Manti

In June, the youth group in our ward took a trip to Manti.  We got to visit the beautiful temple, provide a service project, and then watch the famous pageant.  

The weather was gorgeous and we were with a super fun group of youth and leaders. After the temple, we met up at the park for some snacks and then some weed pulling.  The cute old couple was so grateful and I know Millie and the other kids felt so good knowing they were part of that.

Then we ate dinner, the "famous Manti BBQ turkey dinner." I must say it was delicious!

Then BS and the kiddos met up with us.  He drove them down in our car because we were going to go straight to Lake Powell from Manti (post on that trip later). 

I was already feeling so blessed to be in an awesome ward with awesome people, going to the temple, and then I felt even happier when I saw my cute family coming to join us.  Here we are waiting for the pageant to start:

 I'm a little ashamed to say that I have never been to the Manti pageant before (well, my Mom says I went when I was little but I don't remember it at all). We really don't live that far away.  

But BS and I decided that the kids were perfect ages for the pageant.  Old enough to sit still and understand it, but not so old that they think it is boring ;)

We all really enjoyed it!

When the pageant ended, we said our goodbyes and the 6 Clarks were off to Lake Powell round 2!  We drove to Green River and stopped at a budget motel for a few hours of sleep.

*So glad we did this!!!*

Date Night

BS and I had a date with this lovely young lady last weekend.  We went to the Draper Temple for baptisms and then to dinner at Pei Wei.  We really relishd our alone time with her. It was fabulous.  

Camp!

I still can't believe my Millie is twelve.
In June she went to her very first YW {Young Womens} Camp.  This year it was at Mutual Dell up in beautiful American Fork Canyon.  Every four years the whole Stake goes together and this was one of those years.  The group of YW in our ward is small so we were glad that there would be a lot of girls at camp.  I was so excited for her to have her first camp experience because I have great memories of camp when I was her age.  But I was a little nervous about sending her away for 4 days.  It was the beginning of June and the weather was really cold at night.  There is zero cell service up there but luckily it is only 25 minutes away and some of her leaders are my good friends so I knew they would take good care of her.

I was stoked when the Camp Leaders asked me if I would spend a day at camp doing crafts with the girls.  Of course I said yes, mostly because I knew I would be anxious to see Millie after she had been gone for a couple of days.  After browsing Pinterest she and I came up with some crafts that would be fun, cute, easy, and cheap.  That can be hard to find!

The girls left early on a Tuesday and I went up on Friday {they camped until Saturday}.  BS had volunteered to be the Priesthood leader for Friday so we got to go together and spend the day at camp.  I was eager to see how Millie was doing because she doesn't have a good track record when it comes to sleeping at other places without her Mom.  She is quite a home body late at night.  But when I entered their campsite this is what I saw:

Tatum {silly}, Mills, & Morann waiting to Zip Line

Wouldn't be camp without braiding and hair wraps

Team building activity. She's the smallest :)

 It was great to see her and the other girls having so much fun together!  Smelling smoky with braided hair, dirty hands and feet, dirty clothes, and happy faces.  I quickly knew that indeed my little girl is growing up.  She could handle this.  She had a great experience and came home with a stronger testimony.  Gotta love girl's camp!  I am so grateful for her awesome YW and Camp leaders!  They did a fantastic job!  And she said the food was delicious :)

Reina - Camp Leader.  We didn't plan the shirts {from Goldilocks Bike Event}

For the crafts we made Sharpie Tie-Dye shirts and jar lanterns.  Their theme was "Arise and Shine Forth" so the lanterns were perfect.  They both turned out really cute.