Birthday Date

I celebrated my birthday a little early this year with a date to the Chihuly art museum in Seattle. 

Scott took some video while we were there and made it into this cute 2 minute video.  Enjoy. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZiWKm5Z-7M  click on HD and full screen for the best viewing.

Today I am thankful that
*Our big girls can babysit when Scott and I go on a date.  Yay!
*Holly is at a stake dance tonight with a friend.  It is an outdoor dance in the church parking lot.
*Emily had a fun time at her music/drama camp and now I am done driving to Issaquah twice a day. 

I got to go to camp this year!

Last year I dropped my girls off at girls camp and felt a little sad that I didn't get to stay.  This year I was the stake girls camp secretary so not only did I get to attend girls camp but I got to help with the planning.  I attended girls camp with Holly in 2011 but this was my first time to be there with Emily.  We collected and traded pins at camp which was fun.

The backdrop our youth camp leaders made was awesome.  Our theme this year was Mountains to Climb.  These are the two sets of senior missionaries that work at the church camp we attended.

Here are the picnic tables that we ate on for meals.  I loved how they were decorated and I wanted to include a pictures of them since I swept under them all after the dinner meals. That was the job I assigned to myself.  I am a good sweeper.

 Here is Emily and her friend from our ward.  They are the only second year campers in our ward.  She wishes there were more girls her age.

 I stayed in a cabin with the other stake leaders. 

 My bunk was the one on the bottom right.

 On the first day of camp I was scrambling to collect all the remaining letters. We had both parent letters and YW leader letters.  It was a bit of a fiasco. Fortunately we collected them all.

 Then the letters were placed in the girls camp mailboxes.

 We had singing time each day and was lots of fun.  Our camp theme song was called Mountains to Climb from lds.org.  Here is a link to the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7IGXddWYiE.  The girls all the sang the song and raised their arms when they said Mountains to climb. 

 This is the logo for our girls camp.  The Stake YW president designed it and we put it on our t-shirts and the camp songbook.

 My favorite part of camp by far was the food.  I loved that I didn't have to do a thing.  I just went and picked up yummy food for every meal.  The cooks did a great job.

 Holly wasn't at camp this year because she was on the 4th year hike. She carried a big backpack and everything.

 They hiked up to Rachel lake and it was beautiful.  She had a great time.

Today I am thankful that:
*Girls camp is over.  I have been looking forward to it/dreading it for months. Helping to plan it was pretty stressful.
*Scott did a good job of tending the little kids while I was at camp.
*Holly returned from her hike a day before camp ended and she cleaned up the house before I returned.  It was so nice to return home to a clean house.

EFY Deja vu

18 years ago I applied to be an EFY counselor.  They didn't want me at BYU but they said I could be a regional counselor in Tacoma for a week at the University of Puget Sound.  There were several other kids from my stake that got to be regional counselors that week too.  I guess it saves them money if they don't have to fly the regular counselors to the regional EFY sessions.

Today I drove to the University of Puget Sound again to drop off Holly there at EFY.  There were four girls going from our ward so I drove them all.  We got there early but wouldn't let us check in early so we wandered around campus enjoying the scenery.  

 



Then we joined the check in line.  We were in line for about 40 minutes and this girl in the yellow was behind us.  She didn't seem to be in line with any one else but I was hesitant to speak to her for fear it would embarrass my daughter.  I often do embarrassing things. :)  After about 20 minutes I just couldn't help myself and I talked to her. She was alone (she had been dropped off the night before)and so happy to meet me and the four girls I brought.  I guess it is true, never disregard a prompting to do good.  This picture was taken before I met her.

After checking in the girls headed to the car to get their stuff.  I took this picture without their knowledge because I didn't want to embarrass them.

 Here is Holly and her friend in their  room.  We have been having a heat wave (high 80's and 90's)and it is on the 3rd floor and there is no air conditioning. Luckily they each brought a fan.

 The other two girls I brought were assigned a basement dorm room.  Lucky them, it was much cooler down there.

Just for old times sake I had my picture taken by the fountain with Holly's friend. The picture on the right was taken when I was an EFY counselor.

 This is a picture of my girls when I was a counselor.  In my journal from 18years ago I have written after my first day as a counselor "this is so tiring and hard.. they are not paying us enough"  "I'm never going to do this again".  Then after my experience I wrote "being a counselor was amazing. I'd love to be a counselor again".

 Today I am thankful that:
*Due to the high temps my kids have had fun playing in our blowup pool and slip and slide.
*Emily finally found a new swimsuit.  It has been a very long process because she is too big for little girl swimsuits and not big enough for women's sizes.
*We just had some new neighbors move in and they are friendly.