Molly Goes to Girls Camp

     I went to Girls Camp. It was pretty fun, but everyone else was much better friends with each other than with me. We went down to Saint George. It was like a four hour trip, but only Piper and I were in that specific car, so it was okay on the drive there. I had a secret sister and bought her presents.

    We made hats. Mine looks kind of blank because I was painting in yellow, so it wasn't very different from the original color of the hat.

    The coordinator (my favorite new leader) spent so much time on the camp that she missed throwing a big birthday party for herself, so the bishop (her husband) got her a birthday cake.

     We were theoretically going on a short hike. We went on the wrong one and it was burning, and super long. The end was really pretty, but it took us hours to finish it. Once we got to the vacation rental, I went into the garage to make a bracelet and once it was done I walked out and literally everyone was asleep and it was boring.

    We went on a Faith Walk and it was pretty cool. Each of our leaders gave us a lesson on being the light, and then they gave us notes from our parents. Mine was close to the bottom so I had to wait a little bit.

    This was at the temple.

    Same here.

They had pretty flowers. After the temple we went to Costa Vida and then went home.

I Love the Mountains

I love having the mountains right next to the city and getting to see them all the time.  It's so fun to watch them change throughout the year!  They change colors in the fall, are dramatically covered with snow and clouds in the winter, green in the spring, and then they're still showing off in the summer.

This was my gorgeous view on my walk through the neighborhood one morning. The light was streaming off in rays and it was so peaceful and pretty!

The Heart of Pleasant Grove

Strawberry Days is my favorite summer holiday.  Our city really hit the jackpot in terms of summer festivals that are cute and delicious.  I don't think I'd be as pumped to decorate, dress, or cook for onion days.  You can't really do any of that for Steel Days or Lindon Days! Molly has an entire Strawberry Days wardrobe and I have two shirts and earrings.

We wanted to go to the Garden Tour, but there was a massive windstorm so we decided not to.  I do love it so we'll have to go next year!

Elliott loved the Strawberry Days cooking class and his favorite recipe was the mini strawberry pancakes.

Our favorite family tradition is to go to the parade and then go to Chubby's for lunch afterwards.  The kids got a TON of candy and goodies from the parade but the only picture they wanted me to take was this adorable puppy sitting next to us.

Miles left his hat to rest on the paper towels while we ate lunch.

Molly was so excited to go to the carnival with her friends this year!  She had her first two cups of strawberries and cream and then we also got some more at the parade.

The other fun thing about Strawberry Days is all the baking you can do.  We had a LOT of events during Strawberry Days (two separate Father's Day celebrations and book club) so I got to do even more strawberry baking than usual.

Strawberry buttermilk ice cream for Father's Day #1

Molly made strawberry plumcot pie with pistachio streusel for Father's Day #2

I made strawberry stack cake and and strawberry salsa for my book club.

Elliott made overnight waffles that we topped with strawberries and cream to eat before the parade.

Stem Camp Adventures

Just the week after I went to Young Men's camp, I also had the opportunity to go to STEM camp at BYU. 

The days at camp would mainly consist of going to classes during the first part of the day, doing a more hands on project during the middle, and doing some sort of activity near the end. 

Some of the things that I really enjoyed at STEM camp included:

-Doing the campus scavenger hunt

-Going to the various booths at the STEM expo

-Getting to create our own game controller with the capability of playing NES games

-Visiting Splash Summit

A lot of things were slightly inopportune on our trip, including scheduled activities being canceled for Juneteenth, another scheduled activity being canceled due to excessive rain, and a couple of scheduled activities being things like "Dance for 3 hours" and "Get abandoned by all of your counselors".

There aren't any pictures in this post because I totally forgot to take any

Camp Camp Camp (young men)

Editor's Note:  Miles wrote this up for you!

This summer, I had the opportunity of going on my ward Young Men's Camp up to Idaho, and I'm glad to say it really was one of the best times I've had in my life! 

Early in the morning on the 12th, we grabbed all of my stuff and walked over to the church. At this point in time, I felt slightly reluctant about going on this vacation. If you had asked me about how much fun I had on the prior two Young Men's camps, I would say 2023 was Type 2 fun (miserable in happening, fun in retrospect) and 2022 was Type 3 fun (misery). With this astonishingly positive track record, we drove off! 

