THE GREAT OUTDOORS

the last 5 exciting things we have done outside...

1. TRUCK REPAIRS - okay, not so fun, but has to be done! Ryan has been working like crazy on the truck, especially last week. When he fixes one thing he finds another part that needs something. Everyday after work this last week he's been trying to figure out the next thing. The job he's been doing for work right now requires him to do what's called "zoning" to Horse Mesa Dam (Apache Lake). He drives to a substation near there instead of to the SRP yard where he regularly goes. So he has needed the car and has been dropping me off at my parents house for my work early. I don't mind getting up at 3AM with him, but I hope he gets it running smooth again soon. I feel incredibly blessed that we have a good car that runs and has cold AC, especially since it's summer.

2. VEGGIE HARVESTING!!! - There have been 3 squash and 1 tiny carrot enjoyed from our little garden so far. The carrots aren't quite ripe yet and the cantaloupe and watermelon vines have a lot of flowering going on, and not so much fruit growing. We'll see what happens though. This is a picture of the first summer squash. I was quite excited.

3. BBQ-ing FOR THE YOUTH - This was the first Wednesday of June at the home of some ward members. The youth were busy swimming while Ryan was busy BBQ-ing, as usual.

4. FEEDING the DUCKS!!! - One morning a couple weeks ago Elizabeth, Bethany and Benjamin and I went to Riverview Park with some old chips from my pantry. At first most of the birds that were feasting on the crumbs were pigeons. Yuck! We moved down a little closer to the lake and woke up some sleeping ducks.

They didn't seem to mind once they spotted the food.



The kids also had some fun on the playground before it got too hot.





5. CAMPING!!! - This is what makes living here in the summer bearable. Well, having A.C. and going swimming help too. We went up to a camp ground not too far from Woods Canyon Lake, the day after Ryan's adventure of having a porch collapse under him and getting squished by the roof. It was a much needed get away. Ryan's family has a tradition of going camping there for a few days every summer. All of them came up at some point that weekend. Ryan enjoyed taking a nap in his parents tent trailer. I wish I'd snapped a photo of that. We slept, fished, slept, ate, slept, fished... you get the idea. It was cloudy most of the time and rained really good on Fri. night and some on Sat. morning. When we got home late Sat. night we set up our tent in the living room... after moving almost all of the furniture out of it. We set up some fans and it was dry by morning. Again, I wish I had a picture, but at the time I was tired enough to not care. Here are just a few photos from the weekend! We had tons of fun with the Stewart family!

FALLING OFF OF BUILDINGS

Yeah, it's not really that fun. Just ask Ryan. He knows. I don't have any pictures of it, thank goodness, but Wednesday the 17th is when it happened. My visiting teachers were over, it was about 11am when I got a call from Ryan. He says, "I need your advice on something." I say, "What kind of advice?" Ryan: "Well, my chest and my left shoulder hurt." Me: "What did you do?" Ryan: "I fell off a roof."

Here's the story, but Ryan tells it much better. He was at work by the Horse Mesa Dam replacing the roof on some kind of a big old shed that had a very poorly framed porch. He was out on the porch striping off the old roofing when all of the sudden the porch started sinking while the rest of the building looked like it was rising. It just collapsed, as it seemed to him, in slow motion. He landed on his feet but then immediately fell over, as what was left of the porch's roof fell on top of his upper body. When the roof had first fallen it was vertical, then it flipped over so the bottom was facing up when it landed on him. He tried to push it off, but it was too heavy. His coworkers, who were working on other things nearby but not right next to him at the time, realized his predicament a couple of minutes later and pulled what was left of the roof off.

The damage? He went to a doctor the next day for x-rays and amazingly nothing was broken! The doctor really thought he might have torn something in his left shoulder because it and his ribs were really squished and sore, but nothing was torn or fractured. The doctor was very surprised. His left shoulder and elbow are still bruised, but nothing was broken. It didn't really hit me how seriously he could have been injured until a few days later. He and I both know how blessed he was. We count new blessings everyday each time we think about what happened. He has healed amazingly fast as well. I know the Lord watches over us, and Ryan and I both are truly thankful for that.

in the good ol' summertime...

...you need an umbrella for high school graduation night, a winter jacket if you'll be going up on the Rim, and plenty of sun screen. It must be an Arizona thing... I know it's not official summer yet, but again, this is Arizona.



Here's the run down of what we've been up to in May and so far in June.
First of all congrats to Kevin & Kristi (Ryan's sister) Johnson! Koltyn Jay came into the world on May 18th at a whopping 10lbs 8oz! He is a cutie, and just as big as Sophie who is a whole month older!


Ryan's youngest sibling graduated from Mountain View. She has wonderful artistic talent. Way to go Lara!

As you know, we put an offer on a house in Mesa near Gilbert Road and Adobe which was accepted. Everything looked good, but the house was appraised for $5,000 less than the asking price so the bank we had applied for a loan at wouldn't finance us. Now we've applied at a different bank and everything is going smoothly so far. The deal should close no later then July 15th... we hope!

Elizabeth (my sister) and Jeremy's family went to Disneyland for a week and had a fantastic time there. On May 16th Jeremy graduated with his Master's form ASU's bussiness college, and with all the family activities (2 showers and his graduation) going on it made for a busy day. Jeremy also had a birthday in May. There was also a family baby shower the next weekend. We had a fun Memorial Day too. Ryan helped his dad on thier roof, I went to some cemetaries with my parents, and we had fun at my Aunt's pool party in the evening. There were more of my cousins there than I've seen in ages! It was really good to see them.



I've been working hard getting devotionals and decorations ready for girls camp for the last month. Tempe Stake went to Lo-Mia June 6-10th, and once again I had the privlage of being the 1st Counselor and the Del Rio Ward Camp specialist. The theme was "Be Loyal to the Royal Within" and our ward got to decorate with "Belle" from "Beauty and the Beast" as our "princess". (i think i'm a little quotation mark happy for some reason)
We had 8 girls in the cabin this year and everyone got along much better this year than in previous years I've been to camp. It was kinda chili, but only got into the 40's at night, instead of the 20's like last year. One of the Mia Maids hand drew the poster for our ward this year. It was so beautiful I had to take a picture of it. Camp was a tremendous experience for all of the girls. Especially the Sunday night activity called the "Hold to the Rod Faith Walk". It was amazing! Some stake leaders dressed up as Sariah and led the girls in small groups to several scenes from Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life. They saw a cabin as The Great and Spacious Building with people mocking and pointing their fingers at them, they experienced the mists of darkness as they tied bandannas around their eyes. They experienced temptations to let go of the Rod of Iron, and the encouragement to keep going, as they followed some rope tied to pieces of conduit toward the Chapel in the trees of Orchard Camp. They felt the embrace of our stake president and his wife as they took off thier blindfolds and led them into the Chapel where a lit up Christmas tree held bracelets with charms shaped like crowns, which was the fruit of the tree. I almost cry just thinking about it. I know it's something I'll never forget and I pray none of the girls who experienced it will either.

Ryan just got back today form taking the Scouts fishing at Willow Springs Lake. He only caught one fish and one of the boys caught one as well. He will be going to Geronimo in July again this year. We both love any reason to get up on the Rim, not to mention being able to serve with the youth. Some of them are so amazing! We are excited to camping with the Stewart's soon. Hopefully we will have better luck with the fish next weekend!