Nauvooooooo

The tree with the thorns that crucified the Savior. 

Kansas City Temple!

Liberty Jail

The girls and mathias

Every two years, our church has combined youth conference for the stake.  It's a great time!  The Spirit is so strong and I love being with these great great people.  Two years ago, we did the Trek which was super fun.  My sister Erika came on that with me, along with our good friend Brennan McClure, and a few more of their friends.  I miss them and their presence on this conference, but in my opinion, I had an even better time on the Nauvoo trip.
           Sunday after I got back, I went to my friend Kiara's to pick some stuff up for Nauvoo.  Love that family.  Sunday night, the day we got back from CA, we went to church, then had a farewell party for my mom's friend Andrea who is going on a mission.  During that time, I went upstairs and saw my brother and his friend Riley shaving their heads an giving each other mowhawks.  Crazy fools.  I decided to be the "supervisor".  Eventually, they shaved them off.  Monday, I spent the day packing and in my room.  Usually when I pack or clean out my room, I get super distracted with stuff I find and it takes literally the entire day.  That's what happened this time... The next morning, I got up at like 2:30.  Yep it was fun.  We got to the church around 3:40 and it was completely dark outside with people and their luggage.  We went inside after dropping off our stuff, and then waited in the gym until it was time to leave.  A lot of my friends, I discovered, were on mine and Kiara's bus.  We were the youth committee leaders for that bus, so we were always on the same bus.  We had Jessica, Audrey, Josh, Jacob, Hayley, Mckaylee, and Katrina.  There were a lot of people on there, but those were who I was sitting by.  We all tried to sleep at first, but for the majority of the bus, it was an epic FAIL.  Me and Kiara started eating sunflower seeds, which probably sounds super nasty at 6:00 in the morning, but we did it anyways.  Then we ate twizzlers and tried to stuff it up our nose (like spaghetti! actually, this ones more of an inside joke...sounds gross i know) I had to go to the bathroom, and since there were bathrooms on the bus, I decided to give it a shot.  It reminded me of an airplane bathroom, where you feel like you're going to fall out of the plane any minute.  And let's just say...it was hard to keep steady.
          Moving on.  hm....well we handed out shirts after that and I got to use the microphone.  That bus made me have a deep love for microphones.  Especially talking into them in front of lots of people, even if what comes out of your mouth doesn't even make sense.... During the ride, we also made lots of hemp bracelets and anklets with mine and Mckaylee's hemp.  Near the end of that 12 hour (i think?) bus trip, we all got a little crazy.  I call it bus syndrome, and we all acted in our own different ways.  Kiara tends to get violent.  I have proof of that because there is a beautiful bruise on my upper right arm. haha.  Jessica starts doing interpretive dancing and writes her own songs which she serenades very...nicely.  um...everyone else just goes a little crazy!  We finally got to Independence and saw the RLDS ice cream cone temple against the blue sky.  It looked cool.  We got a tour of Independence which was really neat.  I think it's cool how such a small town right now will be one of the capitals of the world one day.  For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, we (Latter-Day-Saints) believe that Christ will come again and rule the earth.  There will be two capitals, one in Jerusalem, and one in Independence.  I just think it's super neat.  Then we saw the Christus statue which was beautiful.  Instead of having a dark blue background like the one in Salt Lake, it was a light blue which I found interesting.  I think I later found out that it represented the Second Coming.  We (Kiara, Jessie, Mckaylee, me) all walked back to the stake center, ate dinner outside, then got back on the buses with everyone else.  Sister Sterling, the lady in charge, announced we were going to a waterpark.   Everyone was way excited about that, including myself.  Jessie started saying stuff like "I like watah!" um...probably had to be there.
          We got to the hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, unloaded, then headed to the waterpark.  Me, Jessica, Kiara, and Hayley were all together for that night.  It was a party.  At the waterpark, we did jumping logs, went down a slide, and dunked each other a lot.  Then we moved to the outdoors pool and continued dunking each other and doing cannonballs.  Talk about a great time!  The next morning, us four all headed down to the dining room in the huge hotel and ate some breakfast, and all wore matching tye die. Yeah...you could say we were cool...We loaded the buses and went to Liberty Jail.  On the way there, we passed the Kansas City temple.  At Liberty Jail, Joseph Smith, along with 5 other innocent men were all confined for four months, in which the coldest winter recorded in Missouri occurred.  After Liberty, we went to Far West.  Far West was very beautiful and had blue skies and birds singing.  I think President Whittier spoke to us there.  It was very quiet and beautiful.  There was a tree there that had the thorns that crucified the Savior, and it the only kind in the United States.
          We ate lunch at Far West, and then left for Adam-Ondi-Ahman.  This was definetely one of my favorite parts of the trip.  I got there and felt as if I never wanted to leave.  It was so quiet and peaceful, I just couldn't comprehend all the things that had once happened there, and what would someday happen there.  It blew me away.  My friend Kiara's sister Maegan and another girl sang "If the Savior Stood Beside Me" and it was beautiful.  Then there was a musical number on the trumpet.  Afterwards, the President McClure spoke to us, and then we all left for alone time to ponder.    I wandered off down a trail I saw, not really sure where it would take me, but it was so beautiful.  I stayed quiet and pondered a lot.  Aways down the trail, I finally found a spot that was shaded and flat with trees, but had a great view of the valley.  I got out my journal and wrote in it, then said a prayer or two.  Afterwards, I still hadn't heard that trumpet sound telling us to come back, so I continued even further down the trail.  There was only one or two people down here.  I took out my booklet for the trip and read the words to the song Adam-Ondi-Ahman.  They are like this:

