Youth Conference 2009

Kyle and I were asked to be chaperones for Youth Conference. It is a conference for youth 14-18 years old. It's a time for the youth to build meaningful relationships with other youth from the Stake, have good spiritual experiences and have some fun as well. We have never been chaperones before. We were co-planners for a youth conference in our old Stake when we lived in North Seattle over 4 years ago. It was fun to plan it and work with the youth and other stake leaders, but being chaperones was a lot different. It was a good different. :) We went to Ensign Ranch (a church owned camp) from Thursday until Saturday morning. Kyle met Marci in Bellevue on Wednesday afternoon to make the kid hand-off. Marci took Kate and Preston over to my parent's house so my Mom could watch them while we were at YC. It was so very nice of them to help us out!

It started on Wednesday night with the kick-off fireside at the Stake Center. There were eight couples who were chaperones and all the kids were split up and put with these chaperones into "families". Each family was assigned a country and our family was France. We taught the kids some phrases in French and we had to learn to say the theme in French as well. The theme of Youth Conference was Timothy 4:12 Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. We only had to say "Be thou an example" in french. Phew! Once we got into our families they had some really clever games to play. We had to use chopsticks and a can of alphabet spahetti o's to spell out "be thou an example of the believers". It was hilarious, but our family did awesome and almost finished first.

Part of being a chaperone is to do devotionals at night before bed and in the morning with our families. They only last like 1/2 hour, but I was stressing because I had procrastinated and didn't have the devotionals planned out enough. So once we got home Wednesday night I had to figure out the devotionals (I like to have things written out), make cutesy tags to put on our handouts for the devotionals and then pack. I was stressin' big time- ask Kyle. :) In the end it was fine. I gave them sunflower seeds to represent seeds of Charity, bubble gum for them to not "blow" it with their words and conversation, and then a toothbrush to "remember to smile", to have a happy Spirit. We had awesome kids in our family. They were fun and I think they had fun with us. We really did have a great time.

Thursday Morning- Met at the Stake Center at 7:30am and then went to Northwest Harvest in Kent for a service project. They supply food to food banks, shelters and charities. We put labels on over 59,000 cans of corn, bagged over 3,000 lbs of rice and bagged over 11,000 lbs of frozen diced carrots. We did a lot! The kids loved the service project and the people in charge were happy with everything we did. We ate lunch there and then left for Ensign Ranch. Once we got to camp we unpacked and had a European Tour with 3 different presenters. Everyone had passports to go along with the theme of going around the world and learning about different cultures. You could earn stickers for completing different tasks and a reward was given for the most stickers earned. That night was a dance.

Friday- We had the first leg of the Amazing Race. After the first couple of challenges our team was 2nd to last and we were trying to complete this task of getting a marble through different pieces of pipe. You had to move the pipe down this grassy field and if the marble dropped out of the pipe you had to start over. It was hard and we had to start over like 10 times. We thought we were going to be last and some of us (me included) were getting frustrated. Well, we finally did it and got to move on to the next task. When we were done they told us we could go to the pit stop since we finished the marble thing already (other teams tried it and gave up and went to the easier challenge- the waterslide. We couldn't b/c 3 of our girls didn't have water shoes and you HAD to have water shoes to go on the waterslide so we were kind of forced to do the marble challenge). Little did we know that all the teams had to eventually go back and do the marble challenge so that put us ahead and we ended up being 1st! Then, we ate lunch and had free time. In the afternoon, we started the 2nd leg of the Amazing Race. We ran SO much. One activity was at the lodge and then we'd have to run down to the water, then back to the lodge, then back to the river and finally back to the lodge to the pit stop. The activities included a 50 question test, water balloon launching and catching 5 of them, obstacle courses, scripture/analogy challenges, and then finding our family colored rock (ours was blue) in the river. Well... our family WON!!! It was so exciting. We were so tired and hot from all the running. We got gift cards to Cold Stone Creamery or Jamba Juice for winning. It was so much fun. Then we had dinner, the Dating Fireside, Bishop's hour and then Testimony Meeting.

Saturday- After breakfast and family devotional time, President Latimer spoke to us for a while before we cleaned up and packed up to go home.

This was the cabin I stayed in with the girls from my family. Another chaperone mom and her girls stayed in there with us. We had fun getting to know one another. The girls didn't stay up too late chatting. The other chaperone and I were even up chatting with them late one night.

This is our awesome family winning the Amazing Race!!! Woot! Woot!

