"It's too [dang] hot for a penguin to be just walking around here..."

So I almost had a heart attack the other night. Well, that's not true. I almost wet my pants the other night. Why? Because of this little feller:

 A freaking penguin statue.

Let me set the scene: at about 3am I woke up to the sounds of Jack crying, followed immediately by the sounds of Jack, er, tossing his cookies. Poor baby. Poor me. Poor bedding. I got him cleaned up and his room cleaned up and went to take out his trash -- except that through the front window I saw a weird outline of a weird object in the street. 

(this is the part where I almost wet my pants).

 Now, in general I consider myself fairly brave/tough/hardcore/whatever, but this freaked me out pretty good. I braced myself enough to open the door and venture out a couple steps. At this point I was pretty sure it was a penguin, which provided absolutely no comfort. It possibly freaked me out more - I thought it was maybe some sort of (Billy Madison-related??) message.

 I know it doesn't look that creepy in these pictures, but you all have the benefit of light - picture this bad boy peering at you THROUGH THE DARK. Yeah, that sends some shivers, doesn't it??

 So, I woke up Chuck. I'm not proud of this, especially considering the poor guy's alarm was set to ring in about an hour. But you do what you gotta do, and my poor sweet husband looked out the window, walked outside a couple steps, confirmed it was a penguin, reassured me that we were fine, and then rocked a sick baby back to sleep. So he's clearly the best.

 The next morning I staged a self-intervention and made myself go confront the little guy. Spoiler alert: he was just as creepy up close. I decided his middle-of-the-road placement was less than ideal, so I got hands-on and walked him over to the side of the road (he was HEAVY!). There was some more debris a few feet away, so he must have fallen casualty to a middle-of-the-night move. 

Apparently he was worth a return trip, though, since when I looked out a few hours later he was gone. Good riddance buddy! See you in my nightmares! Please never come back!!

(P.S. here's the Billy Madison scene the post title refers to: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlFcCfcOO7I 

Fair warning, it's Adam Sandler, so, you know, proceed with caution :) )

Super Activity trip to the Oregon Coast

Warning: This post is VERY long. Like 39 pictures plus commentary. Obviously I think it's pretty compelling stuff, BUT don't feel like you have to read the whole thing to maintain our friendship :).

Last week Chuck and I were able to go with the youth (kids 12-17) from our ward to the Oregon Coast, and we had such a great time. I still can't believe how smoothly everything went, especially considering how last-minute a lot of it came together.

Everyone met at the church EARLY on Wednesday morning to start the trip: thirteen youth, ten adults, three small-ish children. We split into the four vehicles and started the [gorgeous, but sooo long] drive to Newport, Oregon. Chuck and I ended up with five super awesome girls in our car: Naomi (the only girl we knew prior to this trip), Kiki, Erin, Abbey, and RayLynn. Words probably can't describe how much I love them all now.

I obviously started out the drive up next to Chuck, but a slightly [very] carsick girlie in our vehicle meant a bit of rearrangement, and I moved to the back row. It was, granted, not the most comfortable spot ever, but it worked :). My favorite thing was how much 'carry-on' luggage the girls brought with them that we had to try not to step on every time we got in and out of the van!

 

We stopped for a tourist/lunch break at Multnomah Falls: here's a group picture of all the Young Men and Young Women who were able to come on the trip: Will, Jarrin, Lee, Naomi, Kiki, Erin, Olivia, RayLynn, Miranda, Abbey, Stefanie, Celeste, and Jared. The whole adventure was planned primarily by Stefanie - she researched where to stay and what to do and her hard work really paid off. She's a superstar!

Multnomah Falls! Sooo pretty. I would have been content to admire it from this perspective, but Chuck insisted we wander up that bridge really really high up there.

So we did. I don't know who took this shot looking down off the bridge (I certainly didn't) but it makes me want to throw up a little just looking at it. I might have an issue with heights.

Abbey was a tad nervous as well, so we held hands and went out on the bridge together... and after squinted-ly checking out the view, I hied myself quickly back to the stability of the trail. Also, the cheeriness of the warning on the 'Stay on the Trail' sign made me laugh.

 

Oh, I did stay out on the bridge long enough for a photo op with my cute husband, along with the Jenks and the Fleshmans.

And then we found a cute picnic area to devour our delicious lunch (BBQ chicken and watermelon and carrots) and our even more delicious dessert (rice krispie treats and chocolate chip cookies sent along with us from the Swallows).

After lunch, we semi-begrudgingly piled back into the cars. Holy moly, that drive is long. How did we keep ourselves entertained for fourteen-ish hours (with stops...so many stops, haha) in a minivan??

