California

Cody, Wyatt and Shawn invited us to go to California the last weekend in July. We weren't sure we were going to go and then Brother Cowgur told us he could get us free tickets to Sea World and that tipped our decision over the edge. We spent the first day at Sea World. I think it was the first time we went to an amusement park without a stroller. It felt like we had turned over a new leaf. The 3 oldest kids were also tall enough to ride on the roller coasters and that opened up a whole new world for them as well. We also went and saw several shows. The Cirque de Soleil was my favorite. We got a picture with a few of the cast members after it was over.

The kids absolutely loved just getting to interact with the animals. They got to pet sting rays and baby sharks. I didn't think I was ever going to pull Rook away from them. He LOVED them.

The next day we spent on the beach. What could be more fun than perfect weather and a whole bunch of cousins to play with?

Some days I just look at my life and try and figure out how I got to be so blessed.

2 Front Teeth

These 2 lost the same tooth on the same day. We wanted to make it easy on the tooth fairy.

Trek

We got back from trek this morning. I wish that I could adequately express my feelings. Although I know I won’t be able to. I awoke about 4:30 this morning and the words from Come, Come, Ye Saints were running through my mind. I looked up at the branches of the huge pine tree that I had slept under. There was a slight breeze whistling through the trees. And as my mind thought back on the testimony meeting the night before and the events that had transpired the past 3 days, I just kept hearing the words, “all is well, all is well.” We each have experiences in our lives that change them. This was one of those experiences for me.

We got up there Wednesday morning about 9:30. We were supposed to start trekking at noon. So we had about 2 ½ hours for bishop to put us in families, get our handcart and get it loaded and get prepared to start out. In our family it was Jamie and I as Ma and Pa, Greg and Emily Cowgur as big brother and big sister and our kids were: Alex Westover, Bracken Trudeau, Chase Williams, Allesandro Pena, Nelson Schnepf, Trenton Bollschweiler, Baili Watt, Brooklyn Murphy, and Justine Walker. I never knew that I could love someone who wasn’t my own flesh so immediately.

Before we left, I wasn’t really worried about the physical part of the trek. I have been running several times a week and I felt like I could handle the physical part of it. But I was more worried about how I would interact with the kids. I didn’t want to do or say anything that would detract from their experience. We had only been pushing the handcarts for a few minutes and Justine, who wasn’t in the yoke, walked up to one of the brothers and asked them if she could get them water. That simple act touched me so much and I knew at that moment that they would teach me more than I ever taught them. That first day was just a lot of walking. Me and Jamie were both thinking about Addy’s championship swimmeet that we were going to miss. About 5:15 we were still on the trail and we had pulled over the shade for a little stop and Jamie said he would be back and headed off into the woods. I thought I knew where he was going so I asked him if I could join him and he said yes. So I followed him, and we went into the woods and kneeled in prayer. We prayed for Addy’s success and that she would feel our love for her. We were both in tears by the time the prayer was over. The hardest part about leaving was knowing we would miss that meet. (She won all 3 of her events -3 1^st place medals. She is amazing.)So that was a sacred experience to me. As we kept going, Baili was really starting to struggle. She was lagging behind quite frequently, and complaining that she wasn’t feeling well. I knew the next day we had the women’s pull and Rocky Ridge and I was starting to get worried.

We slept under the stars Thursday night. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. I just had my sleeping bag and nothing else and it wasn’t cold, the night was clear and there were a million stars in the sky.

We were the last company to get going Friday morning and so it was pretty hot as we got started. We had 2 or 3 miles and then the women’s pull. I was kind of surprised when Baili asked me if she could be in the yoke for the women’s pull. It was like she had made up her mind where she needed to be to be successful. In the end, she decided that she wanted to be in the front yoke but she did amazing. As we watched the men leave, it was an interesting feeling. I don’t know how those women did that. I don’t know how they let their men walk away knowing they wouldn’t see them for months and years and that they would be left alone to do that trail by themselves. We knew no matter how hard it was that our boys and men would be just right up the road. The whole trek was kind of that way. You knew you were just reenacting and so in a way it kind of felt a little cheesy and then the spirit would hit you and make you feel things you weren’t expecting.

As we started pushing up the hill, Emily and I were in the built in part of the yoke and the three girls were in the added on yoke in front of us. It was tough. The cart was heavy and the hill was pretty steep. But we soon got to the boys and they ran over and asked us if they could help and at first we said no, and then some of the girls were getting pretty tired and they said they could and started jumping in. Brother Cowgur, had had the tips of his fingers cut off just a couple weeks ago in an accident at work. So he hadn’t done a lot of pushing in the yoke on the handcart just because it was pretty difficult with his one hand. But he came up next to his wife, lifted up the side of the yoke with his arm and let her out and started pushing. It just touched my heart. Jamie got in for me and the men in our family got that cart up the rest of the hill.

After that we stopped and ate lunch and then right after that it was Rocky Ridge. Rocky Ridge was a tough hill. We went down before we went up and then going down was tough enough in its own right. There were rocks everywhere, and you were constantly trying to slow the cart down and keep the wheels off of the big ones. Our family just all worked together and made it awesome. As we got towards the top, another one of the families from our ward was running back down to help us. They helped us up and then Jamie and most of our kids ran down to help more of the families up. Again, it gave me a small glimpse of what those families must have felt like to be struggling and seeing some of their brothers and sisters coming back to help them.

