We Believe, We Endure, We Trek

In July (please bear with me while I play "catch-up") Bryce and I participated in our stake's youth conference, which was a pioneer handcart trek. We were a Ma and Pa and we had 8 youth in our little family. The trek took place up on Cedar Mt (which meant there was a lot less dust and a lot more shade compared to the other treks Bryce and I have been on). There were some difficult hills and a few strenuous areas on the trail but our family of troopers were amazing and did not give up. Thankfully, no one in our family got sick or injured (as long as you don't count the one parkour incident - lol).

Our family's theme was "We Believe, We Endure, We Trek". Our family's 'name', war cry, cheer, gathering chant and motivational yell was "Gryffindor!!!" The trek took place over the weekend that the Harry Potter #7 movie Part 2 came out - so needless to say the kids and I were feeling the pain of missing out on an opening night midnight showing while we were camping out in pioneer clothes, so... we decided that since we couldn't be there to view the show the next best way to honor and remember 'The-boy-that-lived' and how he conquered 'He-who-must-not-be-named' was to adopt "Gryffindor" as our family name, etc... It was awesome! No, it probably wasn't what the stake leaders expected and we definitely got a few strange looks, but it was great! No other family had any type of cheer so when we were pulling our handcarts or competing in pioneer games our family was always the loudest, most motivated and most unified. Maybe I am being completely biased, but we had some really great kids in our family. I definitely think that as the ma and pa we really lucked out.

Now please enjoy some pictures of our trek experience:

Here is our awesome flag - notice the sword of Gryffindor and the sorting hat wonderfully depicted.

"Gryffindor!!"

 Bryce and I watching our family competing in Pioneer games. The camera lady got lucky - this is probably the one moment we weren't yelling and cheering for our kids.

I love this picture because of what we are watching: at this moment we are cheering and laughing as one of our sons, Kelton - a real life cowboy, is trying to chase down and lasso a sheep that wandered into camp. All the other leaders were like "leave the sheep alone." Not us. We were encouraging of the sheep chasing; we participated in parkour at trail stops, and we were up playing mafia until midnight... Good Times :) 
That's right - We were the cool parents.

Family Picture Time!

On the trail again...