Glad you asked: Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, walkie talkies, a trip journal, snacks, taking lots and lots of pictures, and lots of napping.

The walkie talkies proved invaluable; each car had one and it was so convenient to just radio in when we needed to take a 'fresh air' break (aka Erin was sick) or double check directions or just chat with everyone when we were bored. We established code names for each vehicle prior to leaving Nampa: we were 'Uplander' (aka the model of our minivan, unoriginal, I know). Bishop's minivan was 'Oscar the Grouch's Trash Can' or 'Trash Can' for short. This led to lots of hilarity as they radioed in for bathroom breaks, ie "Trash Can needs to be emptied". The Jenks' minivan started out as 'Silver Bullet' but halfway through the week they had an identity crisis and switched to 'the Governor', complete with British accent. The Nelsons' truck (towing the Scout trailer) was 'Eagle Eye' since they took the lead at the start of the trip. We had so much cheesy fun chiming in on the walkie talkies and using the code names!

The Tennis Shoes audiobooks are a road trip tradition for Super Activity; we listened to the Sacred Quest on the drive out and the Gadiantons and the Silver Sword on the drive home. The girls LOVED them. We turned them off whenever we needed to use the walkie talkies and as soon as the conversation finished, the girls would all pipe up, "Can we turn the story back on now??" And the trip journal was tons of fun; I passed it around as we drove and during the week and the girls jotted down what activities we were doing and their thoughts. I promised to make them each a copy :).

At long last we pulled into our campground, hooray! Camp was set-up super quick; the kids all did awesome and jumped in to get it done. We had hamburgers for dinner and then everyone headed over to the beach to watch the sunset... except Chuck (who volunteered to clean up from dinner) and myself, who opted for a quick pre-bedtime nap since I hadn't slept in the car at all. When everyone came back we met around the campfire for a devotional (that night was my turn) and then bedtime!

Thursday morning we hopped back in the van for the short drive to the Lighthouse; I LOVE this picture of our 'Uplander Girls'.

We spent some time in the visitor's center and learned a lot of the history about the Yaquina Head Lighthouse and information about the sea life in the area...

which came in very handy since our next stop was Quarry Cove, just down the road:

This was one of my favorite parts of the trip. We spent a couple of hours just wandering along the beach area, letting the kids explore and wade in the water.

On the other side of the path there was a neat area that we climbed down into and found sooo many cool creatures: crabs, fish, starfish! (All sealife was safely returned to their water-y homes post-photo op). It was sooo neat to just wander around and see the kids having such a blast.

 After climbing back up to the cars, we headed back to camp (with a funny group pit stop to Walmart. Guess we're not very hardcore campers, haha). We ate lunch and then some of us went over to the beach:

It was sooo pretty! And soooo windy!!

Prior to hearing Bishop's warnings about the cold, cold temperatures of the water and how quickly hypothermia sets in, I had promised a bunch of the kids that I would go all the way in to the ocean. How do I get myself into these things??

Chuck and I ran in together, although he went much further. I pretty much stopped ASAP and let a wave crash me down so I could get the heck out of there faster. I don't think I can properly describe how bone-chillingly cold it was. Also VERY very salty. Like in my nose.

So what's the appropriate follow-up to such an experience? Doing it again, apparently:

Yeah, we ran back in... not really sure why. I think I figured it couldn't be any colder the second time (I was wrong) and I wanted to make sure I got credit (aka more photo ops as proof) and I don't see myself at the ocean again any time soon, soooo, might as well, right?

Chuck and Bishop, courtesy of whichever cute girlie had my camera at that point. These two guys did so much to make this trip possible and fun. Chuck was a superstar with the food prep; everyone for sure took turns and helped but Chuck was a pretty constant presence. And Bishop is just such a great guy. His emphasis for this trip was just facilitating fun experiences and spiritual experiences for the youth - as leaders we said 'Yes' as much as possible. The result was so fantastic; everyone had such a great time. The kids didn't feel hurried or rushed or overscheduled (even though we fit in a ton during our time there) and we had plenty of downtime to just hang out and talk with the youth. And the devotionals presented by the leaders (one each morning, one each evening) were all so relevant and effective at inviting the Spirit.

 After the beach we all headed over to a science learning center that was really neat. We didn't have a lot of time before it closed for the day, but the kids managed to see a lot of the exhibits:

I handed off my camera to the girlies again, and they came back with all sorts of awesome pictures!!

We decided the yellow submarine was a good spot for some official pictures: the top is all 13 youth and the bottom two are all of the adults (plus Keylee).

And here are some unofficial shots too :). I love the bottom middle shot of Sister Fleshman and Sara and Keylee.

