B-day

This last Wednesday was my fifteenth birthday! Yay! Exciting! We went to the Zoo and I had a neat friend party on Friday. Some of my favorite presents are; a titanium water bottle, a leather journal, a seed-beading kit, and a Bonsai tree! A Bonsai tree is one of those really tiny ones, mine is the kind that is going to live for a couple hundred years so I need a really good name for it. I'm thinking about "Zen" but if you have any suggestions let me know. I am also going to be learning how to drive this year so that's exciting. To all of those who gave me gifts thank you. To those who didn't, well shame on you.:)

Condo

Our BYU investment condo has been on the market for awhile, without much action, (big surprise in this economy!) We decided to give it a make-over this month and spent many hours improving it. Steve (Dad) and Whitney gave it a fresh coat of paint and yesterday we moved everything, ripped out the carpet and old couches and had new carpet laid and brought in new couches. A huge thanks to my brother Quinn who spent the day doing slave labor for us. We couldn't have done it without him!

Know anyone in the market for a dang nice BYU men's condo?

Knights' Summit

the final battle

the victory parade after the final battle

don't I look great?!?

the authentic musicians at the feast

The Knights of Freedom Summit was a great time. We learned about 5 Knightly Virtues at different camps. They were team work, proving yourself in battle, going on a quest, etc. At the end of the 2 days we had a huge battle with all of the adults (who played villains) against the kids. The first day you got a shield and the second day you got a sword. There were different colored camps, brown, green, purple, yellow, red and we were the oranges. We all made up a cheer, and our cheer was "Orange, orange, we are strong. We fight for freedom, we fight the wrong. Huzzah, Huzzah, Huzzah!" We did a tournament thing with all the knights. Every team had a tournament to find their team champion, and I was the team champion from the oranges. But the kid from the brown team beat me and everyone else so he was the Queen's champion.

Daniel

For the knights summit I volunteered as an elitist (bad guy). you probably think this was easy, march in, yell "ha ha, were the bad guys" and start smacking swords with the kids. Not in the least. I had to wake up at 6:00 each morning, help set up, and be in costume and character before the kids started arriving. I was an elitist (A.K.A. a rich and powerful noble who looks down his nose at every one else) and had to make the kids dislike us while not hurting any boys feelings. This did not succeed however, as all the kids loved us and thought we were cool. It was our role to escalate from quietly resenting the King and Queen , to openly rebelling against them. After a failed attempt to kidnap the Queen, (all in the script) we ran away and joined the gelds (the real bad guys) in the final battle. After surrendering we left and joined the feast afterward. With not much down time, and a lot of heat, it was certainly hard, but a lot of fun!

Steve

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Change is coming! Starting next week, I will be posting the Koru every Sunday, instead of Friday. I think the new schedule will help everyone in the family be more involved in writing our family history. So, see you next Sunday!

Baby Update

Thanks so much for the kind inquiries about my health. Yes, there has been a lack of mommy pictures on the blog. I've found that "green" just isn't my color. But, I've hit 2nd trimester and I'm feeling much better. I even got to hear the baby's heartbeat last appointment!

The 24/7 nausea was a huge challenge for me. Everything I did or even thought about during that time I started associating with nausea. Steve bought me a new MP3 player and loaded a book I really wanted to listen to on it. About half way through I had to hide it, it was making me feel so sick. I still can't look at the thing! I was careful not to read books I liked, think about school plans or fun projects, or eat foods I wanted to have in my life later. The hardest part was I was so very bored! Thank goodness I had planning the family festival to keep me going.

I am so grateful I am feeling better in time for the new school year!

This is the Place!

As treasurer of the Non-profit that runs the clubs my children enjoy, I saw the need to raise operating expenses. So I cooked up a fundraiser at This is the Place Heritage park, one night about 3:00am. Six weeks later found us at the park putting on a Family Festival.

Tea Parties with square dancing for the girls.

Vendor Booths

Sword fights and tug of war for the boys.

Pulled pork, roasted corn on the cob and homemade fries for dinner.

A carnival for all. Cousins enjoying the cake walk!

Followed by entertainment. I got to give away the door prizes!

We had about 600 people attend the Family Festival and raised some much needed cash. I'll do about a 100 thing differently next year, now that we've done it once, but I think it was a great success. Huge thanks to my kids who helped at every turn, Becca, my right hand woman that day and Steve who's always my #1 man!