This earth was once a garden place,
With all her glories common;
And men did live a holy race,
And worship Jesus face to face,
In Adam-ondi-Ahman.


We read that Enoch walk[e]d with God,
Above the pow[e]r of Mammon:
While Zion spread herself abroad,
And saints and angels sung aloud
In Adam-ondi-Ahman.


Her land was good and greatly blest,
Beyond old Israel's Canaan:
Her fame was known from east to west;
Her peace was great, and pure the rest
Of Adam-ondi-Ahman.


Hosanna to such days to come—
The Savior's second comin[g]—
When all the earth in glorious bloom,
Affords the saints a holy home
Like Adam-ondi-Ahman.

My view from where I was sitting

Friends

cool trees

Trail that I took

On my walk I took this picture

Since then, I have grown to love that song, and it is definitely one of my favorite church hymns.  I heard the trumpet and started to head back.  By the time I started up the hill to meet everyone else, I realized I was one of the last ones there, and I could hear the rest of my stake singing "Adam Ondi Ahman."  I made it up there to sing the last verse with them which was really neat.  The Spirit was so strong, and I felt sad to leave that beautiful place, but at the same time, it felt okay. 

Mississippi River! 

Brigham Young's Home

covered wagon

         We loaded the buses then we made a long 4-5 hour travel to Nauvoo.  On the way, we sang lots of songs, played different crazy song games, did back massage lines...it was a great time!  We crossed the Mississippi river and it was a crazy big river.  Dang.  Let's just say, the Poudre river is a stream compared to that...and the Mississippi river is bigger than some lakes found in Fort Collins.  After arriving at a park in Nauvoo, we ate dinner, then played soccer, frisbee, football, and the stretchy fabric things that are super fun.  The fabric things (I really don't know the name of it...) were really fun with strong people because you were literally whiplashed to the otherside and ended up being clotheslined.  Jessica had a fear of ticks that week, so it kind of became kind of a joke.  (ticks ticks ticks ticks!)  Brady pushed Kiara and Jess into a small ditch as a joke...Kiara retaliated by pushing him down the ditch.  He went down then tripped.  Hehehehehehe.  After dinner, we went to our hotel at the Nauvoo Family Inn and Suites.  There were two different buildings, one was across the street, and of course we mixed up which building...but we got to our room in the end.  There were 8 people in our room that night, minus Jessica.  Me, Kiara, Hayley, Audrey, Kayla, Julee, Sariah, and a different Jessica.  Everyone was amazing in that room.  Since there was a dance that night, they sent us to the rooms to get ready.  Me, Audrey, Hayley, and Kiara didn't dress up like everyone else.  Actually, we all just wore soccer shorts, flip flops, tye dye...Audrey wore her cool blue party pants, birkenstocks, and socks.  We saw that our guy friends pretty much did the same thing.  The dance was in an old arcade.  There were go-karts, movie posters, games, some kind of awesome fit-for-fun thing...ohh yeah.  We kind of all went crazy at the dance.  Such as pulling our shorts up high for country songs, whipping our hair back and forth, etc...crazy crazy times.   Jessica pretended to have seizures on the ground.  The next, we woke up and it was super rainy.  I brought my keens (all-purposers!) but I didn't think to wear them.  Yeah...dumb idea.  It was the day we walked around Nauvoo.  Me and Mckaylee finally just took off our shoes and walked barefoot around gravelly Nauvoo.  I guess you could say we got the true pioneer experience because at the end of the day, it hurt even more to put our shoes back on.  

