Goblin Valley

Last year we ventured out to Goblin Valley State Park.  We drove down with our new RV, in the dark, got a little lost, and then got the gutless RV stuck in the soft dirt off the road as we tried to turn around.  And I mean stuck.

As in, had to call a tow truck to pull us out.

And as we weren't in an area with cell service, this meant that West had to drive away with Mike until they found service to make the call.

All's well that end's well.

We climbed on hoodoos, played night games, and hiked Little Wild Horse slot canyon.

I love Goblin Valley, however, I feel like once you've seen it... you've seen it.  It might be a while before head back, but I seriously loved how much fun we had there.

Once we weren't stuck anymore.

Tayler brought her friend, Casadee, and Cali brought her friend, Lilly.

Casadee

Donut Falls. And Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other.

Cas has been having a hard time lately with some things at her dad's house.

Stress, anxiety, and sadness have been rampant emotions at our house lately, in mass amounts.  On Sunday my ex was trying to get a hold of Casidee, but she had no desire to speak to him.  He called the house several times, texted my phone (with accusatory texts such as, "Are you going to let me talk to my daughter?") and I was beginning to wonder if he had legitimately gone crazy.  I mean, legitimately lost control.

Neither Cas nor I appreciated his behavior.

Brynn, Tay, and Cali were with him, Jay and Sean were with their mom, and West had gone riding with a friend.  Cas and I went to church and then decided to head to Donut Falls for a hike.  Cas just wanted to hike, she didn't care where, and Donut Falls has been on my bucket list for a long time.

Seemed perfect.

And we talked.

And we adventured.

And, along with every other hiker, we ignored the warning signs, because frankly, if I'm taking the time to hike up to Donut Falls, I am most certainly climbing to the "donut" part, which isn't visible from where the sign sits.

And it was absolutely worth it.

Absolutely.

I think we still have a long road ahead of us (no pun intended with the picture, but I'll take it) emotionally.  Cas wakes up most mornings in tears because she doesn't want to go to school, she doesn't want to face life.

And I don't know what to do to help her.

I hug her, and stroke her hair, and encourage her to not give up.  I want her to find her happy again.

Until then, we'll hike.  We'll eat Subway cookies.  We'll pray.  We'll visit the therapist.  And one day we'll look up from our path, after simply putting one foot in front of the other time and time again, and realize it's long past us.

And if life holds true as it already has for big and heavy trials, we'll be better for it, and closer to our Savior.

I Can Do Hard Things - Youth Conference 2014

Youth Conference has a special place in my heart.

I probably love it more than Girl's Camp.

I especially love it more than Girl's Camp when Youth Conference is held in a cabin instead of tents.  A cabin with electricity, running water, real live toilets, showers, comfortable beds, and let's face it, the pool table didn't hurt any.

Except it was missing the 8 ball so there are about 17 games of unfinished pool sitting in the background of our minds.

I picked Cas up from Vernal (which loosely means half way from Vernal, but it's still a 3 hour round trip) the night before and then we threw together some last minute packing.  I had my devotional and activities planned already so I didn't feel like last minute packing was going to be a big deal.

Until the next morning when I suddenly had no time left and needed to pick Makenzie and Casey up and get to the church.  Cas had decided to turn her alarm off and not get up so with 15 minutes to go I was also trying to get her going.

As it was, I decided that as long as we had deodorant and toothbrushes, that was all that mattered.

Turns out that all that was forgotten was the whiteboard I had been asked to bring, but we didn't end up using it anyway, so all was well.

We met bright and early (especially for a summer morning) at the church with some smiling faces and some not so smiling faces and headed to the Mt. Timponogos Temple where we started off with a fireside at the park across the street.

Our leaders and friends who couldn't join us for the entire trip were able to join us for this fireside.

We listened to a touching fireside of a lady who had lost her mother to cancer when she was 11 years old and was left to be raised by an alcoholic father.  An alcoholic father who, two years later, took his own life leaving her sister and herself at the mercy of a neighbor family.  A neighbor family who wasn't completely supportive, but gave them a home and introduced them to the gospel.  It was actually a beautiful story about how she could see the hand of the Lord in her life and how it led her to the gospel.  It also set the tone for our youth conference: I Can Do Hard Things.

We had a muffin and juice breakfast at the park after the fireside, said goodbye to those who were heading home, and loaded up for a long drive to the cabin in Brianhead, with a stop at Cove Fort for good measure.