L-R: (back) Collin, Trevor, Kyle, Rachel, Sarah, Brandon and me.

L-R: (front) Josh, Michael, Ivy, Victoria and Michael.

This is the main lodge. We had many firesides here along with a dance. On Friday night we had a dating fireside and it was so funny.

They were speed dating and the guys were asking the girls' questions. Most of the guys forgot the girls' names when asked later. They got in trouble for that! Ha!

The Rockets Red Glare

It's been crazy busy the last couple of weeks and we have been gone a lot. I am the secretary for our homeowner's association and there was an important meeting I couldn't miss on Thursday night so we had to wait until that was done before leaving for my parent's house for the 4th of July. It was probably good we waited because traffic was a breeze by the time we left. I was supposed to work on Monday after the 4th, but Sara and Derek were coming to my parent's after getting off of their honeymoon and I wanted to see them so I canceled work and we stayed through Monday. I worked on Tuesday and Wednesday. Kyle and I were chaperones for Youth Conference (another post on that later) and so Wednesday night was the kick-off fireside. We packed up that night and left the next morning for Youth Conference at 7:20am. I was stressed about getting ready for YC (more on that later) and trying to do primary stuff, work, household stuff, play with kids, pack the kids (they went to my Mom's while we were at YC), do homeowner's stuff, etc. I was a little overwhelmed trying to juggle everything. I thought I was going to have a mental breakdown. Kyle was telling me to calm down and everything would be fine. I lived.

We had a great 4th of July. We had a Sabin reunion and it was good to spend time with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The weather was good (not windy) and we even had our own little 5K race in the morning. We were going to go to Othello to their 4th of July 5K race, but we went last year and NEVER got our t-shirts that we paid for!!! Annoying. We even emailed them and nothing. So we boycotted that and kept our money this year. We ran up near the high school and up this big hill (the same loop we ran for the 5K we did at Thanksgiving time). My Dad, Marci, Jared and I were the brave runners. :) We started at 8:30 am and it was already HOT! We thought we were going to die on the last leg of the run. We joked that we all got 1st in our age divisions and that my Mom would make us t-shirts! HA! We had a good time with it and jumped in the pool when we got home.

Kate splattered with dirt. She lived in her bathing suit this weekend. Well, that and dress-up clothes.

We were outside talking and Jared was laying on the ground. Preston would come over and lay down next to him. It was cute.

Kate doing her first sparkler. Last year she would scream and run away from fireworks. We were planning on putting her to bed before the big fireworks since we had early church the next morning, but she insisted she wanted to stay up because she liked fireworks. She actually loved it and commented how she liked the red one's. ha!

Preston is a handful. He is into everything and is quite good at throwing tantrums. My family calls him "moaner" because he will moan and whine all the time. Well, he's also good at throwing up. He is a gagger and so watch out, he'll gag on something and end up throwing up. He threw up like 8 times over the 4th of july weekend. It was annoying. We put him to bed before the fireworks, but I went to check on him and he had thrown up. I changed the sheets and tried to put him back down, but he was hysterical. I brought him outside with me for the fireworks (because everyone was waiting for me) and he did good. I thought he would cry, but this was his expression most of the night and he just sat there.

Kate insisted on sitting in her purple chair that Kyle brought from home. She had fun playing with all the other kids. She adores my cousin Allison (who is probably 11 or 12) but she calls her Alice. It's so funny. Allison just goes along with it and doesn't correct her, but Marci and I were trying to get Kate to say her name right. It was funny.

Mr. Independent

This is a video of Preston going down the slide standing up. He was being brave and wouldn't sit down to go down the slide. It was pretty funny.

Here Comes the Bride

Sara and Derek are married!!! They got married on Friday at 11am in the Columbia River Temple in Tri-Cities. The weather was amazing and lots of family was there so it was a great day. After the wedding we had a luncheon at the Stake Center right next to the Temple. It was yummy. Then, we had a reception that night in Mattawa. On Saturday night, there was another reception in Moses Lake where Derek grew up and it was outside at his parent's house. Sara and Derek took off on a cruise to Mexico for their honeymoon on Sunday morning.

It was a fun weekend because we were able to see aunts and uncles from both sides of our family. On Saturday my Mom's family came out and we went swimming and slip n' sliding. We had to leave on Saturday night after the reception in Moses because Kyle had to teach Gospel Doctrine on Sunday and we knew we'd be gone next Sunday after the 4th of July and we can't miss too many Sunday's.

