Since I am in the Young Women's I got to go on the winter retreat with the youth in our ward this year! Actually it is the first time the yw have been invited to go, so it was super exciting!
In the back is James, Brennen
Middle is Jacob, Shayla & Lynsey
The group that rode up to the South Hills with us.
Parker & Benny
These two crack me up!
We have such an amazing group of youth in our ward. Vaughn and I are so lucky to be able to work with them!
Maria & Lisa
(Maria was one of Sam's teachers)
The lodge was soo cold!! I wish I would have taken pictures of the outside when we got there! It had just started snowing and it was so pretty! We had to park probably 1/2 mile from the lodge so we used snowmobiles to get the gear and most the people to the lodge. It took quite a while since we only had three snowmobiles doing all the work! It was dark and cold and everyone was hungry. The kids were in surprisingly good moods for the conditions they were in! It was almost 9 pm by the time dinner was finally ready to go!
We had a few people talk after dinner.
Madi & Shayla were in charge of the devotional.
They came up with a great theme of unity and I think it was the perfect theme for this group of youth!
Our lovely breakfast chefs!
Once it started snowing it snowed almost continuously through out the night.
Oh, it was so beautiful up there!!
Vaughn had a ton of layers on, but forgot his coat. With the snow just dumping on us, he was getting soaked, so he had this idea. It worked for most of the morning. By the afternoon it was in shreds!
Some of our YW!
A couple of the ym!
Dwayne taking riders and sleds up the mountain!
Vaughn taking Lynsey up the hill!
I think mostly everyone had a great time!
There were a few girls that were ill prepared for a sledding trip and were miserable. I felt bad for them, but there wasn't a lot I could do to help them.
Most sledded, some skied and a few even snowboarded down.
It was so much fun!!
Lisa being white washed by her son!
Lisa and I FINALLY convinced Maria that she needed to go down the hill! She is afraid of heights, but she did it!! I was so proud of her! I went down once with Vaughn and then Lisa and I went down! I think our bums hit every possible bump on the way down, and I was super sore the next day, but it was worth it!
Sweet Madi helping one of the girls to try and get warm.
She is a very thoughtful, compassionate person.
The cars in the parking lot were buried!
We had lunch back at the cars in a snowmobile trailer (because the snow was relentlessly coming down!) and then everyone was soaked and tired, so we decided to pack up to go home.
Vaughn's gloves dyed his hands!!
Its a good thing it came off with some really hard scrubbing!
Once we tried to get going we noticed we had a much bigger problem! Everyone (minus the 4x4 vehicles) were stuck! The vans didn't have a high enough clearance! Once we would get one unstuck it would either get stuck again a few feet down the road or the other one would get stuck again. It took us over an hour to get the vans out. Bishop Bingham's van had some light damage done because of the deep snow, but Bishop Bingham didn't seem too concerned about it. He hooked his truck up to his van (someone else drove it up) and was trying to pull it out. I am so glad it was his van because he was being so rough with it and I know we would not have dared treat it that way!
Further up the road we repeated the whole pushing thing all over again. These young men were out there without their coats on and they were sopping wet. I felt so bad for them. But they worked hard and were able to finally get everyone unstuck and on their way home! It was quite the adventure!