Then we headed back to camp. We had some time before dinner so the guys played a weird rock-throwing game called Perg; I guess it's a Scout camp-out fave.

Here's what we learned: Will doesn't understand the concept of 'lobbing', if a rock might be coming your direction you should just be smart and move, Tasha has an amazingly quick guardian angel, and also that Sister Jensen is an amazing seamstress and can nicely repair the hole in the pack-and-play that her son may have caused via his thrown rock :).

And the main takeaway should be that Chuck won the game: good job babe!!

After our spaghetti dinner it was time for s'mores and devotional and bed, yay!

Friday was Sister Jensen's birthday, and her sweet Will came prepared:

We stayed up the night before to decorate her chair and the trees around their tent with crepe paper. We also sneakily had everyone make her birthday cards and we gave those to her first thing that morning.

Oh, one of the fun amusements around camp was a little nerf rocket that Sister Jensen found; the boys had loads of fun flinging it around and mostly getting it stuck in trees. Then they used firewood to try to knock down the rocket and it got stuck, haha.

Our first activity on Friday was heading back to the Lighthouse for a tour of the inside:

Poor Kiki got sick as we were in line, so she and I headed back to the van for some Pepto (for her) and naps (for both of us).

 I sent the camera with the other girls, so they again came back with awesome pictures and stories.

And once we saw the crazy stairs they had to climb, Kiki and I didn't feel so bad about not making the trek up:

Intense right??

 

Most of the group traipsed down to the rocky beach beneath the lighthouse and got to see some seals and birds that looked alarmingly like penguins, but weren't.

 Friday afternoon was devoted to window-shopping/actual shopping in two neighboring towns.

Bishop was lucky enough to have a sleeping granddaughter and phone calls to catch up on, so he was excused from the first excursion. Shopping is not his favorite thing, but the rest of us had fun!!

The stores had a good mix of cute stuff and oddball stuff. Ryan found a cool seashell ring, so I told him to go 're-propose' to Tasha (they just celebrated their 10th anniversary). She was a little confused, but said yes, so that's good!

My favorite sign is the "I laughed so hard ~ Tears ran down my leg" one!

Okay, funny story: Paulina sweetly told me about some cool orange sunglasses she saw for $5, but she couldn't remember what store they were in. It was just about time to meet up, so we told Bishop we'd be riiiight back and started randomly running in and out of stores, haha.

And then we found them! I decided not to buy them, but we had to have a quick picture to commemorate the epic search. And Erin and Kiki had to try some sunglasses on too :).

More downtime around the campfire... and the young men (supervised by Brother Jenks) shaking a tree to get the rocket down... and me giving our hot dog dinner a hearty thumbs up!

Oh man, speaking of dinner, I have to include this picture:

This was our special salad mix that served as lettuce for our hamburgers on Wednesday and then switched to be regular salad as a side to our hot dogs on Friday. Tasha and I gave Bishop such a hard time about it... pretty sure everything is funnier when you're camping, haha.

Our dessert on Friday night was extra special for Sister Jensen's birthday :). Under Chuck's supervision, we made dutch oven cobblers (and I do mean 'we'; I think there were like eight people helping at one point).

And then we lit some candles and sang Happy Birthday! I think Sister Jensen had a really nice day, which makes me happy because she's one of my favorite people and she's had a rough go of it the last few months and she deserved a really wonderful birthday.

The next day we woke up and somehow it was already Saturday and time to head home! Crazy. So we packed up camp and ate some doughnuts and hit the road:

The drive was still loooong, but we had fun. Erin felt better the last half, so I got to sneak back to the front seat. We listened to our book and were excited to drive by the Portland Temple and ate sandwiches out of the Scout trailer in a Rite Aid parking lot in the middle of Oregon, so it was a pretty sweet drive all-around.

Chuck and I had such a great few days with everyone on the trip, and especially with our sweet Uplander girls:

Abbey, RayLynn, Kiki, Erin, and Naomi. 

In fact, the only thing that made me feel better about saying good-bye to them that evening when we rolled in to Nampa was the fact that it meant I could go home and say HELLO to these darling boys:

My babies!!! (Eating the lollipops we brought home for them). Ohh, I missed them. I'm so, so grateful for Grandma Pam and the amazing care she took of my sweet little boys (with help from Uncle Cody!). My boys are kind of high maintenance as far as medicine and such, and it was so nice knowing that my mom had all of that under control so I could focus on the youth and the trip. Thanks again Mama!!

And that was Super Activity! Good times!

Summatime sports

In an effort to balance out the copious amounts of screen time our boys would undoubtedly be enjoying this summer, we decided to sign them up for some fun in the sun activities as well: t-ball and swimming lessons.