Things I learned in that car with two girls and four boys:

Max M can make the car sway when he "dances"
Max P doesn't like his hair touched
Colton likes to bug Max P by touching his hair
Casey has a contagious giggle
Casidee will make a car full of boys listen to her boy band music
Angel is just as quiet in the car as she is outside of it

We stopped at Cove Fort where we had lunch.  The boys worked out their feeling of being cooped up in the cars by climbing a few trees, and then we met up with our missionary for the tour.

I had been trying to stir up some interest and get some smiles out of some of the grumpier youth by telling them I had a jar of pickles for my lunch and I was going to be passing out rocks to them at some point.

I proved my first point.

(Casidee posts on Instagram with this picture that she took: "'I have a jar of pickles and I'm passing out rocks." This is going to be the best Youth Conference ever.")

Which made them infinitely curious about my second point.  Especially when I didn't drop it.  "Guys!  This is going to be so awesome, I'm passing out rocks later!"  

I had their attention.

We started the Cove Fort tour with a video about the Ira Hinckley family who built and ran the fort.  From there we were led through a tour by the missionaries who are there.

I think my favorite part of the Cove Fort tour is when you go into the room where they tell you about how the pioneers didn't waste anything.  They had material for mattresses, and when those wore thin, they would cut out the good parts and sew pants.  When the pants wore thin they cut them into strips and wove rugs with them.  The water was first used to do the dishes, then the laundry, then for baths, then it got dumped onto the garden.  Ashes from the fires were used to make soap.  Nothing was wasted, and everything was used and re-used.

Talk about "I can do hard things."

From Cove Fort we finished our drive to Brianhead and found our cabin.

After unloading the cars we let the kids, I mean youth (I was corrected on that.  They are not kids.  They are youth.)  We left the rest of the afternoon to settling in and exploring our new surroundings.

And napping.

After dinner Makenzie did our first devotional where she spoke about doing hard things and used THIS video of an incredible young woman who was born without arms.  Despite this she played on the soccer team, participated in cheer leading, learned to drive the family tractor, and we watched as she did the everyday things that we take for granted, like brushing her teeth, applying makeup, and putting in her contacts.  It was amazing to watch.

And then we had the youth, which we had already assigned into teams for the purpose of activities and "chores," and morning and bedtime "exercises" (prayer and scripture/thought) make their team flags.

With their feet.

Team "Why MCA."  Which started out as team "MCA" for Max, Angel, and Casidee, but then when I saw "MCA" I asked why and thus began a pretty solid team name.

Team "Foox Loose."  To be said in a Swedish accent, because how else are you going to say it?  Go ahead and try it.  It was supposed to be "Foot Loose" but writing with your feet is strangely hard...

Apparently the "Majestic Flamingo" team has some mad skills when it comes to writing and drawing with their feet.  This would be two flamingos in water with greenery and a sunset being reflected in the water.

Nailed it.

The night ended with a rowdy, and I might add very loud, game of Pit.  And a green Skittles war in which I was pulling out the green Skittles from the bulk bag of Skittles and making a pile for myself on the table, but Casey and Michael kept stealing my pile.

So I bent over and licked the pile of Skittles.  They stuck to my tongue and then fell back onto the table.  

Michael reached over and ate them anyway.

After the shock of that wore off we laughed so hard we cried.

Michael is now my favorite.

About 2:00 in the morning we decided to shut it down and go to bed. The next morning we rose with heavy eye lids, made it through breakfast, and trekked out to find our hike. I've never been in the Brianhead area and it was fun to drive through it. I've also never been to Cedar Breaks, where our hike was.

It was so beautiful.  I felt we had the best of both worlds with the mountains and the red rock.

Our triplets for the day.

The view on this hike was amazing.

"Hey, Michael, take our picture."

We stand there a minute.

"How many do you want?  I've taken like twenty already."

"Twenty?! Why didn't you say so?"

And he had.  I had about 20 of those shots.

Michael also became professional photobomber on that hike.  Stepping into the forefront...

or the background of every picture I tried to take.

Wait for it...

There it is.

Every. Single. Time.

We got to check out a 1600 year old tree.

And play with some panoramic shots.

I tried to take a group shot but was told I needed to be in it.

What other option is there when it's your phone and you're not sure that you have a timer on it?

Group selfie.

Luckily some other hikers stepped in and offered to help us out with a group shot.

And then we returned the favor for them.

We had a pretty sweet devotional from Alma 30:44.

 The hike itself became somewhat of a hard thing for us, not so much because it was hard, because it wasn't, but because of the altitude.  The hike was only one mile in, one mile back out with not much of any incline going on as we just hiked around the edge of the redrock bowl to the 1600 year old tree.  But going from 4,000 ft altitude to 10,000 ft altitude kicked our butts when it came to breathing.

