Family Reunion

We left girl's camp early and arrived at the KOA in the late afternoon

We were all so tired from girl's camp

Said Hi to all our extended family

We didn't get any pictures because the camera died and I didn't have the charger.  If I weren't so lazy right now, I would get on facebook and still from Emma.  I'll do that later though.

We were all kind of grumpy.

At girl's camp they sent us with WAY TOO MANY leftovers.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were still some hiding in the fridge waiting to be thrown away.

The next day we went to the lake.  It was so high.  You can't drive down this year, but the water isn't any farther away from the road then it was from the vehicles when we drove on the beach.

Kei and Sei joined us and we were so excited because they are cute!

Kei, Sei, and Vidalia ate rice rusks, V didn't get it for a long time.  She gets it now though and loves them.

We had Raspberry Shakes (we were in Bear Lake after all).

We saw all Madsens, I think, and many Andersons too.  It was great to see them all.

The water was cold in the morning when we first got there, but by afternoon, it wasn't nearly as bad.

I tried to get Vidalia to tough the muddy beach sand.  She was skeptical and wouldn't do it.  She was excited to see the water, but wasn't so happy when I dipped her feet in.  I guess it was cold.  (I did do that in the morning after all.)  It seems that she slept the majority of the time, but I may be imagining that because nice people let me play in the water even though she didn't want to come.

It's nice to see family every now and then so I'm glad we were able to go, but we do wish Ryan could have come too.

Girl's Camp

The day after we arrived in Utah, my parents and sisters were all going to girl's camp, so Vidalia and I went too.

On the first day, we woke up early, drove down to the church, had a little devotional, welcome to girl's camp meeting.  After the meeting, we drove for a few hours to get to Smith's Fish Haven (fish farm turned camping ground) near Lava Hot Springs.  We did first day stuff, set-up camp, certification, and then later we did skits.  Well, more like, the girls did all this stuff and Vidalia layed on a blanket and got oodles of attention from like 400 girls (it was a stake girl's camp).  I have a video of my sisters' skit.  I think it was cute.  I'll show it later.

The next day we went through rotation groups.  The stake YW presidency talked to the girls, well, three of them talked to the girls, one did Zumba.  It was kind of fun because we were high up in the mountains and dancing to music.  It seemed kind of like Ninja training, if you know what I mean.  After lunch, we went rafting on the river.  My mom stayed with Vidalia so that I could go.  My dad and I rode in a double tube.  We hit lots of rocks.  It was fun, but not that fun.  I'm glad I went rafting.  Then we went swimming.  Vidalia loves swimming and she tires herself out really fast.  Then the girls played games and hung out with their wards.

On the next day (our last day there, but not the actual last day) they did more certification.  I don't know what happened after that because we left girl's camp and headed on our way to the Madsen family reunion.

We made it to Utah! (Quite a while ago really.)

Side note:  I haven't gotten any pictures off of my camera since getting to Utah so, sorry, the next few posts will probably be picture-less, which also means you'll have almost wordless posts with only pictures in the future.
 
11:30 am - Left Lincoln

12:45 pm - Arrived at Omaha airport

It really wasn't too bad.  I put Vidalia in a wrap and carried everything else.  I checked in the luggage and went through security (that was definitely that hardest part).  I don't know why they didn't tell me I couldn't wear the baby until my stuff was going through the machines; I had plenty of time before then that I could have taken her off, instead the lady behind me was annoyed.  I ignored her because really, that's not my problem, I didn't choose for her to get annoyed.  If it had been my choice, she wouldn't have been annoyed and really, I wasn't annoyed, so that was way too many sentences to tell you that.

2:30 pm - Through security and putting my stuff back together and also time to get on the plane (so we did).  While I was putting my stuff together, one of the ladies looked at me for a second and then asked me if I was in her daughter's ward, it ends up, I indeed am.  She had the same flights as me to Utah.  That was exciting.

3:00 pm - Plane takes off.  Vidalia has a bottle and falls asleep.  Nobody was sitting beside me.  That made my life so easy.  And she slept have the flight.  That also made my life so easy.  Everyone on the flight loved her.  They kept making faces at her and she would smile and laugh and get excited.

