Help!

So I know how to do posts and how to leave comments, but I have no idea how to add followers or become a follower or any of that stuff for other people's blogs...and I would love to know how! If anyone could help me out in this department, it would be greatly appreciated :) Thanks!

Megs

Lanae's Farewell Party

One of my best friends, Lanae, is leaving for her mission to Scotland in just over a week. A couple Sundays ago we had a goodbye party for her before she moved back home to Idaho. Lanae is going to be an awesome missionary and we're all so excited for her, even though it will be sad not to have her around!
Amy and I thought we'd be clever and make our own ice cream cake. It was so easy and everyone loved it!
The all-time best part of the night was probably the prank that the kids across the street played on us. They were just kidding but it sure gave us a good laugh!


Good luck to Lanae! We know the people of Scotland will love that little dairy farmer from Idaho!

Manti Weekend

A couple of weeks ago some friends and I headed down to Manti to watch the Pageant and just play for the weekend. Our friend Amy is from the area so we stayed at her house. It was quite the campout we had! Her brother goes to BYU and brought along some friends as well, so all together there were 20 people staying at her house! The Washburn family was so generous to let so many college kids take over their home! Not only were they happy to cook us meals, they kept us entertained by letting us use their horses and four wheelers all day Saturday!


The Pageant is quite the little experience, to say the least. Hehe. Considering the script was written in the 60's I guess I'll give them some slack. :) Words like "eutopia" and "interum" were commonplace and although the play was even humorous in parts, it was still a fun time with the friends. We were able to get excellent parking thanks to my gimp-ness on crutches! They let us right in to the handi capped parking which was only 100 yards or so away from the chairs!

I was looking down at this newspaper they handed out and saw this little girl in the picture. When I looked up and over, I saw the very same girl standing up on a chair in the very same hoodie! So we got a couple of the boys to go get her autograph. It made her night!



We went back to Wales to spend the night and woke up the next morning ready for some fun! We spent almost all day Saturday playing outside, which is just fine by me!



We rode the 4-wheelers for a good couple of hours and just kept going and going up this mountain. It's just an area that people summer their cattle so there are trails everywhere but no one to bother you. We finally stopped and took a picture at the top overlooking three different vallies. It was such a pretty ride.


Amy's family has a small herd of hereford cattle (which the Peterson family is a little partial to I'd say) so they keep a few horses around. I was lucky enough to be put on the crazy one since I was the only one who had done much riding. It was a fun challenge! By the time we were out of the corrall the horse and I were buds and he was great for me the rest of the time...well most of the time :)
We had an awesome time riding horses and 4-wheeling and none of us wanted to leave, but all good weekends must come to an end!

A Little Catching Up To Do!

The past little while has been pretty busy for me, so I haven't spent time updating my blog at all! Since my last post was about running for National Office, I guess I better share the news! I was able to receive the candidacy as Utah's Candidate, which means I will be representing the state at the National Convention in Indianapolis in October. It's a pretty rigorous process but I'll keep you updated! I'm going to post about the 4th of July but stay in tuned for more posts on my other fun weekend adventures so far this summer!

I love the month of July. I love the fireworks, picnics and warm weather! This past 4th of July weekend was especially fun, and I don't think I could have topped Friday. It started out by going fishing with a good friend first thing in the morning. Afterwords we had a fun family picnic at Mack Park.

It's such a fun park and days like that make me so grateful to live where I do. We spent quite a few hours just sitting around and chatting, playing a little baseball, and watching Landon and Clay wrestle :) I think it surprised Clay that Landon could almost take him! It used to be that Clay could flip him around in 2 seconds flat! I think we can all agree that Landon is turning into quite the strong, and handsome, I might add, young man.



Ella and Dylan are such fun little kids to be around. I never get bored when I'm with them, that's for sure! It's been such a fun summer getting to know their little personalities more and more. Grandma is so fun with them too. She just loves her little grandkids!!




After a fun time with the family at the park, I headed off to a BBQ with a bunch of friends. We had a good time watching the fireworks at Romney Stadium.



