Silver Creek Falls

For one of my unofficial activites we went on a hike to Silver Creek Falls, Oregon. It was way fun but quite a long drive. I forgot my camera and so the few pictures that I do have is from a friend named Spencer. Though he didn't have pictures of the otheres there it there was Jared, Spencer of course, Will, Michelle, and I.

Michelle Gamez and I. (love this girl)



There were little cave holes all through out the hike.

Tender Mercy

Saturday I got a call from a dear friend of mine, Miss Stacee Jo. Not that it's uncommon for us to call one another just to have a good 'girl chat' but this call was special. Stacee Jo got a chance to see my boys up close. Stacee happened upon my family namely my parents, all the nieces and nephews, my boys, Lindsey, Crystal, Caroline, and I think that's everyone. Now she didn't have the guts to go up to Caden and Hyrum and drill them with a million questions like I would have loved for her to do, but she saw them and they were happy. She even informed me that she thought Caden looked like me.

Now My family as I had learned was going to the gateway mall in SLC, which has become quite the tradition for the nieces and nephews to do now. I thought nothing of it though had the typical heart strings pulled at the thought of wishing I could be a part of the fun. I knew most likely that I would hear little of the activity which happens with most things that my sweet boys are included in, but yesterday while skypeing my parents I asked them about seeing Stacee at the gateway. In conclusion to the little shin-dig Dad was kind enough to send me a pic of all the grand kids taken the day that Stacee saw my little ones.

Left - Right Carly (8) holding Lucas (6m) Caden (turning 7) Lincoln (5) Eden (6) Aspen (turning 3) Hyrum (5) Ty (4)

Now in reality after seeing my boys Caden looks more like his daddy than me by far and Hyrum is the one that looks more like me. I love it though. What a blessing!!

Lot O' Shakespeare

So tonight with my new roommate who I am getting along famously with Sharon Hagel invited me to go to the Linfield College theater to watch Lot O' Shakespeare. It was free and I figured why not try it out. I don't remember liking or disliking plays in the past. Anyways this ended up being a one man show. How can Shakespeare possibly be done by one man you say, well I'll tell you. Timothy Mooney was the gentleman name and he played different acts from several different plays written by Shakespeare. He had memorized over 70 different sections of the play and then would act them out at random. Literally it was random he used bingo balls to find out which story he then would act out, while we in the crowd hope that he would call out the correct letter and number so that we could win a prize playing instead of 'bingo' 'iago'. I'm guessing Iago is a character in one of these plays but as I mentioned before I went in there with nothing.

It really was so fascinating. He really did a fabulous job and because the crowd was limited in size it was intriguing to watch his facial expressions. Sharon and I hooked up with second row seats so it was pretty intense. I really was very impressed and enjoyed myself almost the entire time. :) Would I go again!? Absolutely and possibly might even pay if I needed to next time.

Long Sabbath Day!!

 So I'm walking out of my relief society meeting proud of the accomplishments that the presidency made but to be honest a little frustrated by the lack of willingness that both the sisters had in wanting to go visit the sisters. After I told them both multiple times about the meeting and it being lengthy. Urg! Well it ended up being an hour long anyways and I admit that I felt better in visiting the girls with Michelle this week. Hoping since she knew some of the girls I was planning to visit that it would make the visit go more smoothly. I left the meeting drained and so ready to go home and get into my pj's and drink some hot herbal tea. As I was about to turn the corner of the hallway there stood Sister Haslam informing me that I was wanted in the Branch Presidents office. I happily concord thinking that I could turn in my receipts and ask my questions concerning some relief society questions that I had concerning the rolls.

Much to my surprise President Haslam was not asking me about getting me my refunds or even the visiting teaching list (though we did go over that after the fact), no President Haslam has asked me to be the new relief society president. Literally my breath was taken away for a moment. President Haslam kind of got a kick out of it and said that I honestly couldn't be that surprised. Honestly I wasn't, but I didn't except to be called I just thought I was going to act like the relief society president. I really was contemplating at the time whether or not to move farther north so as to be in a larger area where there would be more single LDS males that maybe courted. Ha!Ha!

Well all that has changed now. I have been struggling since Sunday to come up with those whom the Lord and I would like to have in my presidency. The first name came incredibly easy, in fact almost the moment that I caught my breath the name of my first counselor was reviled to me. Though I have not had such luck with the other two names. I struggled greatly because President Haslam suggested that I keep what I had in the presidency already and just add one more. Well that would have been easy enough except for the fact that I have a great desire to be an exceptional presidency to befriend and bring those sister back into the branch that may be struggling spiritually.

To be very frank I do not believe that the two sister who are in the presidency now will be able to fulfill in a way that I need. Right now I feel like I am doing everything on my own. I know that with my crazy schedule and trying to stay healthy and strong I would need a good support. I still am not sure on the names, but I feel pretty good about the two other girls that I have now chosen and will go to the Lord tonight to see if I have chosen wisely. Let us pray that this is so because it is technically already Saturday and President Haslam wanted to sustain us in church this Sunday. Ahh!!