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Paleontology fun!

Sand, water, and dinosaurs - plastic and real. What more could a kid ask for? Thanks Aunt Brooke for taking us to the Dinosaur Museum!

Summer Fun

Grandma and Grandpa G invited us over for lunch and a day of playing in the near by creek with cousins. The best part was Grandpa got in the water with all the grandkids. A perfect summer day - especially when you add Popsicles and doughnuts!

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Legos and Day Camp by Daniel

For my birthday I asked for money instead of presents from everyone, so I could buy a special Lego set. It's the Battle of Endor. It comes with 2 scout speeders, 2 commandos, 3 ewalks, a Walker, a catapult, and a deflector shield base. It's cool, because if you push a certain button on the base it blows up. Thank you to everyone that helped buy my birthday present!



I went to Scout Day camp for two days. I went one day to Jurassic Journey and I also went to a Super Hero one. There were tons of activities there. We went BB gun shooting, we did archery, and we did sling shot shooting. One of the activities was to dig up fossils. I don't have a favorite activity because I liked it all! It was a great place.

20 Years!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to participate in my 20 year high school reunion activities. I was surprised at the fun I had seeing old friends and acquaintances again after such a long time, many I had not seen for almost 20 years. Friday night we had a Show and Chamber reunion where we ate some good food and got to know each other, and our families, better. The highlight was when we sang some of our old music together, we had quite a group turn up to the reunion, and it sounded great! A flood of memories came rushing back and some of the emotions that come from singing in close harmony with your friends as well. It was a great time and the general consensus was that we had a desire to get together this next year to sing together again. A big thank you to those who organized the event and made it happen!



The next morning we attended a Seminary Council breakfast and had a chance to catch up with almost everyone with whom I served on Seminary Council. Again, tons of fun to see everyone and to see everyone so happy in their lives. Again, a big thank you to those who organized the event and made it happen!

Later in the day we attended a picnic at the park where we played the face recognition game more earnestly than before. This was the larger school crowd at this gathering. The trick was to mingle and try to recognize a few and then see if that led to recognizing more. It worked and before long it was like being at a dance with lots of chit-chatting going on and general mixing and mingling. A fun time.

Later that evening Noreen and I attended a dinner event where more people attended and again, the face recognition game, this time with the aid of name tags! Much easier and still a lot of fun to mix and catch-up with friends and acquaintances. I had the opportunity to talk at length with a few close friends from high school which was great fun. The general feeling on the experience was one of humble gratitude for being able to mix with such a great crowd of friends and acquaintances that helped shaped my early years. What a blessing! I was also so very happy to see people in good circumstances in their lives, with very few tragedies. What more could you hope for? Not much. So, for those of you who might have your own reunions coming up, attend it! - Steve

The Show and Chamber Crowd

8 of the original 12 Seminary Council Members

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Hiking the Uintas

We were lucky enough to spend the 23rd and 24th of July camping in the Uintas, where it was gorgeous and about 30 degrees cooler than the valley. We tented next to a beautiful lake and the next morning started out on the trail to Twin Lakes. About 3/4ths of the way there I was dying for a snack, so we stopped in the shade for me to pull an apple from the pack. It was only then that the horrible realization hit us. We had left the food pack back at the car! Tip - if you pack your fishing gear in a blue back pack and your food in a blue back pack, remember to make sure you have both with you! The whole way up I assumed Steve had the food on his back. Well, needless to say, we had to modify our plans a bit. We hiked back down about a half mile to Wall Lake and Steve and the kids started fishing. Then Steve L. and I started the trek back down the mountain to recover our food. I should note here that my husband did offer to go down to the car and bring back our lunch, but I knew that I would be eating much sooner if I went for it myself. The extra 2 miles hiking seems a small price to pay when you are 11 weeks pregnant and starving! So we made the trek, and arrived at the car exactly 2 hours after leaving it. We quickly ate our lunch and Steve L. carried the pack with the rest of the food all the way back to Wall lake. Our rescue mission allowed us to stay fishing for about 4 hours with great success. Janey prayed that we would all catch a fish, and guess what? Everyone did! One after another, everyone pulled one beautiful trout out of the lake apiece. (Except for Mom who didn't have a fishing licence and was content to lay on the shore watching everyone fish after her extra long hike.) Dad cleaned the fish and we brought the home and grilled them up for dinner. We were so proud of the kids who all ate their own fish with a hearty appetite.

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