Conference and Renaissance

Over General Conference weekend Katie and I made cinnamon rolls. This was a monumental occasion for me. I have never successfully made anything with yeast. True! I always have the liquids too hot, too cold, not enough of something, probably instruction or experience. Growing up the granddaughter and niece of wonderful bakers, I learned to appreciate really good bread, rolls, etc. but never learned how to actually do those things. I found this great food blog that I am pretty much addicted to and this recipe was on it.

They turned out so great! Here is Katie rolling up all the goodness, can you tell I love baked stuff? It was a great weekend, Conference always is.

Katie is in Drama 4 at Orem High and they have been preparing to go to Cedar City for the High School Shakespeare competition. They had a renaissance faire the night before they left for the trip to present all of their dances, songs and scenes. It was of course a fundraiser also. We had a feast of a 1/4 Costco chicken each, corn on the cob, with the husks still attached, red potatoes and pumpkin pie for dessert. The cool part was...no utinsels! We ate with our hands and then cleaned up afterwards. Another mom and I helped out at the little boutique selling stuff. There was also face painting, mask making, hair braiding, archery practice and coloring pages, too. This is the Shakespeare dance, Katie is 7th from the right. In Cedar City they got to use foils, but for this night, they just pretended.

I think they got 1st in this division.

Fair maidens, Nicole and Katie, all dolled up

Katie's scene was from A Midsummer's Night Dream.

It was a fun night!

Fall fun

Katie and Aubree played a piano duet of The Lord's Prayer in church. It was so beautiful.

Nelson and I went to HumorU at BYU with the Hoyals. It is a stand-up comedy show and it was so fun. I don't really LIKE to laugh so hard I cry because I probably look scary but it sure feels good.

We rode the chair lift at Sundance to take in the pretty fall leaves. My pictures aren't too great because I forgot the camera and had to use my phone to take pics.

AHHHHH...this lift feels a lot steeper coming down than going up!

What a view!

Congrats Katie

Katie earned her honor bee and was presented with this new charm in sacrament meeting today. They made some changes to the Young Womanhood award and now you can earn more after you earn the main award. To earn her honor bee she read the Book of Mormon an additional time, did 40 hours of service and helped other young women work on earning their awards. We are sure happy to have a daughter who loves to do these things to earn her award. Way to go Katie, we are so proud of you!

Hidden things

Well, this is my last catching up blog to finish. Yay! I am done with all of the blogs for the summer. So please keep searching backwards in time for all of the hidden blogs I am sure you missed this summer. David is really into geocaching and loves to go find new ones and visit favorite old ones. On Sunday, he printed out a few new ones and Nelson and I went and found them with him. This one was an empty film cartridge sticking out the front of a birdhouse. Each cache has a log you sign when you find it. This one was tiny!

A little drama in this shot. We looked forever for this one. This is Nelson and David showing you haw shocked they were when finally found. It was named dry bird and what finally got us to look harder was David wondered why 2 sprinkler heads would be so close to each other. There was one just 2 feet away. The geocache was hidden in the old sprinkler head, buried in the ground. Pretty clever. Then we went and David showed us some of his favorite ones he has found and one that is his. He had 2 pages of log in the container and they were full, time to bring new ones! What fun with hidden treasures!

The kids left for the bus one morning this week and ran back in saying I needed to get the camera. It was a very pretty sunrise, hidden unless you are there at the right time to see. ( ok, that hidden thing is a stretch, I am trying! The next one might be, too)

My birthday was this week and John and family, and Michael gave me flowers. We went out to dinner as a family and it was a very nice day. No, my age is not hidden, I am 43 now. That is an awfully big number, I don't feel that old.

The next hidden thing is...

Katie! She was a KluKluxKlan member in the play "The Foreigner" at Orem High. She loves to be in drama! Here's the cast and director, they did a great job!

More From Caroline

Hello again everyone and thank you for reading today so let's get started. Now enough of the happy go lucky status this blog always seems to have let's talk serious just for a sec. It has come to my attention that some people in this world just love to ignore everyone else below them, pretending they aren't there. Well in my opinion that's lame. Seriously. Did any of you blog reader's caught up in your social worlds really thought about all the other people who don't really have the time or the means to do any of the things you do. Everyone is so far above the rest of the world that you don't realize how well you have it? Did you know that less than 1% of all Yearly salary in the entire world is given to foreign aid? Not to mention that 1% is not a group effort. The people who donate are usually rich people that donate huge amounts that eventually add up to that measly 1% given to others. When these rich people donate they usually do it for the wrong reasons, just to improve their personal image. Most people in the United states have never donated to charity. Are you one of those? Wouldn't you rather be one of the good one's who cares for other people? Just a thought for you guys to suck on for the next little while. I hope it makes you think for the better. -Caroline

Fort Bridger

(Just a reminder to keep reading backwards in time, I have been catching up with the summer events! You can scroll down but still have to click on older posts. Watch for Lake Powell and Alaska...coming soon!)

For the last several years, Katie and Caroline have gone to the Mountain Man Rendezvous in Fort Bridger Wyoming with our friends the Schills.

It is always over labor day weekend. We would've liked to join them this year but it didn't work out. So, David, Nelson and I hung out together for the weekend. We went to the BYU football game, and then went golfing and to dinner on Monday. It was beautiful weather and we had a great time. So strange to not have a bunch of kids around. We realized the reality of it is that we will be this way permanently in 4 years with everyone at college except David. Kinda Freaky!

They dress in period clothing, camp in civil war tents, cook over a fire and have a lot of fun. Here they are hanging out outside the tent.

Saturday night is the Buckskinners Ball, just for the people camping in the primitive area.

Can you tell they enjoy the dressing up part? Here are a few fun pictures from the trip...

Laura, Brinnan and Caroline - Frontierswomen!

The whole crew - Steve is brave to be the only adult around!

The regular stuff

School has started and Caroline got a haircut, picture day was coming up. A haircut always lifts my spirits somehow, I guess it's just because I feel like I am taking care of myself and hey, you look better to boot!

Katie is in the honors art class this year and so happy to be in art class again. Her first assignment was a self portrait that depicts her...personality, I can't remember exactly how it was worded. So, we went to Oranee's and took pictures of her playing the piano because this is also one of her loves (and Oranee's piano is prettier than our brown upright). Then she drew the picture.

Next we have David playing soccer. One of his first games was great weather and I decided to just take pictures every minute he was on the field to try to get a few good pictures. It's amazing how hard it is to follow the correct player, zoomed in , while they are running so fast. I have a lot more respect for sports photographers than I ever have. Ok, they have better equipment, etc, but still. Here he is practically doing the splits to win this ball.

A nice kick at the sideline.

I don't know what to call this...a-backwards-flip-the-ball-behind-you-while-jumping-and-spinning-in-the-air-kick?

And David's favorite fun kick, the bicycle, up over your head in the opposite direction.

Watching it go! Well, that's what we are up to, the usual. Please check backwards in here for a lot of catching up blogs, I am getting there but they get buried behind the current ones, sorry!