Beginning of the Summer! California Adventures

I am so excited for this summer!!!! I will be here the majority of it, but I have a few adventures in store, besides those I've already had.  For starters, the day school got out, my mom, dad, and brother and I all flew to Californ-I-A for a few days.  My sister's wedding reception was there that weekend, because she had gotten married back in April.  Her husband and his family I discovered were possibly some of the nicest people I know!  I'm glad we're now sort of related in a sense.  On Wednesday, we got in and it was super sunny outside.  Me and Matt (my brother), got there really wanting to go to the beach, because, there was a beach.  We were in El Segundo, California, near Los Angeles.  It's a super cute little town.  There are lots of hills, palm trees, and all the houses are kind of crammed together, but still amazing.  That night, we went and checked into our hotel, then decided to go for a plunge in the ocean.  By this time it was like 7:00, and nobody was in the water anymore...most people were in hoodies and pants if they were at the beach, or walking along the pier.  The beach we went to was Manhattan beach, and the sunset was beautiful!  So...me and Matt, being the crazy Coloradoans in California decided to go in the water anyways.  We only went in for a few minutes and people, my parents among them, probably thought we were super crazy, but it was still really fun!  Even a family from Utah passed us and asked us about getting in when it was that cold.  The next day, we biked along the beach on cruisers.  Cruisers are fun bikes for flat surface stuff, and the beach was flat, so it was a pretty easy ride.  I think we rode abouttt 34 miles if I am correct?  It was quite a few hours.  Well anyways, we rode to Venice Beach, which is a crazy place!  If you've ever been there, it's interesting.  In a way you kind of get the creeps, but then there is so much going on on that street...anyways. We didn't stop to look around, but we went to a nearby beach.  I found some gnarly seashells which i brought back. Then we rode back to Redondo beach, where we started from.  The next day, I found I suffered from a major sunburn all over. Actually mostly on my knees, arms, and back.  Ouch.  I never really get sunburned because I usually ease my way into "summer skin", but this time it all came too fast, and you better believe I suffered the consequences :( at Nauvoo.  The next day, we went to In-n-Out burger with my sister Erika and her husband Woody.  Never been there before, but it was quite an enjoyable lunch.  We all went to the El Segundo beach, and used Woody's boogie boards.  They were a party.  I got another burn probably, but that didn't stop my fun.  There was a boundary on where you could go in the water, and where you couldn't go, and I accidentally crossed it.  I was on my boogie board, but I noticed the waves were yellow and a lot bigger.  It was kind of hard to get back, and the lifeguard noticed that too, but luckily enough, I swam out onto shore and was fine.  That night, we went to Woody's to eat dinner, we had great Mexican food called Tito's.  Me and Matt watched a movie with Erika's nieces and nephews called the Boy who cried werewolf.  Like most Disney channel movies now, it was dumb, but it was still an interesting movie to watch. haha.  anyways...the next day, we saw our old friends the Merrells (just Chelsea and her mom) and went to the beach with them for the day.  That night we had the reception at Woody's house and it was great!  The food was amazing and there was a bouncy castle there.  It was kind of the greatest idea ever.  After the reception, we helped clean up a little and took down decorations, then went back to our hotel.  We left on Sunday morning back for Colorado, and went to our ward right afterwards.  We had a great time in California, but it was great to be back in the dear ol' Fort.