July Events

I realized today I hadn't recorded much of whats happened in July. After our trip to Utah, Janette drove back to Washington with Jacob and I and spent a week. It was so nice to get to know Janette better & we think she is pretty special. 

One of the highlights of every July is our annual 4th of July party at the lake house. We had about 30 people there and had a great time. 

 One of the traditions on our lake on the 4th of July is a boat parade around the lake. People stand on their docks and as the boats cruise by everyone throws water balloons at them and visa versa. Jacob wanted to be prepared this year to fight back on the boat. Jacob and Janette spent half of a day filling up over 600 water balloons. Poor Janette's fingers went numb from tying so many knots.

 This is the Gunter family. They live in New York right now and Lance will be starting his Senior year in Dental School. He is VERY interested in buying into Russ' practice in the next few years??? We'll see what happens. His wife is originally from Shelton.

The week after the 4th Dan & Sharon's family came to stay at the lake for a week. It was really fun for us to get to know their sweet family better. They loved riding all the logging roads out here on their bikes. We're glad they didn't get lost and made lots of good memories.

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Russ and I decided to be adventurous and backpack into Lower Lena Lake and camp for the night.  The next morning we hiked to Upper Lena Lake and then hiked out. Its a 14 mile round trip. When we arrived at Lower Lena Lake we couldn't believe how low the water level was. We have never seen it like that!! It was quite the night in our little two man tent. When you're younger it seems like you can sleep anywhere and not be affected. By morning both of our necks hurt from lack of what you could call a pillow. Just as we were about to go to sleep I could hear a critter in my backpack right outside our tent so Russ decided it would be at the end of my feet for the night.

Hiking to Lower Lena is pretty easy, but Upper Lena is a whole different story. It got VERY steep and VERY gnarly!! By the time Russ and I finished the second day we both could hardly walk. The good news is we woke up the next day and both felt great.

These pictures were some of the prettiest areas on our hike, but we really had to work hard to get here. We were rewarded to have the lake all to ourselves as we enjoyed our delicious peanut butter & honey sandwich!

 

For the past several months our Stake RS Presidency has been planning our Stake Pioneer Day Celebration. Heather, our President volunteered to have it on their property. This is their log home that they rent out on VRBO in Raymond. Its in our Stake & is about 45 minutes from our house and 1 1/2- 2 hours for many members in our Stake. Because we are soooo spread out we never know how many to plan on. Many sign up to come, but "showing" up is a different story. We had it Friday and Saturday night. Friday we had a nice program, square dancing and then outdoor movies projected on a king size sheet hanging on the back of this log home. We've had the hottest, driest summer I can remember, and haven't had rain in forever! Guess what we got Friday night for our campout?? You guessed it, rain!! 

Russ and I lucked out because we got to sleep in the log home. 

This morning the High Council was in charge of making breakfast for everyone. We had another little program where our wonderful Stake President spoke about being "modern" day pioneers. Next we played some fun games and then we had 10 different booths for the kids and adults to go to. We also had 4 handcarts for families and kids to do a one mile pull to see how it felt.

Rex playing the banjo & singing one of the songs he's written.

The Nicholsons doing a violin duet.

Tug-O-War

Stick walking Game

Three Legged Races

Water Melon Eating Contest

Taffy Pulling

Rex Angelovich smoked and cooked 180 lbs. of pork for our lunch…it was GREAT!!

Kids waiting to go on the rope swing into the river.

Jacob was an AWESOME helper!!

Wayne & our handsome Stake President:)

Wayne & our handsome Stake President:)

Best of all it was nice to see so many youth just sitting around visiting….with NO cell phones!

It could have been because the cell service was really bad there..hee hee, but we didn't tell them that ahead of time. Today we probably had over 300 there so we were very happy about that. We had Russ' truck loaded to the brim with stuff for the event. Its so nice to have a lot of the stuff out of my house from it now. Jacob asked when we got home, "why do my parents always have to be the ones in charge of everything & bring the whole house?" He really is a good sport about helping us out though. 

I am truly grateful for our ancestors that lived before us and what they gave up to be able to live the gospel without being persecuted. I shared a letter written by my great, great grandfather, Samuel Weber who immigrated from Switzerland with his family. I can't wait to meet his family in the future & tell them how much I admire their courage. Here's a portion of it:

We were not merely migrating to the United States of America. We were migrating to Zion. We had learned of a new way of life; the way to "an abundant life" that Jesus talked about. We got a restless urge to go to Zion. Leave all that was dear & familiar and gather to Zion is what we wanted to do. Perhaps that seems strange to you that anyone should want to leave everything & go across the sea, across a continent to come to rest among people with strange ways and an unfamiliar language. The gospel was what did it, nothing else on earth could have had the power to induce us to emigrate so far away. 

…My charge to you is that you work and pray to the attainment of a testimony of the gospel if you have not already done so. Study its principles--know that in them you will find eternal life….be faithful to the best you know how.