30 June 2019

Our neighbor's firework show has outgrown his budget.  The insurance and permits now cost more than the fireworks.  He was going to retire the show, but the neighbors rallied to preserve a beloved tradition.  Several neighborhood children gathered on Tuesday to hand out flyers for the show and ask for donations.  Matt, in the back row, is the mastermind of the show.

Jen had a box of patriotic decorations for the kids to wear while they canvassed the neighborhood.

Here are Kate, Addi and Helen.

On Wednesday morning Sofi took us to the stake center for the start of a 4 day pioneer trek.  Brandan and Becky went as a Ma and Pa.  Gibson, Abe and Helen were each assigned to a different family.  About 180 youth and 40 adults went as pioneers along with a large support group of cooks, water truck drivers, the porta-potty team and medical staff.

 This is a photo of Brandan and Becky with our trek family.  Every family was assigned a number and color-- we were number 8 and our color was sky blue.  The families chose their own names.  The majority of kids in our family picked the name "The Beard Whisperers."  Back row: Brandan, Becky, Andrew, Natalie, Nikki and Corbin.  Front row: Tim, Ben, Valentin and Ella.  Olivia is not in this photo.

 We rode in school buses for a couple of hours to public lands near Chiloquin.  As soon as we unloaded the buses, we packed our handcarts and started walking.  Corbin, Ben, Tim and Valentin pulled the cart most of the way, with the girls swapping in occasionally.

Some of the kids in our family wanted to name our family after the TV show "Psych."  We compromised by naming our handcart after a car on the show called the Blueberry.  Every episode of the TV show has a pineapple somewhere in the set so we carried a pineapple in our cart.  We ate the pineapple on Friday and it survived three days in a handcart very well.  We had a short packing list of items to bring on the trek.  Besides a sleeping bag and coat, all our other belongings needed to fit in a five gallon bucket.  Becky also packed a small backpack with useful items like duct tape, a lever for opening the buckets, a white board and dry erase markers, fake beards, Uno cards, sharpies, hard candy, Come Follow Me lessons, family history stories and a map of the trek (not that we were worried about getting lost, just to keep track of how far we had gone.)  The kids called her backpack the yellow bag of mystery.

 We occasionally saw our real kids at lunch breaks or when we stopped to camp.  The dirt road was very dusty after 19 handcarts rolled by.  Besides identifying families, the bandanas were useful to keep dust out of your mouth.

Ben made a moss-stache at one stop.

This is the fourth trek our stake has organized and they've gotten more experience each time, making this one the most organized trek yet.  Past treks have been held later in July and August, but with the threat of wildfires, they scheduled this one for soon after school got out.  Instead of the usual heat, the weather was cool during the day and freezing at night, getting down to 28 degrees one night.  We kept our jackets on most of the day and bundled up at night.

 We walked for 4 or 5 hours a day and spent the rest of the time listening to devotionals, playing games and having free time.  Our family loved playing Mafia during free time, and we also played Uno and Pictionary.  One of the kids drew Brandan for their turn and did a pretty good job.  Olivia is sitting next to Brandan making bunny ears.

 On Thursday night, the entire camp gathered together for pioneer games.  First was a tug of war competition.  Helen's family won several matches.  You can see Helen in the middle of the photo with her large sunbonnet.

The stick pull was hugely popular.  Besides pulling our cart all day, Corbin was the stick pulling champion.  He beat almost everyone in the camp.  His one loss was to the Pa of another family named Nate.  Nate played football for BYU and is fiercely competitive.  Corbin is 16 years old and pulled Nate up once.  Nate won the other two times they competed against each other.  In the photo, Corbin is wearing a hat and Nate is wearing a Tshirt.  You can see from the photo that it was not an easy win for Nate.

Two of the kids in our family got blisters on their feet from wearing new boots on the first day of trek.  Another girl was tiny with a wide range of medical issues.  We were proud of them as they kept walking day after day.  We were also proud of the healthier kids who were patient and good natured, distracting the kids who hurt with jokes and keeping a slow pace so no one was left behind.

Most of the walking was fairly easy on level ground through beautiful scenery.

On Friday, the boys and men were pulled aside for a short time and the women pulled the carts on their own.  Our girls met the challenge and all four of the girls in our family pulled the cart most of the way.  When we got to a steep hill, a few girls from other families stepped in to help us and together we got the cart to the top of the hill.

Our stake president gave a devotional at the top of the hill where we had a beautiful view of the Williams River in the valley below.  This is a photo of Helen with 3 sweet girls from our ward: Olivia, Mary and Emma.

Here are the three Hull men on the trek.  

The back of our cart looked bedraggled by Friday afternoon.

It was strange to come out of the woods Friday afternoon and see power lines running along the road.  Besides hearing a train whistle in the distance, this was the first marker of city life we experienced in three days.