As we got into camp that night, Brother Cowgur was struggling. His fingers were driving him crazy. They took the bandages off of them and it looked like where they had done the skin grafts, they were starting to be infected. So they called the nurse over, who gave him an antibiotic and they decided to go home. Jamie and Bishop gave him a blessing. Our kids were out on their own reading the letters their parents had written them and writing in their journals. As we called them in to tell them the Cowgurs were going home, there was just this sadness that descended over our family. It felt like we were losing members of our family. I didn’t know Greg and Emily very well going into the trek. They seemed kind of like fly by the seat of their pants kind of people and I was a little worried about how we would get along with them. But it amazes me how much I grew to love them in 2 days. I was so sad to see them go. We had a family prayer and there were several of us in tears by the time it was over.

Friday night we had to make our own dinner, and we made stew. I thought the potatoes were done, and they weren’t. So sometime after dinner or the next morning, Chase started teasing me about the hard potatoes. But it made my day. I knew at that time I had gotten somewhere with him, because he felt comfortable enough to tease me. So for the next day and a half I heard very little from him except about my potatoesJ

Saturday morning we only had about a 2 and a half mile walk before me got to Salt Lake but again there were these tender moments from my kids. Bracken had formed blisters on his feet the first day and didn’t tell us. His parents were a ma and pa for a different group and he told them and they got him some moleskin but I felt so bad. Well the blisters were driving him crazy so he walked those 2 ½ miles – most of it pretty rocky – with no shoes. I kept asking him if he needed anything. He wouldn’t let us do anything for him and never once complained. He just kept on going.

Brooklyn had also been feeling pretty crappy for most of the trip. She wasn’t hardly eating anything. She was constipated and it had been a pretty miserable trip for her. We offered to get her a ride that last day and she wouldn’t let us. So I look up at one point and Justine is carrying her on her back. I bet she carried her for at least half a mile.

When we got into “Salt Lake” they had all of these games planned for us. We made pies, and candles, washed hair, learned how to dance, played pioneer games, and shot rifles. One of the things they had us do was reenact the sweetwater crossing when those 3 men from the rescue party hauled 500 people, 100 yards across a river with chunks of ice floating in it. They had made a tub of water and it was freezing!!! I think at the beginning of the day it was mostly ice. They asked 3 boys from each family to get in it and carry the rest of the family across. Allesandro immediately volunteered. He was definitely the youngest in our family and I think maybe even the youngest in the whole ward. I was a little bit nervous about him doing it because I knew whoever we chose would have to carry Jamie across. Justine also immediately asked if they had to be boys. She wanted to do it as well. Justine is strong and I knew she could do it but I also didn’t know if she needed the experience of being carried across. Jamie had run back to help with something so he wasn’t right there and I didn’t want to make the decision by myself. But he came back and decided that it should be Alessandro, Nelson, and Chase. So they got in the water and you could tell it was cold. So they started taking each of us across. It was an interesting experience to think of those 3 boys going back and forth across that river and how much love those pioneers must have felt for them. But my favorite experience came at the end of that experience. After the boys got out, Justine took her apron and dried the feet of those 3 boys so that they didn’t have to put their shoes and socks back on with wet feet. Justine has been taught to think outside herself, to look out for other people and think about what they need. I was so proud of her – so proud of her for not being upset that she wasn’t picked as one of the ones to carry the others across and so proud of her for thinking about someone other than herself.

That afternoon as we were walking down the road in “Salt Lake” Jamie turned me to me and pointed and something and said look. I turned around and looked and there were the Cowgurs walking back into camp. They had come back. They had been to the surgeon and he said it was a little set back but he would be okay. I don’t think I have ever been so excited to see someone. It was like we had regained a part of our family. Again, I know it seems silly but it really did.

Update: Jamie lost his glasses somewhere along the trail, and we weren't sure where. So he went back with a member from our stake to one place where we had stopped and then after looking at my pictures he figured he probably lost them earlier on so he went back with our bishop and looked for them there and never found them. Well when we went to Taylor the next week we passed right by where we had gone on trek and so he said I want to stop one more time and look for them. We had prayed many times that he would find them. One of the kids from our group had prayed one night that he would find them. The member of our stake that was with him prayed they would find them. Anyway, I didn't have much faith we would find them a week later out in the woods. But we drove out to where we stopped for lunch one day which was right after the women's pull which was the last time he was wearing them in the pictures. And within a minute we had found them. Him and bishop had looked in that exact same area. So we felt like that was a tender mercy and an answer to prayers.

Swim Team

Emmy and Addy both did swim team this summer. They both did great. Here are some pictures from their season.

Emmy decided that she didn't want to do the finals, but Addy decided she wanted to. They had to swim in the preliminaries and then they took the top 16 girls back for finals. They could only swim 3 events. Addy chose the 25 freestyle, the 50 freestyle, and the 25 backstroke. After her preliminaries she was seated first place in all 3 of her events. We were so excited for her but also sad because her championships were the first day of trek so we knew that we would have to miss them.

We asked Wacey and Jenny to take her to them.  Jamie and I took a pause from our trekking and went up to the side of a hill away from our group and said a little prayer for her. She swam awesome!! She ended up winning all 3 of her events. I was so proud of her. Addy has a tremendous amount of heart and try. She can do really hard things when she makes up her mind to.