, skiing, tubing, just playing around. And then - (insert scary music here) - the wall of black clouds came, thunder and lightening soon followed. We packed up and zoomed back to camp to get all the gear laying out drying in the sun put away so it wouldn't get wet again. THEN IT STARTED! The down pour but that is not enough - enter hail, not just any hail - HUGE hail. The size of large marbles - you know the boulder size ones. The kids were all in the motorhome, adults manned the tents. It hurts A LOT to be pinged on the finger tips by hail as you hold up the vestibule of a tent. Just when you thought it was dying down another round would start up. It seemed like forever, but maybe 20 - 30 minutes later it ended and Little Wasa Lake was in our camp.

The girls tent - what is left of it

Little Wasa Lake

The proof

Standing where their tent was.

Wednesday

A great day at the beach - is was perfect weather and a good ending to the year.

Tylissa skiing - great job!

Chad wakeboarding - best he's ever done!

Keston should know not to mess with Uncle Ken!

No more weeds!

It only took 8 years of living in our house for me to get really tired of having a weed bed. (And for Kendall's information - not anything you can smoke!) So we finally took action. The before picture doesn't do it justice because I had taken out all the weeds so now it looks fabulous. All we need to do is fill it in with rock. So we can't use the weed bed for giving directions anymore. You know, look for the house with grey vinyl siding and a big weed bed out front. Whatever will we say now.

BEFORE

AFTER - now it has Salvia, Daisies, St John's Wart, Gold Euonymus, and some type of purple grass something. Are you impress that I would even know what I put in there?

20 miler down - on to the 50

Keston survived the 20 miler!! His pack was bigger than he was but he survived and he is getting ready for the 50 miler next week.