After the fireworks 3 of my friends and I headed up High Creek Canyon for a campout. My friend and I set up camp the night before so we had a nice place reserved and ready to go! I'm pretty sure it's the nicest little campspot in the whole valley! We were very proud :)

Our friend Kyle had a very clever little way to cook breakfast. Toaster's Strudel in a Coleman Toaster. Who'd of thought?

We woke up the next morning and went on a drive to the trailhead of the High Creek Lake hike, which is SO beautiful. Angela used to take me up there when I was in Jr. High and let me tell you, it is gorgeous!

Smelling like campfire, looking like hobos, and wearing really cute clothes, we headed over to the little fair at Lewiston. They've always had a fun 4th celebration. That night we went out again for the fireworks and then the weekend was over! All in all it was one of the funnest 4th holidays I've had yet!

Having a Destination AND the Drive to get there

In preparation of running for National Office, I've been doing a little bit of soul searching to really find out what makes me happy, why I want to serve the FFA for another year, and what skills I can develop to help me do so. At one of our conferences this past year our trainer, Andrew McCrea, was a past national officer who is now a well known public speaker and radio show host for "American Countryside". He gave each of us a book that he wrote, entitled, "Making Molehills out of Mountains". I've had it since December but came upon it a week ago and began reading it. I had been missing out! This book has a lot of really neat insights on how to learn leadership strategies that reduce your work without reducing your goal, how to inspire individuals to personal and team success, and getting more out of life by making "quality investments" in family, faith, work, and friends.

I came across a section that really struck me for some reason, so I thought I'd share it. He started out with a story about accidentally taking the wrong road and heading miles and miles in the wrong direction in his upgraded rental Mustang. When he realized he was going the wrong way, he knew he had to turn around. It didn't matter how pretty the day was or how fast he could go in the convertible, the only thing he would accomplish would be heading farther in the wrong direction if he didn't stop and get his bearings.

He says, "Yet, in real life, we sometimes don't give as much thought to our destination. We might fail to turn around.

The destination and the drive must go together. If you have a destination without the drive, you will have goals to achieve, but you will never see those dreams fulfilled. If life were about just the drive, you would develop skills that would make you an effective and efficient leader, but you would never be headed toward achieving any specific goal.

Think about it: If life were about just the drive, you would have been given the tools to move as fast as possible in the exact opposite direction you needed to go!"

I think this is so true. So many times we have goals that we want to achieve, and have so much drive inside of us to do it, but if we don't sit down and think about how we are going to achieve them, we could very well be headed in the wrong direction.

Moral of the story: Set high goals AND give them direction!

Here we go!

Well here goes keeping my blog updated! I haven't been lately, mostly because I just put things on the family blog, however, I want to get better at blogging, so I'm going to keep this better updated. The next several posts are probably going to be boring for anyone who reads them because they are mostly for my benefit. I'm posting memories of each chapter visit I did as a state officer so I can have a better recollection of them. Feel free to read the posts and comment if you'd like.

Tabiona and Manila=Crazy Road Trip!!! Part 2

Part 2-Manila and Who Knows Where Wyoming!

