Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House

I just got back from attending the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. To find out more about this temple click HERE. We had such a nice time. As I have said in the past we have a HUGE young women's group. There were around 32 girls from our ward and several leaders. Many of these young women have seen inside of temples, but only in the baptistry. This was a neat opportunity for them to see the other rooms of the temple.

We started in a large tent where we watched a short video about this temple, and then we were able to walk through as a group.

Here's a group picture in front of the temple when we were finished. There is such a beautiful view of the valley from this point. We learned that West Jordan is the only city in the world with two temples, and there are 4 temples in the Salt Lake valley. We are so lucky to be so close to them.

Afterward we went to Rumbi Island Grill, they opened up the whole patio for us and brought out some party platters full of food. We really had a nice evening.

July 24th Celebration

For the past few years when the 24th of July rolls around, I have felt kind of guilty. In the past we have always celebrated Pioneer Day, we lived right in Salt Lake City, and always went to the celebrations put on by the city. And many of the small towns here in Utah have their own celebrations. When we lived in Tooele, my kids would dress up like pioneers and walk in a parade, and then hang out at the city park for a few hours. But once we moved to Grantsville, all that changed. Grantsville didn't have anything planned. I would get up and watch the parade on TV, and we'd all lounge around the house, and call it a holiday. This year was different. Steve and the Stake President of the Grantsville West stake got together and decided to have a combined stake pioneer day celebration. Apparently this was done previously, but before we moved to Grantsville. You can see an article that was in the Tooele Transcript by clicking HERE What an amazing day!!

We started with a 5K run in the morning. There was not a lot of advertising for this, it was just mentioned in the wards, but we had about 90 people show up for that, including Steve and Kaylea. I was dying to run, but had to take a break due to some very minor surgery I had a few days before.Kaylea was actually the first woman accross the finish line...she's a great runner.Steve was not the first man accross, but he did finish in style!! He told one young man that anyone who beats him in the race would have to speak in Stake Conference. The young man said he'd start writing his talk!At around lunch time we had my sister, Erin and her kids, and my brother, Lee and his family come over for a barbecue and games. We had such a great time! I turned the camera over to Jessica to take some pictures, she took over 60! Here are a few to show some of the fun things we did. We played "Topple" a couple of times. Emi was the winner of this game.

Jessica and Peter

Lee and Steve, talking "Stake President" stuff. Lee ended up taking the older boys out past Dugway to hunt for geodes. Conner went with them, he had a blast! Thanks for the adventure Lee, Conner felt like it was a fun treasure hunt.

Conner, Steve, and their cousins Andrew, Corban, and Dallin enjoying the Xbox a little too much.

The kids all ate their food outside, here is Kaylea with her cousins Quincy, Parlee, and Gabby.

I have about 40 pictures of craziness like this!! They had a blast posing for weird pictures. In this picture are Emi, Kaylea, Gabby, Parlee, and Jessica.

I caught the three younger kids having a blast jumping down the stairs, if you look closely, you'll see pillows at the bottom of the stairs. In this picture are Corban, Peter, and Parlee. Quincy was there too, but wouldn't hold still long enough for a picture.

We also played scrabble a different way. Actually it was really quick and really fun. I prefer this way to the real way of playing. Tricia, Erin, Lee (with chocolate in his teeth), McKenna, and Jessica. I'm driving my kids crazy, because all day Sunday I wanted to play scrabble, it was a lot of fun.

After our little barbecue, it was time to go back to the festivities in town. There was a primary children's pioneer trek, my kids were too old, but it was fun to see my nieces and nephews dressed up as pioneers, and walk to "Salt Lake City". Steve's parents came to enjoy the evening with us. I was running low on batteries, so I don't have a lot of pictures, but there was a lot of fun things going on all around.

We picked up Berniece, a sweet woman in the stake, and she spent the evening with us as well. We all sat under a tree and enjoyed watching the primary children's parade. Then there were booths set up all over around the church. There were activities for the children like washing clothes on a wash board and hanging them to dry, decorating a pioneer hat and apron to wear, making a rag doll, making your own ice cream, there was a chicken launch where they would stretch a bike tube back like a sling shot and launch a rubber chicken, and on the other side someone would be wearing pants with a huge hula hoop for the waist. They'd have to try and catch the rubber chicken in their pants. And there was an obstacle course. There may have been more things, but I didn't have a chance to see them all.

A free dinner was served to everyone. Steve said there were over 1,800 meals served, we were really surprised with how many people came out. I was able to get one picture of them serving dinner before my camera died altogether. But there were people EVERYWHERE.

After the carnival and meal, they put on a pageant. It was very well done. They had the pageant two nights in a row so that everyone would be able to see it. We didn't get home until around 11:00pm. All in all, it was a very fun day. I enjoyed the 24th more than I have in 10 years!