The drive was nothing notable up to Idaho, which I suppose is for the best because if a drive is ever notable, it's for containing a healthy dose of "Type 3 fun". We stopped and got Cafe Rio up in Rexburg, took a short trip around BYU-Idaho, and then did temple baptisms. After this, we drove off to our lodge, a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

This farmhouse is owned by our former stake president, President Cutler. His family has owned the land ever since being given it by the government over 160 years ago! Another neat part about it is that it's actually directly overlooked by the Grand Tetons.

Already when we got to the farmhouse was a noticeable change that I feel greatly helped to propel this into the best YM camp yet: beds. That's it. Everyone got to sleep in a legitimate bed which was not either a couch or a sleeping bag. In addition, there were not any bedbugs, which I feel also enhanced the overall sleeping experience.

We were told that we could explore the farm but that we were not under any circumstance to touch any of the very expensive farm equipment. We were told that about one and a half miles out was a canyon which we could go explore towards, so we went out that direction. As we walked, we also saw one of the neat farm sprinklers.

Continuing to walk got us to see other cool things, including footprints of an unidentified animal, a random outcropping of igneous rock, and a mysterious run down building off in the distance.

So naturally, being a Young Men's group (this instantly impairs the quality of our individual judgment), we decided to go investigate this mysterious building.

 

There were at least a few circumstances where this could've been a poor decision (like if the abandoned building had since become residence to a group of unfriendly coyotes, badgers, or maybe raccoons). Luckily for us, this was probably one of the coolest things that happened to us on the entire trip. This building happened to be an authentic abandoned pioneer homestead!!!

An oven used by the pioneers

One of the buildings

Another shot of the whole area

Picture taken from the inside of the silo

This silo had a little imprint on the inside which said

"Manufactured by Z.C.M.I, Salt Lake City"

This is sadly the best picture we took of the cool pioneer potato picking machine.

Here's some broken pioneer pottery visible on the floor.

We didn't have enough water to keep going to the canyon, but we decided we would come back later.

Additionally, we explored a little bit more of the farm, saw equipment, plenty of cats (kept to kill the mice), and additionally a cool hangar full of cool vehicles and a very very disturbing crawl space.

We ate a delicious dinner of steak, corn, and potato, went back out and found a pioneer wagon (also very cool), started a fire, played a lot of games, and went to bed concerningly late.

The second day was probably the most chill. We woke up and then drove to Jackson Hole to go rafting rapids on the Snake. We went through a couple of seriously intense rapids. Of course, due to the nature of river rapids, we do not have any pictures. We stopped at Jackson Hole and walked around a little bit, drove back and got barbecue along the way, and then did about the same night activities as the previous day (started fire, played lots of games, went to bed concerningly late).

We got this last picture because there was a violent lightning storm in the distance.

The final day we mostly just did a lot of hiking. The first hike we did was out to a creek with a huge bridge. We got a lot of pictures from this place. 

Getting down to the riverbed was a very very steep and harrowing experience

(This part definitely was one of very few which counted as Type 3 fun)

 We got a few pictures on the bridge.

Here's some mysterious graffiti that really cannot be deciphered.

This is our bishop, who brought a fishing pole and managed to catch this fish.

I promise this picture was taken with the utmost safety taken into account

(and quickly dismissed)

This shot was taken from about 230 feet over the creek.

The next hike that we did was back out to the canyon that we did not get to in the first day. It was actually really neat!

Here's some evidence of a beaver that we saw

Here's a pretty part of the river, complete with beaver dam

A wide shot of the entrance to the canyon

Here's the calm part of the river that we walked around in.

After we finished with this, we sent the above picture to President Cutler, who decided that he was going to pick us up. He drove out in a dirt bike and drove us back in it one by one. It was super cool and probably one of the most fun things!

The final hike we went on was at Packsaddle Lake, a really pretty place with an overwhelming population of bugs. Overall, we hiked about six miles this day.

We found this rope swing next to the lake and one of my leaders did an epic back flip off of it.

Naturally, after we got home we continued to play lots of games, to the point of us being awake at 5 AM. This is probably an instance of a different kind of fun, Type 0 fun (fun when it's happening, not too smart in retrospect).

After this, we drove home, and it was probably an equally uneventful drive. Overall, this was an excellent camp and additionally my first camp example of Type 1 fun (fun the whole darn way through).