Better Lucky Than Good!

So I finally decided to go hunting after many years of talking about it. I had gone out every morning the whole week and had only seen two-two points ( one of which my boss's 12 year old shot ). The last saturday I went out with my bro-inlaw and my two nephews and the next thing I know my freezer has a whole lot of jerky in it! It's my first big game animal and it was a 26'' wide four point with small browtines. And for all the PETA people out there, no other animals were harmed during the making of this story.

The bad thing is, my camera died so I wasn't able to get any field photos. These pictures are from a phone, that's why they suck!

IDINA MENZEL

Are you a huge fan of Wicked or Glee like me? If so, then I'm sure you're a big fan of Idina Menzel. She performed with the Utah Symphony last Saturday night at the Deer Valley Amphitheater. I was so excited to see her. I was even more excited when she sang Defying Gravity for the Encore. I had been waiting all night for her to sing that. I'm glad that Manny took me to Park City to see her and I'm glad that he enjoyed her concert just as much as I did!

24th of JULY WEEKEND

For the 24th of July, Manny and I rented a cabin at Fish Lake. We've been so busy every weekend this whole summer that we haven't fished or camped nearly as much as we usually do, so we were glad to get away.

Since the cabin had two rooms in it, we invited my brother Paul, and his wife Tiffany. We had so much fun together.

We brought Elphie with us, and she loved it! Every time we'd catch a fish, she'd want to be right there smelling and looking at it.

Instead of bringing our pontoon boats, we rented one for the whole day, and Elphie spent the whole day on the boat like this:

I'm surprised she never got sick. We had a great weekend and I'm glad that we were able to spend it with my brother. By Sunday, we were so tired from not sleeping very much(as if you couldn't tell from the picture below).

SEEKING TREASURES OF WORTH

GIRLS CAMP 2011

So for some reason, I can't delete this huge gap in my post before the picture below. I have tried to many times and it's just not working. So sorry that there is this huge gap before you get to the post below. It is WAY annoying!

So, it's about time I get to blogging. There's been a lot that's happened in the past couple of months, but maybe I'll get to blogging about that one day. For now, I'm going to blog about Girls Camp. We went June 6th-9th. And let me tell you, we had a blast. I'm still the 1st co. in Primary, but they also called me to be an assistant camp leader...finally! I love girls camp and have always wanted to be a leader. This wasn't a regular girls camp that I was used to. Growing up, we always had Stake Camp at Mia Shalom every year, but in the stake that I'm in now, we switch off every other year between stake and ward. Well, it was just our ward this year and we had it at the camp director's family cabin at Scofield. This was a WAY nice cabin, with 3 bathrooms, 6 bedrooms, a huge loft, and a huge basement with lots and lots of room. I really didn't feel like we were camping all that much. We had such a blast! We had 24 girls in all that stayed the whole week, and 2 other leaders and I were there the whole time too. Here's a little bit of what we did throughout the week. Our theme was "Seeking Treasures of Worth" so we had a pirate theme to go a long with it. We had a pirate pinata that ended up getting bashed to pieces.

We had our 5 mile hike, that was much more like a 5 mile stroll down to the lake and back. Of course, the girls complained, and I don't know why. They kept saying it was so hard. How could it be hard when we're on a flat even trail for 4.9 miles of it? There was only one little part where we had to get off the trail and just cut our own way up part of the mountain, but still, it was pretty easy. Teenagers will always complain.

And of course, you can't do camp without doing skits. We did those on the last night before testimony meeting. They were a riot! I helped this group get theirs ready. The pirate was Tom Cruise looking for the gospel because he realized that Scientology wasn't a real religion afterall. They acted out parts of movies and made up a bunch of popular song parodies. But, I do understand that it is one of those things that you had to be there to think it was funny.

For some reason, I was put in charge of all the crafts that the girls would be doing. I don't know why, I'm not very creative at all. Yes, I can be crafty, in a devlish and mischievous way, but not when it comes to thinking of things to make...for girls camp. But, I must say, I'm quite proud of myself because I came up with some GREAT ideas, and all on my own. They all turned out so well. The girls LOVED them and couldn't get enough. When I was thinking of what to do, I thought, "What's something that I would want? Duh, jewelry." But, I wanted to make some jewelry that I would actually wear outside of camp. So here's what I came up with...

