Birthdays, Youth Conference, and Other Things

This is going to be a long post, so bear with me. A lot has happened in the last couple weeks of our summer vacation. I'll start with the most recent.

-Birthdays-

Dar celebrated his big 30 birthday last Thursday while we were at Youth Conference. The group all sang happy birthday to him while rafting down the Colorado River. Not to mention I reminded him all day long that it was his birthday. I couldn't help it! :) Happy birthday, baby!

My 24th birthday was yesterday. We enjoyed a wonderful phone call from Australia - it was great to hear your voices, guys! We miss you!! Then yesterday evening we had both of our families come over, as well as several friends, to enjoy some good food along with cupcakes & ice cream to celebrate with us. We didn't get any pictures though :( Thanks to everyone for all of your birthday wishes!!

-Youth Conference-

This past week, Dar & I had the opportunity to spend 4 days at Youth Conference with our ward. We seriously had a blast getting to know the youth in our ward better and the other leaders and bishopric members who went too. There were 10 youth and 10 leaders who went. We have lots of fun pictures to post, so here we go!

Dar & I left before noon on Wednesday to head down and reserve a camping spot for our group at West Water Canyon on the Colorado river, just west of the Colorado border. We got there several hours before the rest of our group was coming so we decided to take advantage of our time together and do some site-seeing on our own. We drove down to Moab and then out to Dead Horse Point. I seriously love road trips with just the two of us! And the red rocks down there are beautiful!

Day 1 - Wednesday: Road trip & camp set-up

Beautiful scenery on the way to Moab

Dead Horse Point

Potash settling ponds at Dead Horse Point - the view of the water was so pretty!

Me & my sweetie

Some little boys find themselves too close to the edge

Cool night shot Dar took the 1st night at camp

Day 2 - Thursday: White Water Rafting on the Colorado River
The next morning we were up bright and early to have breakfast and prepare the rafts to go white water rafting. The youth all did a great job with helping to get the rafts ready to go.

We even put the bishopric to work :)

The last raft took a lot of hands to get into the water. All hands were needed on deck! It was extremely heavy!!

Skipper ready for launch

The "yellow jacket" gang ready to get in the water!

Loading up & preparing to take off

All done with the fun and ready to return to base camp. They really only suffered sunburns despite all of our pleading to cake on the sun screen. Silly kids :) And when we asked the kids what their favorite part of youth conference was they all said it was the rafting. I'd say it was a success!

Another cool night shot Dar got the 2nd night. Our camp was right on the river. We stayed in the same place for the first 2 nights. The mosquitoes were relentless!!

Day 3 - Friday: Goblin Valley
After breakfast & packing up camp we headed to Goblin Valley. We set camp up again and then set out on a geocache scavenger hunt using GPS. The kids were split up into 2 teams & each team had 4 bags of items to find using the coordinates the leaders gave them. Both teams did a great job & they had a blast using the GPS on their search through Goblin Valley.

Ashley was our trusted guide & honorary GPS navigator

The last bag of items was the hardest for our group. But they finally found it after a while.

Me & Dar at Goblin Valley

The Red Chief from the Peter Pan cartoon was the watchman over our camp the night we stayed at Goblin Valley. We really needed him too - the wind was SUPER intense at times! I had to re-stake down our tent a couple times because of the wind. Luckily it calmed down by the time we were ready for dinner & it wasn't windy at all that night while we slept. Thank goodness!

The youth had to use the items they found during the scavenger hunt to put together a short skit centered around our theme: Joshua 1:9 - Be strong & of a good courage for the Lord thy God is with thee withersover thou goest.
Both groups were extremely creative and did an AWESOME job!

Dar took some more really cool night shots of the beautiful rock cliffs that made up our camping alcove on the last night.

Day 4 - Saturday: Service project & travel home
The kids didn't get a whole lot of sleep the last night because they were playing pranks on each other nearly all night long. We were woken up at 5:00am to the girls laughing hysterically and taking pictures because they had zip-tied the boys tent shut in an attempt to get the boys back for the pranks they had played on the girls the night before. They were planning to wake up early anyway to hike to the top of the cliff to see the partial lunar eclipse that morning. Dar & 1 other leader went with them. I was so tired I stayed to get some more sleep before they came back :)

We did a service project on the way home. We stopped near Salina to clear a hiking trail of garbage & trim back the branches and bushes to make the trail more accessible to hikers and horseback riders who use the trail. While we were waiting for the tools, they played dodgeball.

After the service project we had a final testimony (and I made a fool of myself by bawling my eyes out while trying to share a spiritual thought about being strong and having courage through trials), then we ate at a super yummy Mexican restaurant before driving back home. This was such a fun experience for Dar & I to be a part of, and we know the youth all had a really great time too. Even though we don't have very many youth in our ward, they are all really great kids and I learned so much by watching them this last week.

-Summer fun with the kiddos-

Last Saturday Dar & I were laying out, trying to work on our base tan before we go to Lake Powell next month. When we were done we had some fun eating tons of popsicles and playing with our nieces and nephew on the swings and teeter-totter at Dar's parents house.

-Layton Trip-

A few weeks ago Dar & I went up to Layton to spend some time with my family. We watched my baby brother in his last ballroom dance performance--you did a great job, Sky! We also helped my dad get the pool set up for the summer, and had dinner at my sister's house before coming home. We always have fun when we get to spend time with our families :)

Dar was the only one brave enough to get in the pool so early. The water was freezing!!! It was hose water straight from the house. Definitely not warmed up by the sun yet. Silly boy :)

We got Liam this mega-magnifier for his birthday last month. He absolutely loves it!

Some of the shots, like this one, make me think of the "Elf Yourself" videos.

Dinner at Bri's house. These are cupcakes with an insane about of icing over the top. The kiddos loved them tho!

Hannah

Liam

Baby Dakoda
Our yummy chicken enchiladas
The clouds were soo beautiful!! We had an amazing lightning storm that night.

I think that's it for now. Thanks for reading :) And keep reading because we have many more summer adventures to come!!