And thus it began, whenever anyone would start to complain about anything, someone else would state, "You can do hard things," like it was a jab.  A challenge.  The complaining stopped immediately and attitudes took on the challenges in full force.  For the entire rest of the conference.

And just for the record, being a leader at Youth Conference is exhausting.  Especially when you're up yelling with the youth until 2:00 in the morning.

But we had one more hike after that.

After a short drive to another trail head, and a quick stop to eat an entire pan of rice krispie treats, we ventured out on another mile long hike to Alpine Pond.

Which as it turns out, isn't really as pretty as you would think.

It was more... promising of murk.  You could see the think bottom and we had no doubt it would suck someone in as quickly as they tried to set foot in it.

Michael, of course, impeded my attempt to take a picture of it.

Max took a long stick out to measure the murk at the bottom.

Turns out it would go all the way up to his armpit.

Casey was offered $52 to jump in.

I told him if he did jump in, he was walking back to the cabin because there was no way he was getting back into my car.

Apparently an 8 mile walk covered in murk wasn't worth the $52 because he stayed dry.

Much to his mom's relief.

It was an interesting day for trees.

We saw one that had been hit by lightning and was still standing.

After the hikes we drove back to the cabin and ate a late lunch and then every single one of us crashed for a 2 1/2 hour nap.

Apparently we can do hard things, but it's going to require some beauty sleep.

We woke them up with some Minute to Win it competition, using the teams and posters from the night before and adding a leader team in as well.

Where "You can do hard things," is also equivalent to "I can do embarrassing things under peer pressure."

By this time anticipation for my rocks was running high as I'd still been goading them about it.

I presented a devotional from Pres. Thomas S. Monson's talk called "Meeting Your Goliath." (Here) I like to try and make the scripture stories come alive for the youth so they can really connect with them and we did that with the story of David and Goliath, with the help from Pres. Monson.  I related to them the 5 stones that he suggests we prepare ourselves with to meet our own Goliaths.

And then I passed out bags of stones with the 5 things written on them.

And then, in the name of doing hard things, I created a menu using things that could be hard for them at their age, and the things Pres. Monson suggested doing in our lives to fight through it.  And with that menu we presented a scrambled dinner.  (You can find how to do a scrambled dinner in my post here).

I'm also posting printable PDF versions of the menu, the ordering card (cut it in half), and the menu answer sheet here so if it's something you're looking to do with your youth you can use it.  This was set up to have four courses, ordering four things each course.  

It was a lot of fun to see their faces when their orders came out.  By the fourth course they should have received everything they needed for a spaghetti dinner with brownie sundae dessert, but after all the ordering was done we let them come into the kitchen and fix a real plate.

Because sometimes caramel sauce and spaghetti sauce don't mix well on a plate, nor does ranch and pasta.

After dinner?

Another late night of games.  This time we played Curses, and it went into the early morning hours with loud cheering and laughing.

And this time Michael and I shared the green skittles, pick them out of the giant Costco bags and eating them until we were sick, but in the end, not leaving a single one.

We ate so many our tongues turned green.

The next morning we packed up and ate breakfast, and then sat down for a "testimony" meeting.  We took turns sharing what our favorite part of the conference was and then shared something we had learned along the way.

It touched my heart to listen to them tell us about the conference from their point of view.

We weren't done with them quite yet.  We had one last stop on our list before we headed for home.

 Makenzie grew up in Minersville and her family runs a dairy farm there.  On our way to the dairy farm we passed through the Parawon Gap and decided to stop and look at the petroglyphs on the rocks.

It didn't take long before everyone quickly became more interested in climbing and exploring.  We discovered a small cave, and a small slot canyon in the rocks.

Finally we made it to the dairy to finish of our travels.

Where we got to see two day old calves.

And have year old calves suck on our hands.

Because "I can do hard things" became a challenge for "I can do gross things under peer pressure."

I'm just glad I thought to remove my wedding ring before hand.

I believe we are all better people for the time we got to spend bonding with each other over late night games and antics.  And for the time we got to spend speaking and learning and thinking about scriptures and gospel principles along the way.  We got to see some beautiful things, and do some funny things, and we came out of it hearing the youth saying, "this was the best Youth Conference ever.  It's truly been a changing point in my life."

I believe we all felt that way.

I believe we're better prepared to do hard things in life.  Because we have the gospel.  And we have each other.