Silver Beaver

Proud of Warren Henrie for being awarded the Silver Beaver by the Utah National Parks Council. Warren, Tyler Henrie, and Graigry Henrie all started off the day by training new scout masters at Maple Dell scout camp. They barely made it back for the ceremony. In the program for the Silver Beaver ceremony they list all of the past recipients of the award. Tyler and Graig found their Great-Grandpa Linford Maxfield's name. He was awarded the Silver Beaver in 1948. 

Well deserved!

President Mark Johnson. Warren. Jared Hall. Merrick Fonnesbeck. Of the Porter Rockwell Scouting District.

 I was Warren's escort and got to walk across the stage with him.

We celebrated with dinner at Tepanyaki restaurant. Melanie was our hostess for the night.

Tyler got a ride home for the weekend so he could support his dad.

Comic Con

The costume was a lot of work but it was epic.

Melanie and Brina got to pal around together all day. They had a long list of things they were supposed to do while at Comic Con for their school class.

AF Homecoming, Melanie earns her YW in Excellence Medallion, Comic Con Costume, Costco

Melanie attended AF HS homecoming dance this past weekend. She went with Robert, one of the bus boys at work. Here is the date as reported to me: Hike to BattleCreek Falls, lunch at Subway, hurry and get dolled up, very well thought out, nicely decorated and delicious dinner at one of the boy's houses, pictures, Japanese sodas at Pop and Sweets, dance, teaching her date to swing dance, ending the dance on the last song with a perfectly timed spin into a dip, visiting cats, smores, kiss on the cheek.

Melanie was given her medallion for earning her YW in Excellence award in church on Sunday.

When Melanie gets an idea in her head, she generally makes it happen. In this case she decided to make body armor out of foam floor mats. She has spent hours but it is really coming together. She plans to wear the armor to Comic Con this next weekend. I'm sure it will be epic.

I love it when I can get the girls to go with me to Costco. It is great to have their help. They entertained themselves by dancing with the shopping cart.

doTERRA Convention/Days for Girls

I got the opportunity to work at the doTERRA convention this past week. doTERRA has a big humanitarian push and decided to highlight Days for Girls this convention. I helped run a workroom where the conference attendees could come and spend an hour or two helping to make the components of the kits. 

 On Friday night, we broke an official Guinness World record by assembling the most hygiene kits in one hour. In the picture below, we just got finished bagging and hanging up about 1000 of the kits over 5000 kits into a really cool looking display.

Blanding Vacation Day 4

I thought it would be fun to attend church in Bluff and the 10am start time seemed to work well with what we wanted to do that day. Turns out they start at 10 because it is a branch and they only have 2 hours of church. We were the youngest ones in the room. It was a Bluff Fort Missionary Reunion. There were some great testimonies born. I talked about how  I was thinking about how we can tell ourselves our trials are "hard" and wallow about or we can just plow through them and find a way. (Which is what the Bluff Pioneers did.) The missionaries treated us so kindly. They all wanted to know who we were related to of the Bluff pioneers. They even invited us to their mission reunion pot luck. 

From Melanie: "We went to church at Bluff Fort where I was recruited to write on the chalkboard. I got a bunch of compliments on my handwriting. Here is where being well fed comes back to the surface. I just went to the best potluck lunch I ever could have imagined. You know how grandma's tend to be incredible cooks? This was a potluck of all grandma dishes. The food was amazing, the salads were incredible, the chip dip delectable, and the pie? All delicious slices of heaven."

A new feature at the fort is a water wheel and raised "stream" where you can pan for gold. It was nice to play around in the cool water on a hot day. The fort is more and more developed each time we visit. The missionaries and board have done a nice job. Melanie misses the lizards that used to run around in the dirt at the Fort.

We took the long way back to the cabin and stopped at Goosenecks State Park

We were driving through very beautiful country. 

I was driving on this part of the journey. It was a little nerve racking.

Our last stop was Salvation Knoll. This is the hill my Great-Grandfather climbed that helped him get his bearings and find his way to the settlement after being lost. His testimony is that it was Divine intervention that saved his life.

Tyler on top of Salvation Knoll

Graigry, Tyler, and Melanie on top of Salvation Knoll

The kids asked that we get back to the cabin so that they could have dinner, relax and play games.

 Graigry choose to sleep out under the stars.

Melanie slept in one of the queen rooms the first night but liked the futon in the loft better.

Blanding Vacation Day 3

We drove for an hour out into the desert to see Hovenweep National Monument. I was wondering if it was going to be worth the drive. I'm not in a hurry to go back but it was a pretty cool place to visit.

There were lizards to catch.

Cool ruins to see.

There is a circular loop around the top of the canyon. The map shows that there is a trail that leads down and back up the canyon but it was hard to see until you were right on top of it.

Our plan was to spend time at the Bluff Fort on Sunday but we knew the Gift Shop would be closed on Sunday and so we stopped by on our way back to the cabin from Hovenweep.

We got back to the cabin just as Jessica, Clayton, Jennifer and Josh were arriving and so we all went to the reservoir.

 Melanie taught Fiona to paddle and the two of them went off to explore a small island. They claimed it as their own and named in Fionanie. Melanie mapped it out and they brought back some samples of the rocks and plants.

There were three Kayaks and 12 people so some of our group did some swimming.

Taking pictures as the sun was setting.

We went back to the cabin, had a bbq, and watched LaLa land.

It was a great day!

From Melanie: "We went to Hovenweep national monument in the morning and did a hike throughout a whole bunch of ancient ruins. It would have been a cool setting for a movie. We caught some lizards and I tamed them enough that they would just sit on my shirt. In the afternoon everyone made it to the lake to kayak. Fiona and I immediately headed out on our own to explore an island I had seen on my way in. We worked our way over to the island and I taught Fiona to paddle on the way since it was her first time kayaking. Getting to the island took a while but we quickly found a good place to land. On the island there were these amazingly brightly colored green rocks and an entire beach of green sand. I found deer hoofprints but no other signs of wildlife living on the island. Fiona and I ended up going back to the kayak and paddling all the way around the island due to the stony soil hurting her feet. We collected flowers from all over the island and I took a green rock before we headed back. The island was dubbed "Fionanie" with some help from my brother Tyler. I drew a map of the island with some references after we got back. The sunset over the lake was incredible so Fiona and I had a photoshoot. Tyler tried to photobomb one but we ended up looking like swimsuit models. After we all bundled home all of us squished into the basement to watch Lala Land."