Our Family – Page 114 – Andelin Adventures

Father’s and Son’s Campout

Rebecca is exciting about camping. It’s never been an interest of mine, due to having to live out on the dirt, not take showers, and of course, deal with uneven ground and my bad ankles. However, she convinced us to go to the annual ward Father and Son camp out, which happened at the Cherry Campground of Hobble Creek, near Springville. I don’t know why the ward chose that area, but I was glad they did, once we arrived. It was very woodsy and close to the creek, and there were plenty of trees for shade. Considering the weather was overly hot through the past week, it was a welcome coolness.

I got off work a little early on Friday, as Rebecca met me at work and I loaded the boys and our camping equipment up in my car, and then we set off for Springville (after a quick stop at McDonalds for food). I was surprised with how far the campgrounds were into the mountains, as the directions said to simply go to a stop sign, turn right, and continue on to the camp. It was miles past there to the grounds, then miles more to the Cherry Camp.

We arrived and found other members from our ward, then set up the tent. Ethan and Jeremy tried to help (Ethan read the directions, both tried to set up the poles) and eventually we had our tent up.

The boys went exploring up the hillside where everyone else was going, and I just hung around the camp.

The boys found much pleasure in climbing up the hill and sliding down (notice all the dirty back sides?).

After a while, the boys decided they wanted to pee, so we made our way to the restrooms. I was surprised that they were more of a glorified outhouse (brick building with a hole in the ground, and a hollow toilet seat over it). Jeremy refused to use it at first, and we stayed outside whilst Ethan used the room. I showed Jeremy the posters on the walls of the bear and snake warnings.

He wasn’t too happy about them, and wanted to pack up and leave.

We stayed, though. Next time, we’ll probably bring campfire foods (marshmallows, hot dogs, etc) and just roast them, instead of doing McDonalds. They continued to play, and there wasn’t much structure to the evenings’ events. After a small fireside-like message, people started going to their tents to sleep. We ended up trying to watch a movie on my tablet, but the volume wasn’t good, so instead, we played with glow bracelets until we were all too tired.

It was hard having to sleep with a slight feeling like I had to pee. In the morning, we woke up early and all went to the bathroom, then made our way back to the camp to help make breakfast. There was more than enough food (supplied by the ward) and we had pancakes, sausage, hash browns, eggs, and juice to choose from. After everyone had their fill and we cleaned up, and the boys played some more, and we started tearing down tents and picking up random bits of trash, then went home.

No bears or snakes were seen, though.

Our Little Jailbird

Yesterday morning Jango was getting wild as she was playing with the kids and I felt it was time that she went out in the backyard to go potty, since she hadn’t been out since the night before. So Ethan opened the back door and let her out. A little bit later, I put Chewy out in the backyard to go potty, but I don’t recall Jango being right there. She is usually right there when I let Chewy out because she wants to play with him. I just figured she was laying down in the shade somewhere, and thought nothing else of it.

Throughout the day I would look out into the backyard, and I remember thinking that Jango wasn’t running her usual circle, but thought that maybe she was laying down in the shade since it was hot. And with all the weeds in the back I couldn’t SEE that she was laying down in the shade, but thought that she MUST be there. After the kids woke up from their naps I thought that maybe I would let Jango in for a bit since it was really hot by this point and besides, maybe she was thirsty. I opened the door and called for her, but she didn’t come. So I went out to look for her. I went to the side of the house because sometimes she likes to curl up in the gooseberry bed to take a nap, and I saw the side gate wide open and blowing in the breeze! As soon as I saw that, I knew Jango wasn’t anywhere in the yard. I then remembered that Kyle had used the side gate Sunday night to get the trash can out of the backyard and put it on the street since Mondays are trash days. And I had left the lawn mower in the backyard on Saturday and he went out to put it back in the garage. So basically the gate had been wide open since Sunday night, and Jango most likely got out as soon as we let her into the backyard. 🙁

I immediately called Kyle and told him that he hadn’t shut the gate after moving the trash can, and he asked me if Jango got out. I told him that she had and she had most likely been gone for hours. He left work to come home and help find her and I loaded the kids up in the van and started driving around the neighborhood. We drove around for awhile seeing no sign of Jango and I came back home to get the kids some dinner while Kyle continued the search. I called him up to tell him where we were and I suggested that he go to the mini-police station and ask if they had picked her up or something, and if that failed I suggested that he swing by the animal shelter on Lake Mountain Road. Less than 20 minutes later Kyle was home saying that a police officer picked her up this morning and took her to an animal shelter near his work. But they were going to close in half an hour so Kyle didn’t have time to go get her.

Today after work he went to go pick Jango up to bring her home. She was there, and we had to pay a fee to get her back, not to mention the fact that the police officer wrote us up because she was “running at large”, and she wasn’t wearing any tags. So there will be some fines for us to pay because of that, but she’s home and safe and that’s all that really matters right? 🙂

Q&A Fireside with President Draper

Every year our Stake President invites the women in Relief Society to submit any question that they might have. We can ask ANY question, and he will research answers and then there’s a big Relief Society fireside where he answers them all. I have gone the past two years and these firesides are really amazing. This year, we have been told, will be the last of these question and answers firesides with President Draper, as he mentioned that there will be some changes made to the stake at our coming stake conference in October.