T-ball was pretty sweet. The boys were in the same age bracket so we stuck them on a team with some friends from church, which made sitting on the sidelines loads more entertaining. And Coach Robbie and Coach Brad did an awesome job!!

Clyde proved to be a pretty good little player, especially since he was one of the oldest kids. Will had lots of fun and was a solid hitter, but his coaches were hard-pressed to find a position in the outfield that could hold his attention :). I like the picture in the top left where he's straight-up turned the other direction, haha.

 As was the case with soccer, Chuck and I managed to not attend a single game together - either I was at Relief Society (twice) or Chuck was at work (twice) or at Scout camp (once) or the boys were sick and we all stayed home (once) or we were off chaperoning a youth trip and Grandma Pam took them (once). Jack was a loyal supporter though!

Despite the warm, warm temperatures, the boys had loads of fun; I think we'll do it again next year, although Clyde will be in the baseball division then. I'm really glad we made it in this year to have them play together - the picture of them sitting rightnext to each other on the bench just melts my heart. 

 And then of course the older boys also did swimming lessons. Poor Jack was relegated to the side (and occasionally the entry area) since there wasn't a 'mommy and me' class that lined up with the level 2 class openings and I declined the opportunity to spend any more time there each day. We'll catch him up next year (poor third child!).

 The boys did splendidly in their class; they did two rounds of level two. Clyde passed it after the first two-week class, but luckily they had the same teacher for the next two weeks so she made adjustments then and pushed him to work on level three skills.

 Hooray for fun (aka water slide) day! 

And now we still have some time before school starts to have more classic summer days where we have NO where to go (besides the store, and who really needs milk and bread?) and stay in pajamas (aka yesterday's clothes) until well into the afternoon and, you know, enjoy copious amounts of screen time while it's like twelve hundred degrees outside. 

(Although it turns out we really do need milk and bread, so I'm off for a midnight Walmart run right now...)

Hey, we camped!

I am not an overly enthusiastic camper. I can camp and I have camped and I do camp and I will camp, but I love my bed/indoor plumbing/internet too much to want to camp on a regular basis. That being said, when a group of friends put together a quick camping trip the Monday and Tuesday before the 4th of July, we were psyched to accept the invite to join them. 

(Until I saw the forecast of record high temperatures those days. Then I crossed my fingers someone would see the light and cancel the whole thing. Spoiler alert - no one did. Luckily it was a few degrees cooler up in the mountains!!)

We had a happy little stream next to us, with awesome logs made just for adventuring across and back. Will (via his shirt collar) was mostly accompanied by Chuck, whereas Clyde stayed close to Cameron and Andrew.

 I channeled my inner gymnast and - holding Jack! - balance beam-ed my way to a fun spot for the wee fellow to do some fishing.

 Altogether there were fourteen kids 10 and under, and they did a great job keeping themselves/each other entertained! This was some sort of group hike, complete with walking sticks :).

Andrew, Clyde, Lily, Will, Hallie.

 OH: I rode a four-wheeler for the first time! Shelly is one of those amazing people that I absolutely trust with my life, and this was my chance to prove that :). She took me out for a spin and encouraged me to try driving it back...

 so I did! Pretty sure we topped out at about 18 mph; I'm pretty hardcore.

 The boys LOVED the four wheelers, or 'jeeps' as Will referred to them. Luckily Dan, Shelly, and Troy were all superstars and made sure everyone got lots of rides:

 And the kids were also happy to just sit and pretend when there wasn't an adult driver readily available for an actual ride, haha.

 Jack and Brehner were crazy, as could be expected. For a while I thought sticking them up in the bed of the truck was a good solution; they happily marched around and were contained...

but then their mischievous sides came out (as if they were ever hidden), manifested in pirate faces and leaning over the side of the truck in an effort to give me a heart attack and an 'accidental' middle finger slip from my eighteen-month-old. Obviously going to have to watch that child...

 I watch this child because he likewise makes me laugh sooo hard:

  If you're going to balance a rock on your head, Will found a pretty great rock to use!

 We were in charge of dessert, so naturally I stayed out of the way and Chuck made two delicious fruit cobbler/cake dutch oven concoctions.

 And thanks to the magic of dry ice (if it's not really magic, please don't tell me) we had vanilla ice cream with it, mmmmm.

We headed to a sweet beach-y area alongside the lake to do some swimming before we headed home on Tuesday:

It was excellent, Shelly and I commandeered the light sabers (aka pool noodles) and ventured out while Chuck and Dan kept watch on the beach and the seven (!) little boys stayed somewhere in between.

Minus poor Clyde's ridiculous amount of mosquito bites (despite our vigilance with the bug spray) we had loads of fun. Annual event, anyone?