3 Bears Skit

This is a short clip of the skit at our family reunion.

Family Reunion 2009

We had our annual Collings family reunion last weekend, we ended up renting a cabin is Ashton, ID which is close to Island Park, and right on the river. We had such a nice time. The boys could go fishing right in the back yard, we took inner tubes and floated down the river, there was a fire pit where we cooked marshmellows and made smores. There was enough room for everyone and we all really had a great time. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I did get out the camera for our family talent show.

This is Darling Kenadee in a Goldilocks wig. She's gorgeous!!

My niece Grace sang to us. She's growing up so fast, it's cute to see her with her ipod, just singing along. She's a doll.

Then we watched some of the older family members perform a skit. Goldilocks and the three bears. John was papa bear, Kenney was mama bear, and Adam was baby bear. Caitlyn was Goldilocks. Their arms were played by Molly, Kelton, Steve, and Cameron.

Uncle Kenney with lipstick all over his face, thanks to Steve.

Goldilocks trying to enjoy porridge. I think Molly missed a bit.

I think Adam and Cameron were the stars of the show. It looks so funny when baby bear and mama bear both need to shave.

Connerberry Shortcake!

On the way home we stopped at Uncle Kenney's house to see our new puppy. Here are all three puppies... aren't they sweet???


Kaylea is holding our puppy... Maizey! She's a Yorkie! Isn't she sweet??? We'll be bringing her home sometime in September.

School Fire

Conner came running into the house yesterday to tell me that the school was on fire. He said he saw it on the news at the neighbor's house. I put my work aside and decided to take a drive down the road to see. I thought he said it was Willow Elementary, which is right down the street from us. It's only about 5 years old, which I thought was really sad, but it turned out to be Grantsville Elementary school. This school is accross town, it houses all students in Grantsville from 3rd through 6th grades. Conner will be in 7th grade next year, it was kind of funny because he was wishing he had one more year in elementary school so he could see what they do to fix it up. As you can tell from the picture, Conner's not too upset. We drove by today to check out the damage. The whole road was closed off yesterday with fire trucks and emergency vehicles everywhere. The damage was in the front office and the faculty room (also in the front of the school). They say that none of the classrooms were damaged, except for smoke damage. They are expecting to open it for the school year on August 24th, and say that they will be able to have it all taken care of before then.

Some sections of this school were built in the 1930's, they just continued to add on to it as needed, so it's a pretty old school. It's not often that we make the news here in Grantsville. It was pretty exciting.

4th Year Hike for Girls Camp

I got home from Nauvoo late Wednesday night. Thursday I unpacked, and then re-packed for an overnight hike with 20 young women and 4 other leaders. The overnight hike was Friday to Saturday. We really had a lot of fun. We hiked up to a meadow just below the cliffs of Deseret Peak, it was such a beautiful day, and such a fun hike.

Final Day in Nauvoo

My parents moved to Nauvoo in 2001. I can't even count the number of times since then we have come to visit. My kids have stayed with their cousins here several different times for a month here or there during the summer. But with all the time I have spent here in Nauvoo, Steve and I have never attended the Nauvoo Pageant. We decided to change that this year. Day one of the pageant was our last day here, so we decided we'd better go see it as a family.

As you can tell by the pictures, it was raining pretty hard when we arrived. The pageant was supposed to start at 8:30. We got there at 8:15 and got pretty wet. They waited until 9:00 to start.

Steve, Conner, Steve Jr., James (a friend from London, England)

Kaylea and Lacey (her cousin)

Conner: in the two previous pictures of him, Conner's eyes were closed. He tried harder this time. Ain't he cute??

As the program was starting this huge storm front came through, and the rain started pouring again. A lot of people left during the pageant, but because we only had one day to watch it, we stayed. After about 10 to 15 minutes, it stopped again, and cleared up for the rest of the evening. It was worth it!

It showed the pioneers building the temple, and then at the end, this temple was taken down, and you could see the new temple lit up in the back ground. It gave me goosebumps.

Definitely worth staying an extra day in Nauvoo, even with the rain.

Indiana

Today I spent the day with Steve. He had a lot of work here in Indiana, but we were able to make a couple of stops between inspections. You can't come to Mishawaka, Indiana and not see Notre Dame. What a beautiful campus. Here is Steve in front of the football stadium.

And this is the golden dome. I guess it's painted with real gold just like the helmets of the Notre Dame football players. This was a fun place to visit.

We also stopped at the shore of Lake Michigan. I loved this trail to get to the beach, it looked like pictures you see in calendars.

It's incredible how large this lake is. The day was absolutely beautiful, and what a view.