I personally have never submitted any question, but I like to go and take some paper so I can take notes. 🙂 Here are some of my notes from this years fireside:

Sincerity of prayer-TALK to my Heavenly Father, show respect, but just talk to him.
Don’t play violent video games-video games are the biggest waste of time.
Regarding choices that our children may make as they grow up-Live as pure a life as you know how. And if you are teaching correct principals you must find peace with that.
Someone asked President Draper if he could go back and do anything different with his family what would it be, and his wife in the audience said “More scripture study”.
Don’t find an excuse to remove your garment. It’s perfectly ok to wear your garment while working out. The only times you should remove your garment are when you’re swimming, when you’re showering, and when you’re being physically intimate with your spouse.
Someone asked about Joseph Smith’s polygamy habits and President Draper said all we need to be concerned about regarding Joseph Smith are two things 1. DID the Father and the Son in fact appear to Joseph Smith? And 2. Is the Book of Mormon true? Anything else Joseph Smith did is HIS business.
There’s a wealth of knowledge in the Bible Dictionary.
Study the conference talks to find the apostolic blessings within.
Someone asked a question about how to encourage her husband to take the lead in holding Family Home Evening, family scripture study and family prayer. She said that she felt like if SHE didn’t call the family together for these things then they just didn’t happen. When President Draper read this question I totally felt like it could have been written by me, because that’s the way those things are in our house too. If I don’t say it’s time for FHE and already have something planned then it just never happens…Anyway President Draper suggested reviewing the Proclamation to the world on the Family with my husband to review what each of our jobs are, then reward good behavior. 😉
How do you approach teaching the law of chastity to your children? For the Strength of Youth.
Interview your children, one on one (fast and pray for guidance).
The most important traits in marriage are unselfishness and gratitude.
The purpose of the sealing ordinance is to ensure eternal parentage for your children. Then you must earn the right to be that parent.
Within marriage there are three areas of intimacy 1. Spiritual (most important) 2. Emotional (we need to talk eye to eye) 3. Physical (this is the bonus). If the first two are strong, the third will also be strong. 🙂
Communication is EVERYTHING-Have Family Council
I need to be worthy to be a goddess before I can apply any secular learning to my life.

Family Adventure

Thanksgiving Point is doing their $2 Tuesdays special again this August, and Kyle decided he would take a Tuesday off from work so we could all go. But I was feeling like we should do something else. Something we hadn’t done before. Last time we went to Farm Country and the Museum of Ancient life at Thanksgiving Point, Chloe was just a couple months old, and now Lydia is just a few months old. Personally, I’m thinking that maybe we should go back next year or something when Lydia is a bit older too. I still wanted to go do something with my family since Kyle had the day off. 🙂

I had a dentist appointment first thing this morning, which meant that my face was hurting all day. 🙁 But we decided to load all the kids up in the car and see if we could go somewhere to look for birds, so we could work on some of the bird electives in Ethan’s scout book. So Kyle decided to drive into Provo Canyon, and we stopped to take a short easy hike to the base of Bridal Veil Falls.

The falls were beautiful. And the roaring sound of the water, in the river rushing by, was loud.

It was crazy to see that people had climbed all the way up to stand at the top of the falls. And there was another group partway up. Personally I’m content to stand and the bottom and just look at the pretty waterfall. 🙂

We actually only saw two birds while we were there. We heard some chirping in the trees, but didn’t see any of them.

Kyle decided he wanted to take the kids to drive around the BYU campus. Some of them just weren’t understanding that BYU is a school for adults. It was rather funny and frustrating (hey remember that my face was hurting) trying to explain it so they could understand.

Then we were on our way back into Orem, going nowhere in particular and Kyle remembered spur of the moment that he had a gift card for Red Lobster. So we went there for dinner. 🙂 Funny that we go to this nice fancy restaurant and most of the kids ordered mac & cheese. But most of them actually finished their food too, so I guess I can’t really complain about that. 🙂 After dinner we decided to go over to the mall to get some dessert: See’s BABY! Kyle ran into the mall by himself to go to See’s to get us some chocolate, and he decided to go to the candy barrel and get rock candy for the kids dessert. While we sat in the parking lot waiting for him, I saw some birds so I pointed them out to Ethan and we started looking for others.

We saw sparrows, and seagulls while we were waiting for Kyle. Then I remembered that there was a pond by Blue Host (where Kyle used to work) and ducks were frequently in that pond. So we decided to head back down to Provo to go see what ducks and what other birds we could see down there. We saw some black ducks in the pond and some geese. I’m not sure what kinds of ducks and geese they are, but that’s ok. Then we saw some black birds and as we were heading back to the freeway I spotted a small flock of quail in a parking lot. So Kyle slowed down and we pulled over so the kids could see them too, and there was a HUGE flock of them on the grass on the side of the building.

It’s been a bit of an adventure. We didn’t have anything planned really and we really did drive back and forth going all over town to see what we got to see today, but that’s ok. It was all spontaneous and we got to spend the day together going on a drive to wherever we felt we wanted to go. 🙂

Mooching from Mommy

The kids had been put to bed. Some of them had actually fallen asleep too. And I decided to come out to the living room and have some ice cream before going to bed myself. Little did I know that Chloe was one of the kiddos still awake and she doesn’t like to ask for a bite, she just came out and tried to take one:

At least in this one she is waiting for me to put the ice cream in her mouth: