We are home from a wonderful 4 days in St. George. I don't like unpacking or cleaning the car after a trip....so I didn't. Greg won the gold medal in tennis for the Utah Summer Games! We all were going to run the 5k that we thought was on Saturday, but Greg got the days mixed up and it was last Saturday. We decided to run our own .5k instead. We had a blast staying at the wonderful wyndham resort courtesy of Clark and Kari, who owned the timeshare that we stayed in. Thanks guys! The pools were great and the room was very spacious. I love having a kitchen, it makes vacations more economical and easy. We were going to leave on Thursday and decided to leave Wednesday so I got a great deal on priceline for a hotel in Cedar. When we got to the Best Western the lady at the desk said "you look so familiar", it was a sister from my mission! (J. Johnson) She was awesome she gave us a bigger room! We watched Greg slaughter his first opponent the next morning and headed to St. George. We had a bbq and movie night thursday, went to the Iron County Rodeo friday and swam everyday. I love vacations. The thing that I love the most is that we are always together, there are no other plans or activities that take anyone away (well except for tennis). It was wonderful! This week I am going to girl's camp and then we leave Sunday for Cali! I love the Summer!

Trek

Greg and I are a "Ma and Pa" for trek this year and we are so excited. We had our training last weekend at Deseret Land and Livestock in Wyoming. We essentially were the kids and went through what the kids would experience when they go in August. I was surprised when Greg and I were split up into different groups for the weekend. I was looking forward to being with him and having him around, I think of it now as if my blankey was taken away. This is how the kids will feel when they can't be with their friends. I really enjoyed my group and had a wonderful experience even without my blankey :) The hiking wasn't bad. I feel like I put a lot of effort into pushing the handcart and I was fine. I do believe the 80 lb girls and video gamers will have a rude awakening. I thought about the pioneers and the struggles they went through and felt a strong connection and love for them, especially on the "women's pull". Of course, I was bawling as soon as I saw the "General" further up on the trail. My heart was full when our leader sad, "General are you asking us to fight for a country who has not stood up for our rights, who have persecuted and driven us from state to state and harmed our people?" General responds, "Yes". We as the pioneers decide we will send our husbands, sons and fathers to war for our country and they leave us to pull the handcarts on our own. And we pulled them to the top of that hill with tears as the men sang "Come Come Ye Saints". This is a special song to me ever since serving on Temple Square and growing to love the pioneer's sacrifice and telling people about it everyday. The next day on the trail Helaman visited us and told us, in a powerful way his story of the Stripling warriors. It makes it so real to have someone act it out in front of you and you can imagine the feelings and what really happened back then. I had so many ideas of what I want to do with our "kids" I hope we can make Trek a pivotal experience that strengthens their testimonies. Greg told me as I reached the top of the hill on the woman's pull that I would have been a great pioneer woman. I think I am pretty tough physically, however, burying a child or watching a husband walk off to war leaving me behind with 3 kids, I wouldn't be so tough.

Consider yourself lucky to be reading this, Greg has been very clear that he doesn't want any crazies having an insight to his family's whereabouts. If you are a crazy please do not look at this blog.

Park City May 2009

We decided to do our first "timeshare presentation" and it wasn't so bad. I am glad we got it over with at the beginning of our stay. We walked up to our room and the key didn't work so the maid let us in to a spacious beautiful room. When we walked back up after the presentation I realized there was a "B" at the end of our room number. We were in the "b" suite which was the little room attached to the "A" suite. It was pretty squished with all our kids. The pool was awesome and the girls LOVED it. We hung out in Park City the next day, ate at a cute cafe for b-fast, rode the trolley and the Alpine Slide. Hayley had a traumatic experience because the slide shut down due to lightning right before we got on the lift. We had been waiting for almost an hour for Greg and Brooke to go down and Hayley was so sad, as was I. Luckily, we only had to wait another 15 minutes and then we had the ride of our lives!

The Hospital

Thought I would document the most traumatic event of the year thus far. Lincoln fell and split his skin open, it got infected with strep and we had to spend 2 nights in the hospital. The bills keep coming- up to this point we have paid $7000!! We could've done a lot of things with that money, but I just can't think that way. Lincoln HATED the hospital. It was so hard on us b/c each time a nurse poked him or even take his heart rate he would point to me and cry, like he was saying "why aren't you saving me?!" The hospital didn't believe in letting him sleep for more that 2 hours at a time, which made him even more of a mess. I am so glad that is over. I am cleaning every wound now REALLY well.

We went to Liberty Park today to "watch" Greg play in a tennis tournament. Of course there wasn't much watching of Greg because each child was off in a different direction in this huge park. It was nice getting out of Bountiful and seeing a different crowd of people. Lincoln makes friends by throwing sand and saying OW when a nice little girl pets him--repeatedly. Greg won so he gets to play again tomorrow. Then maybe the next day, which will cut into his softball game.......that boy plays ALOT!

Finally

I have been so impressed with everyone's blogs and I feel like I need to join the crowd. I thought I should spend my free time documenting our lives rather than scrolling through facebook.