Bingham Canyon, Grandma, and a New Job

Like my new header? After about 6 months of having "make a new blog header" on my "to-do" list, I finally did it.

The kids are sitting here doing their writing for the day so I thought I'd join them in writing. I haven't felt particularly inspired about writing on this blog in the past couple weeks. I'm realizing that motivation, like so many things in life, comes in waves. Some days, some hours, some weeks, I feel excited about doing a given thing, then other times, I just really don't feel like it. No real rhyme or reason to it. I can usually force myself to do the things I don't really feel like doing if it's important or timely. But sometimes, if no one else is waiting on me and it's fine either way, I give in to that "I don't feel like it" thing. And I'm learning to be OK with that.

Our Learning Adventures Camp is still going very well. The kids did their three weeks of almost-perfect points and earned their trip to Lagoon (scheduled for next week). They decided they wanted to pool their points for the next 3-week period (which they'll be done with next week when we take off on a family Pioneer Trek and then head to Bear Lake) and earn a trampoline for the backyard (it'll cost them their points plus they need to do a big part of the work to dig the hole so we can make it an in-ground trampoline - and actually they're about as excited about digging the hole as they are about the trampoline...).

It's been great to see how many families are loving these Learning Adventure Camp ideas. Here's one of my favorite adaptations.

And here are a few things we've been up to lately:

For last week's field trip, we went to Kennecott Copper Mine - the largest man-made hole on earth -  with our friends the Reynolds. We saw trucks the size of a house and learned all about how they get the copper out of the earth and refine it (it's quite a process). As the canyon where the mine is located is named after my great great grandfather, Erastus Bingham, the trip had added significance.

Here we are with info about our great great grandfather

Here's a close-up of the sign so you can read it. Cool that they ended up in Ogden where we now live. And the little cabin they built in Ogden was eventually moved to Pioneer Village at Lagoon and we visited it last year. I think maybe the connection to Lagoon was cooler to the kids than the connection to the copper mine...

see Ashton in the back?

For this week's field trip, we went to Logan for one of my mission companion's birthdays and got a chance to visit my sweet grandma as well.

It was SO FUN to see amazing women who were my companions in Bulgaria at the birthday party of one of them, Deborah. What crazy and beautiful times we had there together - having people share wild stories with us, going to church in old communist club buildings or bars where the church could rent space, seeing people's lives change as they felt loved and saw real purpose in life.

And as always, it was wonderful to be with my Grandma. It's heartbreaking that she doesn't know me anymore but she is still as beautiful as ever - her love for all of us radiating even when she doesn't remember who we are. The kids did all the jig saw puzzles she made for her children 60 years ago and I told her how many 1000's of kids and families she helped through the Joy School program she helped start (she ran the original Joy School for about 30 years). She's always pleasantly surprised to hear that Joy Schools are still going and to remember that she made up most of the lesson plans that are still being used throughout the world. We always sing Joy School songs with her and it's beautiful to see her smile.


Jared and Isaac (with minimal help from the rest of us) have been working hard on a new fence for our backyard. The old one blew over in the huge wind storms many months ago. It's going to be a very strong and very lovely fence. They've been working fast because JARED GOT A NEW JOB and really wanted to finish the fence before going back into the world of full time work at an office. It's been over a year that Jared has been working diligently on major projects that have moved the Power of Moms website to where it needs to be while doing consulting for others and helping get an exciting new company off the ground with some friends. The pieced-together work has been good work and we've loved Jared's more flexible schedule. But he was ready for a new challenge and he's found a good fit. It's in Salt Lake but since he can do the full commute on the train and the train has wifi so he can work while traveling. It'll be a whole new thing for all of us but we're really excited for Jared and for the company who gets to enjoy his skills and presence.

This might not look like a lot. But getting the old fence out of there and getting these posts
and 10 more installed in concrete deep in the ground has been a MAJOR project.
Yeah, Isaac and Jared!