Canoe Night With The Whole Fam-damily

My family loves to do outdoor things, but we don't like them to last very long. We like to canoe, kayak, swim, ride bikes, and have weenie roasts in the back yard. We love to camp out on nice house boats at Powell, but again...a few days at a time. Here are some pictures of our little outing.

Here is mom in the kayak. She loves it!

We suckered Avery into the canoe. "Let's go see gamma" gets her to do just about anything.

This is what we call "camping." And no, that is not an animal on my bro's head. That is all natural.

Highlights from Girls Camp 2009!

For the first time in 6 years, I returned to the bug-infested hills of Buck's Lake for this year's Reno, Nevada Stake Girls Camp.

One thing was different this year from the 6 years I spent as a camper in my youth. I was a leader! They put me personally responsible for making sure no one drowned in the lake. I was also what they call a "Tent Mom." I quickly changed that title to "Tent Queen" and the girls in my group were great. I had 3rd-years and they were all sweet and very willing to help out. Here are some really funny highlights from the week:

1. On Thursday morning, I woke up and walked up to the kitchen. When I got up there I over heard my bishop and his counselor talking about how the water in the lake had risen about 10 feet and all the canoes which I had left on the beach were now afloat in all corners of the lake. Luckily there was one canoe left on the beach. We hiked down to the beach and piled in one canoe, paddled all around the lake and rescued all of the canoes. I wish I had a picture of the train of 5 canoes trailing behind us and also a picture of the one canoe which made its way beyond a row of booeys, past a chain fence and was resting in a pile of logs.

2. I love pranks. Love, crave and addore pranks. This week at camp was the perfect place to pull some memoreable pranks, or so I thought....

Prank 1: There is a lady in my homeward and she comes to camp just about every year to help with crafts, and what not. She has three daughters and they have the biggest mouths so I had to be ultra careful because all three of them were there at camp and I didn't want them to find out what I was up to and tattle tell, LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO! Anyway, I asked the lady if she would braid my hair and she said she wouldn't because since she did another girls, a bunch of people had come up to her and asked her if she would braind their hair. The very next person that asked her if she would braid their hair she said yes to!! So, since she said no to me, I decided to get as many girls as I possibly could and have them go ask her if she would braid there hair. I rounded up about 30 girls to go ask her. It was glorious.

Prank2: The next prank was sure to be genious. I took a stuffed animal and sewed it to the bottom of my sisters sleeping bag. I sewed a string though the end of the sleeping bag and drew the string out away from the sleeping bag by about 10 feet. I waited intil Allie went to bed, snuck over and started pulling in the string. The reaction was supposed to be something like, "HOLY CRAP THERE IS AN ANIMAL AT THE BOTTOM OF MY SLEEPING BAG!" but, instead I was pulling on the string for about 20 minutes with absolutely no reaction. I had to wake Allie up and tell her I had just tried to prank her. We laughed pretty hard about it so it ended up being worth it.

Prank 3: The third and final prank was when my friends Alyse, Katy and I made a plan to get the camp dad out of camp for a few minutes. When Katy, his daughter, needed to go up the street to get some much needed coke, Alyse and I ran up the hill to snatch up the camp dad's tent. We ran down the hill to the beach. We first put the tent in a canoe and then put all the oars to all the canoes in our canoe as well. Then we paddled out into the middle of the lake and set up his tent on a floating dock on the water. We put all but one oar in the tent so he would have no way to retrieve his tent. Then we paddled back to shore with one paddle and then we hid it in the kitchen. We ran back up the hill just in time to see him getting out of his car. I am not going to share what happened to the tent or the parties involved as criminal investigation is currently underway and also the ending was kinda lame.

A taste of summer...

I don't have all the pictures I want to post, but here are some from this summer... in no particular order.

The Fourth of July

This 4th was incredibly lame... Emilie and I were alone for the weekend so we did the usual Cali-4th things... we went to the beach, had a picnic, walked through a swarm of bums, watched the fireworks and had a BBQ. Sounds great right? Wrong! It was ridiculous. The beach was COLD and parking was absolutely insane. The food we ate on the beach looked like the seagulls got to it first, and the bums, well lets just say bums are to Venice Beach like Mexicans are to Mexico... that is all there is there. One funny thing happened there though... we were walking down the walk way that runs along the beach and this guy who was clearly insane walked past us and wished us a happy 4th. He then proceded to slip in a huge pile of horse business. It was awesome.

After a few hours of complaining to each other, Emilie and I bounced. We decided to go to the grocery store, get food for a BBQ and then catch the La Cresenta fireworks. We watched the fireworks from an overpass in La Cresenta. They were pretty good. Then we went home and after 20 minutes of trying to get the coals to light, we roasted hot dogs, mallows and then went to bed.

I thought things were about as bad as they could get then I called my family. They were in Boise, Idaho with my 91 year-old grandpa partying it up. They bought roman candles, artillery shells and all sorts of crazy stuff. They sure had fun. I wished I was with them. Oh well... next year!