Devin continues to be doing well in Phoenix. I'm not sure he loves summer as much as we do, but he is surviving despite the heat. He does love being a missionary and had some great experiences this month. He loves his companion and the other companionship of Elders who live right next door to them. We are happy he is doing so well. He will celebrate his 20th birthday tomorrow, July 30, and we look forward to hearing how his missionary birthday treated him.
4th of July celebrations as missionaries - they are all wearing patriotic ties. :)
Here at home we celebrated the 4th of July with a trip to a little pond very close to our house where we had fun playing in the water and having a picnic lunch. We later had a BBQ with a smoked brisket Bryce made us and it was so super yummy!! Happy birthday America!
Our next adventure for the month was traveling to Oregon for our Finch family reunion, which was in Lincoln City. We had such a great time being together and catching up with each other. Some of our favorite activities were walking on the beach and playing in the tide pools:
Hiking up the big sand dune in Pacific City and jumping off the dune:
Hiking up Little Bears Hump:
Going to the aquarium in Newport: (Bryce thought it was funny to show his "happy face" in all of the photos that day)
Spending time together with family - always the best!! We also loved mealtimes, skit night and karaoke night, too.
My dad with 6 of his 8 children (sadly Kristi and Jenni and their families couldn't make it)
My dad with all but 6 of his grandkids and 4 of his great grandkids
The week after the reunion was Stake Girls Camp and I don't think anyone was happier than I was to move out of the planning stages and finally get going with camp. The week was pretty amazing with lots of small miracles along the way. We had fun, bonded as a Stake, did hard things together and played a lot, too. Plus, in my opinion, there is nothing better than spending some time in the mountains if you really want to connect with Heavenly Father. It was a really good week! Unfortunately, I forgot to take many pictures, but here are a few:
All of our signs were made by one of the Stake YCLs - those YW are pretty talented!!
Autumn (center) and a couple of friends in a canoe. We also zip lined into the lakes, played on the rock climbing wall and team building course, and did a little archery.
We saw hundreds of sheep on our 6 mile hike
The YW and leaders from our ward. Autumn came home raving that it was the most spiritual camp she had ever attended. She had really great ward camp leaders!!
My own little sacred spot at camp - I love the mountains!!
My sister Kim was in town for just one day with her husband who was here on business, so we went on a morning hike together to these beautiful falls:
We were supposed to end the month with a short camping trip in American Fork canyon, but with work schedules and such, we ended up scrapping the camping idea and going for a Saturday morning hike and then playing on one of the reservoirs up the canyon. We seriously live in a beautiful spot of the world!
That's it for our July! Blog you next month!
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