General Conference, C Subway, J Immigration Project, Hiking group Dog and Desolation Lake

I love General Conference weekend! I love the family time, listening and learning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, playing in between sessions (pickleball, hiking, walking penny) and eating all the great foods!

I'm currently doing a clean and simple eats challenge so this weekend we ate lots of their yummy recipes, including zesty orange sweet rolls (don't tell the kids but they have mashed sweet potato inside) and our favorite muddy buddies, of which I omit the 1 Tbsp of cocoa powder so I can enjoy them too.

They have this recipe posted on their instagram page, so hopefully they don't mind if I also share of picture of that recipe here. 

Elisabeth, who lives down at BYU, came up for the weekend! We love having her with us!

As part of the clean and simple eats challenge I've been doing more meal prepping. I make my shakes for the weekdays all in one day; I just make the same one for every day that week, then I only have to get all the ingredients out once. 

Nora and I made a Halloween cake one Sunday afternoon. We have church from 830-1030am so we have a lot of time during the rest of the day to worship and do various family activities. 

Tuesdays Jane has been watching Saige for a few hours. It's a good way for her to earn a little extra money toward her gymnastics fees (and she keeps some for herself) and then Sher get can some errands done and we get to spend time with cute saige. 

Charles started work at Subway on Thursday October 13th. He works at a different location than Elisabeth worked, but still pretty close. He's enjoying doing something different and he likes getting a free sandwich whenever he works. 

Jane is in 7th grade and had an immigration project where she needed to find out about when her ancestors immigrated to the USA and why they came to Utah. Parents were invited to attend when they set up their triboards in the library and presented to people walking around (parents and students from another class). Jane was the ONLY ONE in her class who did an ancestor from Mexico. The majority had ancestors from Europe that come over when they joined the church of jesus christ of latter day saints. Jane was able to talk about her grandpa, my dad, and how he came over in the 1950s and moved to Seattle. We didn't have family move out to Utah until I went to BYU in 2001. 

This is a picture of my dad in 1956. He would've been 30 years old. 

Here are Nora and Emery hanging out on a Friday night. We have not used the fire pit much at all this year. Maybe one other time? We need to use it more. It's a peaceful activity. 

My hiking group hasn't been doing much hiking this past year, probably because we didn't have Grand Canyon or another big hike to prepare for. So when Shauna and Tiff said they'd be going this past Saturday the 15th and we didnt' have soccer games, I jumped at the opportunity! 

We did the dog lake and desolation lake hike and it was beautiful! The leaves were vibrant and the weather was perfect. We hike 9.1 miles and it took us 3 hours and 26 minutes. We got to the trailhead at 7am (left our house around 615am) and we finished around 1030am and got home around 1115am.  

Temple date night. We got Subway afterward since Charles was working. 

Elisabeth cheering for BYU in 2022

Elisabeth cheering for BYU in 2004

 

Big Cottonwood half marathon, homecoming, soccer, BYU, RS activity Speed Friendshipping and Friendshipping Groups

Kim and I ran the Big Cottonwood half marathon on Saturday September 10th. Elisa L was supposed to run it with us but she had something come up. But she told me we could use her bib and invite a friend. 

So I invited my friend and neighbor Cami, literally the night before the race and she said yes! The three of us drove out together and rode on the busses together to the startline. 

Kim and I weren't really pushing ourselves, just going at a comfortable pace because I've been having hip issues and haven't been able to train as much, but that comfortable pace turned out to be a lot faster than I expected once we crossed the finish line. We finished in 1 hour and 40 minutes, or a 7:40 pace; but it is all downhill so gravity is working in our favor, pulling us down the mountain. 

I loved it! Kim and I just visited like we always do during our weekend long runs and it was comfortable, the weather was perfect and just very enjoyable. We missed Elisa L, but maybe we'll do it gain next year. 

 

Saturday September 17th was Homecoming. Charles took Ella, a friend he met at AFY (adventure church youth camp) this summer; they had gone out another time this summer. They went with Drew adn Kate and some other friends and had a great time. 

We are in the middle of soccer season. This means lots of weekday soccer practices (2 for Nora and 2 for Annabelle), plus usually 2 games every Saturday. Annabelle's away games have been pretty far, we had one in Layton, one in Price (2 hours) and one in Lewiston which is almost to Idaho, also about 2 hours away. Those games sometimes take up the whole day with the drive times. But we've been enjoying our time together as family, supporting one another. 

Elisabeth is enjoying her experience at BYU. She's making good friends and loves her roommates. 

They go to all the home BYU football games and love it

We had our first RS activity since we became a new presidency. We did a speed friendshipping activity (like speed dating) and it was a big hit. Sheryl did so much for this activity and it turned out beautifully. We had a drink bar (like Swig) and we had some desserts and appetizers. 

We had one side of the table stay in their same seat the whole time while the other side of the table moved down a seat every 3 minutes. They had a jar of questions in front of them that theyd choose from and get to know one another better. 

We also started some friendshipping groups in RS. We have a hiking group, a bookclub and a temple/lunch group that meet monthly, and then we have a playgroup that meets weekly. We've sent around a signup for several weeks (we still send it out), and from that list of people we picked one person to be the leader who organizes time/day and sends out reminder messages on groupme. I was surprised at the response we got; we had so many more people sign up than I thought would. Which is great! Though so far, for the actual showing up of these activities we usually just have a small handful. But it's all good; I just want everyone to feel loved and know that they're always welcome. And hopefully as time goes on we'll have more people join in on the fun. 

This is from Nora's color run at school. I didn't stay this year for the race, but the kids had a good time.