Manila is a really fun town and chapter. It's a super small community-only just over 300 residents, but has a ton to offer. You may have heard of Flaming Gorge Reservoir before, well that's where Manila is. I had been there once before for our State Officer team retreat. It's Blake's hometown and since he has a boat and a place to stay, we went there. It was a lot of fun! However, this trip to Manila panned out a little differently than my first one did. All was well when I got to Blake's parents log cabin. Only his mom was home so we settled in and watched a movie. I was pretty tired from the long day so I headed to bed. When I woke up in the morning, Sue, Blake's mom was already gone to work as the Manila School secretary. I gathered all my things up and headed for the school. I got out to my car after locking the house up and realized that my keys were nowhere to be found. I had left hem on my bed. Thankfully, I had my cell phone with me and I Cha-Cha'd the school's phone number so I could call her. There was a spare key in the garage and I was only 15 minutes late to the visit. Luckily, Manila is pretty laid back and Sue went in and told Mr. Schell, the ag teacher, what had happened. When I walked in the room I was pummeled with a million jokes about where my keys were etc. Those kids are hillarious! I already knew many of them from COLT in the summertime so it was fun. BUT...the classes seemed even more empty than they would normally with a graduating class of 12. Why? The Deer Hunt. Everyone goes out for the deer hunt. It was still fun though and it was good to see some old friends.
This is where the story gets interesting. To get back home to Logan, you have two options. A) You can go on I-80 West to Evanston, and from there get on I-84 to Ogden and head home from there. and B) You can go to Kemmerrer and head to Bear Lake from there. The Kemmerrer way is about 50 miles shorter and I had been on the road with my dad once or twice before. I asked Mr. Schell which way he thought I should go and he told me to definitely go the Evanston way, seeing as how it was the deer hunt and a weekend, so more people would be heading to the Bear Lake area. So, I went on my way heading out of Manila. Rain started to come down a little bit, but it wasn't bad..yet. I got on I-80 and headed toward Evanston. I've always been taught that if I feel something strongly, and it tells me something, it's the Spirit. So when I saw a sign for the Kemmerrer exit, and felt very prompted to go that way, I decided I had better. When the exit came, I knew that I had to go that way. I hadn't felt this strongly about something in a long time. So I exited and headed that way. I got to Kemmerrer and decided I should fill up my car before I started the hour and a half trip to Logan.

I asked the gas station attendant specifically, "What's the best way to get to Bear Lake?" He asked a fellow co-worker just to be safe and confidently said, "Take a left here, and follow the road until you see a sign that says 'Big Piney'. Go to Big Piney and follow the highway until you see signs that say Bear Lake." It sounded simple enough so I followed his directions and sure enough saw the sign that directed me toward Big Piney. I got to Big Piney and hadn't seen any signs yet, but since he was son confident about it, I kept going. Now, what I should have done was stop in Big Piney and make sure I was in the right place, but I just wanted to get home and me, being a trusting person, knew I would see a sign that directed me to Bear Lake somewhere up there. Mile after mile I drove. And drove. And drove. Cell phone dying. Gas tank still quite full luckily. What should have been ugly Wyoming scenery had turned into some really pretty scenery. This is when I knew I was on the wrong road. Below are pictures of my road. The one with the North 189 sign is what Wyoming should look like where I wanted to be. The other ones are what I began to see on my little excursion. The one with the river is Big Piney, the other, with the big mountains, is Daniel, 20 miles before I turned around.
I was able to get a little service at the top of a mountain and called Dad and asked him to look at a map and tell me where in the heck I was. As soon as he saw Daniel on the map he said, "Oh my word you need to turn around" Well, I was only 150 miles in the wrong direction. I was paralell with Idaho Falls and only about 50 miles from Jackson Hole. The man at the gas station had failed to mention that at the Big Piney sign I needed to go the OTHER WAY. Needless to say, I was a little upset. Rain was pouring for part of the way and at the moment, I hated Wyoming. 2 and a half hours later, I was back in Kemmerer and I had never been so happy to see the ugly sagebrush and weeds. I so wanted to go into that Maverick and chew the guy out-but you all know me, and I would never have the guts to do it. So instead I went to a grocery store and asked the old service desk lady. She gave me very clear directions and I was in Garden City in less than an hour. What should have been a 3 hour drive home from Manila turned into an almost 7. Isn't it funny how one person can tell you something and it ends up making you on the road for 4 hours more than you should have?

I was pretty upset about it but I did get to see a lot of Wyoming that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. The next day was General Conference. One of the apostles gave a talk and part of it was about having a good attitude. He told a story about his family getting lost on family vacations regularly and one time they had even driven almost 3 hours in the wrong direction. Sound familiar? He said that all they could do was laugh about it. Wow, apparently I needed to hear that! To this day I don't know why I felt so prompted to go the Kemmerer way, nor do I think I ever will. But, all I know is that I'm glad I listened to the Holy Ghost, even if I made a mistake and went a few hundred miles out of my way. Maybe it was just a test for me. Looking back on it, it really was a beautiful drive once I got out of the yuckiness of southwestern Wyoming :) At least I could come home and tell a good story.