Coming out of the Temple. When Derek first saw Sara in her dress he had a cute smile on his face and had a skip in his walk. Awww... young love. :)

Derek was totally cooperative whenever we asked him to kiss Sara for a picture. Ha!

Me with my sis

My Mom made the girls' these cute dresses (and she made Sara's dress and the cake, refreshments, decorations, invitations... you name it she did it. She is amazing!). You can tell in this picture that the bows in front are fun to play with. They are all messed up. ha!

My parents with Sara and Derek (I didn't get any of them with Derek's parents)

The girls with the Bride

The boys with the Bride

Sara's cake that my Mom made and decorated. The pink tulle around the table was a cute idea that Sara saw somewhere else. At the reception they served white cupcakes with raspberry glaze on top, brownie bites with a raspberry on top, mini cream puffs, cashews, junior mints, good n' plenty's, raspberry italian sodas, breadsticks with marinara or alfredo dipping sauces, ravioli and a veggie tray with ranch. It was all really good.

I bet you wish...

I bet you wish you had a pile of ironing like this to do. You can tell I've put it off long enough. After 2 hours, 22 shirts, 4 shorts, 2 pants and 1 dress later, this pile was GONE. Most of the shirts were Kyle's and he kept asking me when I was going to iron, but amazingly he always had a shirt to wear the next day. He just assumed his many other shirts in his closet didn't fit and lo and behold, they did. So I teased him about that. I would be ecstatic to find 10 more shirts in my closet that fit.

I bet you wish you had matching fingernails and toenails as your daughter. Kate kept asking me to paint her nails so I did and she loved having matching colors.

I bet you wish you had a build-in photographer in the house. I was taking pictures on Sunday of the kids and Kate wanted to use my camera. Thank goodness for digital cameras where you can delete all the random pictures. :) Here is one she took of us. We had a couple retakes.

And here is a picture that Kate took of Preston playing with cars. Not too bad for an action photo. ha!

I bet you wish you had these hair clips. (not really, it just went with my post theme!) I've had some friends make these flower hair clips and I've wanted to make them for Kate. I finally found some cute white flowers and made them this afternoon. Kate LOVES flowers so this is right up her alley.

I bet you wish you had gone on our bike ride yesterday morning. (I'm super sore now- those seats are not comfy.) We haven't gone since last year so it was fun to take the kids. Kate loved it and Preston cried and almost threw up b/c he was crying so bad at the beginning. Once we got going, he calmed down and was fine. That boy does not like change- whether it be shoes, clothes, whatever. I think he'll be fine once we go on another bike ride.

Catch Up

I haven't been very good at doing posts on my blog lately. Lately, I've been feeling a bit behind on keeping up with the house. Kyle is doing a good job cleaning, but there is something to be said about a "women's" touch in the house. I just had my systems or routine in place and now Kyle is supposed to pick up from where I left off most days and of course, that doesn't happen since we are different people and he's not used to doing everything I was doing. I was glad that this week I was only scheduled to work 2 days so I could be home and do random catch-up stuff.

We went to the zoo today for playgroup. It was a beautiful day and the zoo was a bit crowded with a million school field trip groups, but once you got into the zoo and scattered out it wasn't too bad. It was fun to see the reactions from Preston once he saw the animals. Kate loved seeing the animals too and they both took great naps when we got home. Kyle and I were asked to be Youth Conference Chaperones and so tonight was our first meeting. We needed a babysitter so we just had her come early and ended up going out to dinner before our meeting. The Youth Conference is at Ensign Ranch in July. It should be fun, but I'm a bit nervous to work with the youth. I'm used to the Primary kids. :) If any of you have good ideas for devotionals or get-to-know-you games send them to me.

The other night when I was reading scriptures to Kate before bed (we read from the easy scripture readers that the Church makes for kids) there was a picture of Christ being crucified and picture of Him resurrected. For some reason Kate started making comments about how she was too small and when she got bigger she could fit on the cross (she said this matter of factly). Then she asked if bad men would take her (she asked this with a sad face). I realized that she thought she had to be crucified like Jesus was and that made my heart break. I emphatically told her she wouldn't be crucified and that bad men wouldn't take her. I thought it was so cute and so sad she thought this would happen to her. It's just amazing how little kids interpret things. I was telling my Mom this story and she mentioned that there was a story of a little boy that was going to give his blood to his sister thinking he would die after giving his blood to her and yet he was willing to do it. Of course, his parents told him he would live even after giving his sister some blood. Kids are such good examples to us.