On Friday night, every family presented a skit.  Our family didn't prepare a skit before the trek.  Becky and Sofi made a stack of fake beards out of felt and we brought them along, thinking with they would go along with our family name.  With 3 days of walking, we had plenty of time to plan a skit as we went.  Andrew came up with a very funny skit about a beard genie who lived in a bucket and when a person made a wish, the beard genie's power was to grant them a beard that went along with the wish, not the wish itself.  In the photo are Corbin and Andrew.

Tim was our free range child.  He is quiet, but friendly, and wandered away from our family often.  At least three other families adopted him and gave him one of their bandanas.

Friday night was the coldest and we woke up to ice on our tents.  The rising sun warmed us up on Saturday morning and we packed up to go home, dirty and tired, but happy and with lots of new friends.

We had a short walk to the buses on Saturday morning.  The handcarts were carefully loaded onto giant trailers to be stored until the next trek planned for 4 years from now.  Although it takes 6 months, hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to prepare a trek, we all agree the benefits of building confidence, forging friendships and strengthening testimonies for the youth in our stake make it worth the effort.

East Coast Trip 2019

East Coast Trip 2019

This is Abe. I just got back from a 9 day trip to Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York. We spent 4 days in Washington DC, 1 day in Philadelphia and another 4 days in New York.

Here is the group that I went with. There were 19 of us in all: 13 girls and 6 boys. Starting in the back and from the left is Avery, Dawson, Cameron, Jayden Fliegel, McKenna, Kaitlyn, Austin and me. In the front is Taylor, Grace, Jesse, Kylie, Ellie, Hannah, Kelsey, Alexis, Jayden Campbell, Abigail and Hailey. This is a photo across the water from the Washington Monument.

This was the group that I hung out with for most of the trip. I had friends planning on going on the trip, but they all dropped out so I had to make some new friends. They were all cool.

Our first stop right off the bus was the White House. There were a lot of protesters.

After that, we spent the rest of the day visiting memorials and monuments. This is me with the National Monument.

The second day, we spent 3 hours at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Some of the highlights there were the Space Shuttle, the Enola Gay B-29 bomber and the Lockheed Blackbird  spy plane.

After the Air and Space museum, we went to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. This is a miniature model of his house in the visitor's center.

We were disappointed to find that the actual house was undergoing renovations and had a bunch of scaffolding on the front, but we still got to tour the inside and walk around farm.

Here is a group photo with the back side of the house. It was a really nice day.

The next day, we went into the city and toured many important government buildings. First stop was the Supreme Court Building.

After the Supreme Court, we headed over to the Capitol Building. We got to take a tour of the inside which was really interesting. 

The other side of the Capitol building.

After our tour, we got lunch in the cafeteria in the basemen. For dessert, I got a Capitol shaped white chocolate parfait. The outer chocolate didn't taste very good.

After lunch, we went over to the Library of Congress. This building was very impressive.

The final thing for the day was Arlington National Cemetery. We visited John F. Kennedy's grave and were able to watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

 The next day we went to Ford's Theater, the theater where Abraham Lincoln was shot. Here is a little cafe that was outside of the theater.

In the museum there were a bunch of exhibits explaining Lincoln's life and assassination. This is the gun that John Booth used to shoot and kill Abraham Lincoln

This is the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The outside of the building looked really cool. To tour the museum, you start three levels below the surface and slowly spiral upwards. We walked about 3 miles in this museum.

We also visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is a room full of hundreds of burned shoes. The whole museum was very solemn.

Here's one last photo in Washington DC.

 After DC, we took a 3 hour bus ride up to Philadelphia. While we were there, we took a tour of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were created and signed.

We also visited the Liberty Bell.

One of the highlights in Philly was eating a Philly Cheese-Steak.

 After Philadelphia, we got back on the bus and drove another 2 hours to New York. This is a photo off the top of the Empire State Building.

Here's the Statue of Liberty. We were able to walk up a lot of stairs and get to the pedestal. It's actually a lot higher than it looks.

Right after the Statue, we went to Ellis Island which was a big immigration inspection center from 1892 to 1954. I was able to find some family names in this big memorial wall they have there.

We visited the memorial for the World Trade Towers that collapsed on 9/11. This really helped the attack feel a lot more real for me.

That night, we went to a Yankees baseball game. I'm not a baseball fan, but it was kinda fun and the Yankees won.

The next morning, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here is the famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware.

That night, we went to the Broadway show, King Kong. As weird as it may seem, it was actually really cool. King Kong was a 20 foot tall, 2,400 pound puppet who was really realistic. I give it two thumbs up.

Here is Trump Tower.

We got to tour Radio City. This is a photo from the lights and sound box. We were there the day after Billy Eilish performed.

 On our last day in New York, we went to the National Museum of Natural History. This is the famous skeleton from the movie Night at the Museum.

I had a great time on my trip to the East Coast and I'm really glad that I went. Thanks to my parents for paying for nearly all of it and encouraging me to go.