LDS General Conference

The Church of Jesus Christ holds General Conference twice a year, April and October.  Two of my children were asked to participate in conference as part of a youth choir formed from stakes in our Region.  This was a wonderful opportunity for our children and probably a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  

  

Hiking as a family around Donut Falls

Our family loves to hike so we took Tanja up Big Cottonwood Canyon hiking.  I love that we have mountains and can enjoy nature in about a 15 minute drive from home.

  

    

    

Up at Donut Falls

          
I love this family picture with Tanja, it captures her beautiful smile and shows that she is still a little timid and shy about being here in America.




During this hiking trip we would say hi to many people along the trail as well as on our way back to the car. It was fun to Tanja to learn that American's are very friendly.
In Germany you don't talk to people, especially strangers, while you are out and about.  The only time you do this would be to ask for directions or something along those lines.

We drove further up the canyon and walked around Silver Lake.

  

First Day of School 2012

Kaylynn enters 8th Grade for the 2012-2013 school year.  Here is the picture from her first day of school.

Cameron is no longer in Elementary.  Here is his 7th Grade picture on the first day for 2012-2013 school year.  

The Past...And welcome Tanja Laudi to our family!

I am very grateful to have been introduced to blogging, now many years ago.  I regret though not keeping up like I used to.  Blogging was a great way for me to journal family events and memories, but then a new social media took over...Facebook!  Don't get me wrong I like Facebook, because I have been able to connect with many family members and friends.  Especially when life keeps you busy and you only see your friends and sometimes family members once in a while...or long while.

Now that my oldest daughter is serving a mission and I am keeping up on a blog of her mission experiences and memories, I think it's time to dust off this blog and begin keeping memories again.

It's neat to go back through this blog and see the memories, pictures, and other events shared.  Boy my kids sure have changed over the years.

What has happened over the past two years?!?
Well during 2012-2013 we hosted another exchange student.  This was our second experience...the last time was Suverce Guller during the school year 2001-2002.

Our student and new family member was Tanja Laudi from Bremmen Germany.  Here is the first picture we took when she arrived to Salt Lake City, Utah and to her new family for the school year.


We of course as a family took Tanja swimming to Seven Peaks Water Park.
    

We had many many more wonderful experiences during 2012-2013 school year.  I am going to continue creating the pages of memories.  For our family to have as part of this blog.  And for our family and friends to enjoy if interested.

Good Friends and Time

This past week my dear sweet friend Yvonne and some of her family were in town. Her husband Tom was involved in seminars for work. Yvonne, Joe, Cameron and I spent some time together on Thursday. We met up at Ikea, wandered the store, did a little shopping, and enjoyed sweedish meatballs. Cameron and I drove to the hotel where Yvonne's family was staying for the week and the boys swam. The boys had a blast playing with water balls, dive sticks, and dive rings. Yvonne and I had a great time dangling our feet in the pool and just talking. Kiarra listened to her ipod outside in the sun, she didn't want to socialize with us...lol. Too bad my girls were away to girls camp, they would have had a blast hanging out together.

Friday night we had Joe and Kiarra over for pizza and fun with Cameron. Their family had a nice little sleep over at our house and left early Saturday morning for the drive back home (Colorado).

It was great to see you and spend some time Yvonne. We should have took some pics of us. Ha ha oh well. I will post the few pics I took of the kids.

Here's to starting over...sort of

I am not really going to start over, but from here on out will be the start of blogging again. Our computer crashed a couple of weeks ago and in order to have it back Todd had to re-install everything. We lost all our memories from 2010 to just about present. I was faithful at making back up cd's, but hadn't since about March 2010. It is sad to think a year of pictures are gone (except those) that were already uploaded into facebook, but it will be ok. The kids change in a year, but maybe not too much...lol

My previous post about Youth Conference 2009 was a draft I had started a couple of months ago, and was working on uploading pictures just before the computer crashed. Hopefully many of you saw some of them on facebook in mine and kierstie's album.

2010 was a fun year for our family. School activities, concerts, plays, and cameron trying a couple of new sports. I traveled to New York for work twice during fall of 2010 and was very excited that Todd went with me on one of the trips.

This year 2011 has been just as fun, with some events we are happy to put behind us. I will try and post with pics if I have some saved from my cell phone.

I am happy to be back to blogging and hope you enjoy sharing in my journal!!

Youth Conference July 2009

With the realization that I have neglected my blog for so long I have denied myself, family, and friends the recording of what we have been up to. One of these events was Youth Conference in July 2009. Normally Todd and I would not be at Youth Conference with any of our children. July 2009 was different, we had the opportunity to attend because the youth did a Trek. Todd and I went as Aunt and Uncle for one of the organized families "The Bauer Family".

Trek was an awesome experience. Kierstie was the only one of our children able to attend and was assigned to another family. Cozy wanted to go but was not yet fourteen. It was neat to watch Kierstie associate with others from the stake while on Trek which is different than Girls Camp.

The spirit felt while attending Trek was amazing. When we first began our walk we quickly started assending up hills and I thought to myself "what have I gotten myself into" and began to doubt if I would be able to enjoy the experience. I have been out of shape and discouraged with physical activity. I used to climb mountains all the time and have come to realize I am not physically fit for mountain climbing anymore and take it very slow and easy when hiking or other things of the same nature. This was no different, but I could tell very early on that this experience was not going to be easy.

The hardest part of the trek was the womens pull. All the men were called off to war. The women were left to push and pull the carts alone. We later learned that the men could see us the entire time (unlike our ancestors) and wanted so bad to come back down the mountain and assist us.
I didn't make it like I had hoped. I had an asthma attack during the pull up the mountain and had to sit on a rock for awhile. I was crying which isn't easy to do when you can't even breathe. To top it off, I do not, or I should say have never been diagnosed with asthma but the medical staff and guide with us told me this is what was happening to me. After about fifteen minutes or so when I had my breath back and went and helped another handcart finish to the top thus finishing the womens pull. It felt so good to finish and to have the greater testimony that our ancestors had many months traveling over the plains to Utah.

I will be forever greatful of this experience and glad I could share it with Todd, the youth from the stake, and the family we were assigned "Bauer Family".