3:30 pm - Plane lands in Denver.  (Not really a 30 minute flight, it was 1.5 hours.)  We walked to our next gate and took care of some necessary things and then it was time to load the next plane.  On the next flight, I sat next to a really nice man.  Vidalia kept trying to still his stuff.  He said it was fine and I could let her get it.  She kept pulling his arm hairs too.  He liked her.  He was so nice.  We were so lucky.

4:40 pm - We arrived in Salt Lake City!  Yay!  Vidalia was so easy to fly with this time.  I hope that is always the case.

Thank you darling child for being the perfectly delightful human that you are.  You bring so much joy to my life and fool me in so many ways about being a mother.  Please teach all future siblings to be the same.  I will likewise teach myself to not compare.

Astuteness

So I think a lot. Some of my ponderings have no clear cut answer. Sometimes I think they don't but they really do once I ask Melissa.

For example, I asked her that if our national and global economy depends on continual circulation of currency, how is it that any financial advice (including that given by church leaders) stresses the importance of frugality, cutting down expenses, and saving for a rainy day. In essence how is it that personal financial interest conflicts with communal and global financial interest?

It's because we have an imperfect financial system. Oh. And it's the best that we can do for now.

In a perfect financial system, money would be consecrated from each according to ability back to each according to need. Everybody would have enough to meet individual needs comfortably. There are many occasions where this has been attempted and failed simply because people were too greedy.

Things To Do In Lincoln #8

Saltdogs game at Haymarket Park.  The Saltdogs are a minor league baseball team.  (Minor leagues are big around here.)  Enough of that though, I'll let the pictures do the talking...

What Rhymes with Nebraska?

I get this song stuck in my head ALL THE TIME.  I find myself walking around singing, "What rhymes with Nebraska?"  I guess it's too bad I found this song because before it, I would walk around humming the first three notes of Come Thou Fount.  I think Ryan is glad though because I'm thinking he thought that a little annoying.  This must be some song though because I hummed the first three notes of Come Thou Fount for 6 or 7 years.

Note:  Once the song ends, there is no reason to keep watching the video.

Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3C9GBJvQ

Conquest

So, first of all, I realize these pictures don't fit nicely into their column, but you can't see what I'm going to talk about when they are smaller.  So, first of all, in case you don't know, these are screen shots of the conquest game we have on our computer.  We play it while we wait for the internet to work (not so much now that we have internet that usually works, but a lot at our last apartment).

Let me tell you about the game leading up to this first picture.  I was playing.  I am the green one.  I was not doing well, so I decided to surrender and just let the computers duke it out until the game was over.  I forgot about the game and left the computer.  Hours later Ryan was on the computer and asked me something about this conquest game.  I told him I had surrendered and came to see who one.  3,793 turns and only one person was out.  Um....that's a little ridiculous.

We decided it must have been a fluke.  So, we setup another game and surrendered before we even played anything.  We were determined to see who would win the game.  This game went on and on and on...for days.  When we would turn the computer on, we would open the conquest game and let it keep playing.  We did this for way too long.  It was looking for a while that it would end before 50,000 turns and each day I would email Ryan conquest updates at work (I guess when we're onto something, we're just onto it).  Eventually I said that if it got to 100,000 turns that we were giving up.  Now, I'm not a quitter (I don't think), but right around 80,000 turns, I decided that this was a really boring game and I didn't want to wait it out to 100,000 since the computer never did anything.  It was after all this that we realized the setting was on very stupid, meaning all the computer players were intellectually very stupid.  Well, that explains it!  Which just brings me to another question....How was I losing against very stupid players?  We changed the setting to very clever and did the same thing.  The game was over in 25 turns.

So, there you go.  Now you don't have to try this because we did for you.  ;)

Finally!

It seems like this took forever, but finally our mormon.org profiles are both published!  We encourage anyone who hasn't made one (who is LDS) to go make one.  It doesn't take very long really.  You can see ours here http://mormon.org/me/41YN/ and here http://mormon.org/me/2JFZ/RyanScott.  Happy doing today!

Stormy Skies

They are awesome in Nebraska!  I love love love the storms here.  I now know what a thunderstorm really is.  It's fun to lay in bed and watch the room light up over and over because of the lightening.  I wish I could show you how cool it all is, but I'm no real photographer or videographer.  I hope this will do fine.

Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSVhjtcl6aA

Is Fun To Do...

(Sorry, sideways video)

Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSVhjtcl6aA