We made button bracelets. I bought almost 2000 different buttons from Robert's Craft. Luckily, they were having a fantastic sale so it wasn't expensive at all. Here's a picture of my bracelets.

And fabric button rings. Everything was made from scratch. They had to choose the matieral they wanted and put the button together and glue it to the ring and everything. Here's a picture of my rings.

Everyone did such a good job on everything! It was fun to see all the different kinds of fabrics that each girl liked and what it looked like as a ring when they were done with it. The girls just couldn't stop talking about how much they loved all this stuff. I was glad that they were really excited about it. And yes, I have worn the bracelets and rings quite a bit since camp (I've even had compliments and was asked where I got them by some strangers when I was out and about around town).

Just like a bunch of girls, they started screaming, jumping up and down, and going crazy when I brought the stuff out to show them what we'd be doing each day.

Each day, one of the leaders would be in charge of a treasure that we thought was worth seeking. Mine was on testimonies. I gave a lesson on testimonies, what each one should consist of, how to gain one and keep it, and talked about having the light of Christ, and about the Ten Virgins and being prepared for when the Savior comes. To go along with my lesson, we did a craft where we made our own lanters. They were so cute! Here's a picture of my lantern.

All of my crafts, I made beforehand, so that I would have an example to show the girls. My lantern was just polka dots. They look awesome when it's dark and they're lit up. We had battery operated tealights in them that flickered. I let the girls choose from flowers, dragonflies, stars, and other cutouts to decorate it however they wanted. I'm glad that this is cute enough to decorate with when I got home. I'm glad that I was able to go to camp. I loved every minute of it, even though I didn't sleep at all. I stayed up playing games every night and we never went to bed until around 2am each morning, and then I was always up by 6:30. According to them, we were fun leaders since we didn't make them go to bed at a decent time. Hopefully, they'll ask me back for next year!

INTRODUCING ELPHIE

This is the newest member of our family. We got Elphie 3 weeks ago and she is now 9 weeks old. She is so tiny, and we love having her. I've never had a dog before, so this is a new experience for me, but we are having fun. She is such a good dog and so smart. It's hard getting a good picture of her because she doesn't want to sit still long enough for us to snap a good picture. One of her favorite places to be is snuggled up with Manny. As long as she has fleece wrapped around her, she is good to snuggle and sleep.

CAPITOL REEF, HENRY MOUNTAINS

(picture of the Capitol Reef)

Over the weekend, Manny and I went to the Henry Mountains so that Manny could look for some sheds (deer and elk antlers). Unfortunately, Manny didn't have any luck in finding them, but we did have a fun and VERY muddy time 4-wheeling, hiking, and enjoying the views. We drove through Capitol Reef and stopped to look at the petroglyphs that the Freemont Indians drew a very, very, very long time ago.

Can you spot the drawings? It actually took me a few minutes to find them.

We had a fun time. It was a great, but much too short getaway.

ICE, ICE, BABY

So the ice fishing season has begun.

It started at the beginning of January with an ice fishing tournament at Scofield Res. We went with Manny's friends Coby and Kris. It was the coldest I have ever been ice fishing. I had to keep going back to the truck because I just couldn't stay warm. Manny's eyelashes were frosted up and had an icicles hanging from them at one point. We eneded up not catching anything at all. I should rephrase that, I didn't catch anything, Manny caught a few fish, and his friends caught a lot more than we did.

The past 2 weeks we've gone to Strawberry to fish. Again, the fishing has not been good at all, only 3 fish total in those 2 trips combined, but at least the weather was lots better!

Here's a 19 1/2" fish I caught. We were doing an ice fishing tournament this day at Strawberry too, but I had to throw the fish back because we had to obey the slot limit laws. Turned out, if I had just lied and kept the fish and said I had caught it somewhere else, then we would have won the tournament. Oh, well.

Here's an 18" fish Manny caught at Strawberry. Can you tell how happy he is to finally catch a fish?