B-Y-U COUGARS!!!

It is a happy day at the Nielsen household. BYU football has begun. We just watched the first game and BYU beat Oklahoma. It was so awesome!! The final score was 14-13. Hopefully this is the beginning of a great season for the Cougars!

These pictures of my cute nephew Jaron were already posted on Andrea's blog, but when I got this new kit to work with I immediately thought of these pictures and asked Andrea to send them to me so I could scrap them. I love how they both turned out. These pictures were taken in June when he was 11 months old. Such a cutie!

Summer is over

School started last Wednesday for us. The boys were all very excited to get back to school and hanging out with their friends. We had a pretty uneventful summer, so I think they were pretty bored and ready for school to start. Maybe we always need to have boring summers so they can't wait to get back into school.

Travis is a sophomore at Salem Hill High School. This is just the 2nd year the school has been opened and it is way nice. He is loving it, especially all the techie stuff the school has like smart boards and plasma screens and ummm well, I can't remember everything else he told me about. He is like the A and B day method becuase he can usually get everything done in class and hasn't had too much homework so far. This year he is taking, Seminary, Beginning Guitar, English, Geometry, Biology, Health, Web Page Design, and Engineering Design. He went to the opening football game on Friday and we won 32-16 against Orem. He had tons of fun at the game and came home hoarse.

Tyrel is a Freshman at Mt. Nebo Jr. High. He is excited for school but more excited to be able to get this year over with and be able to go to the high school. His classes are World Civilizations, Earht Systems, Food and Nutrition, Learning Strategies, Seminary, English, Geometry and Weight Training.

Trevin is a 5th grader at Mt. Loafer elementary. His teacher is new to the school this year. Her name is Mrs. Dewey. He says he likes her and I like that she has them going with a planner sheet already. Helps to keep them organized.

Tyrel's Eagle Project

Tyrel finished his Eagle project. Now he just needs to get his write up completed and get one more merit badge card signed. He did a blood drive for the American Red Cross. He was in charge of scheduling the building, scheduling the Red Cross, taking the sign up sheets to and collecting them from the wards in the Stake, making the master schedule, calling everyone to remind of their appointments, scheduling scouts and YW to help with the blood drive snacks and nursery, setting up the building, cleaning up when completed. He had enough people signed up to make his goal, but not everyone showed up. We got lots of calls from people cancelling because they were sick, some who came but couldn't end up giving, and some who I think just forgot. It was on the first day of school, so I think that threw a bunch of people off between that and soccer games. It was pretty steady most of the time though and no one had to wait for very long.

Girls Camp

Are you ready for lots and lots of pictures? These are lots of the pictures I took at girls camp this year. We had it up Payson Canyon at Blackhawk campground. Our theme was Surviving with the Light of Christ and above is the logo I made for the sweats that we got for the girls. Actually I had some help for another leader in our ward and I had to enlist Heidi to help with the girls ponytail and arm because mine looked dorky. It is great to have an artist in the family for cases such as this.

We hauled our trailer up (or should I say Sean and Tyrel hauled it up)?. Then they stayed to help set up tents. I think Tyrel was having fun being the only boy at girls camp. I must say that the tent they set up did stay up the best of any of them up there I think.

Notice the jewel on the Bishop's forehead. He said he was going to keep it on till Sunday, but I didn't notice it at church on Sunday.

Above are the 4th year girls coming in from their overnight pack in the night before (along with some YCL's that wanted to tag along for it)

Some cute shots of a few of the Beehives at camp above. We had a major wind and lightning storm the first night and some of them got a little scared. I came down the 2nd day for Travis' wisdom teeth and I heard that most of them slept in my trailer while I was gone that 2nd night because they were scared from the first night storm. It was windy the 2nd night but no rain or lightning.

We divided all the girls up into 4 tribes and they all had "buffs" (bandanas) depending on their tribes. They had to come up with a tribe name and then we had them paint a tribe flag which we hung in the trees around the eating area. The morning of the 2nd day, Sasha and Susie did a fun game! Susie gave a "survivor story" and then we had the tribes tie themselves together and they also were locked up with 4 bicycle chains. They rotated around to stations doing challenges and answering questions. If they got their question right, they were able to get keys out of a bottle to unlock their chains. Once they had completed all stations and had all of their locks unlocked, they were finished. They had to do things like paint fingernails, drink juice out of a baby bottle, move clothespins of a certain color down a line (I can't remember the rest) but all of it was done as they were tied together. I think they had a lot of fun. The above pictures were of the fingernail painting and the pictures below are just of various tribes sitting around together and moving along the course doing various things.

We had a slight mishap. One of the chains got wrapped around the wrists of two of the girls and the lock broke when one of the keys was inserted so they were stuck together. Luckily, one of the Priesthood leaders up there had something he could cut through it with.

More Beehives above.

Tent assembling above.

Flag painting above and below and the other picture above is the speaker we had the first night we were up there. She was (I believe) the first member of the church in Kosovo. She joined the church after working as an interpreter for the military when the war was going on over there. They built her a box to be baptized in because the river was filled with decaying bodies from the war (gross). Once she joined the church, her family thought it brought dishonor to them and they were going to kill her. She ended up escaping into Germany but they were still after her. She eventually came to the US and attended BYU. Her story was amazing and I will never forget it. She was a true Survivor. I think the Bishop is going to try to get her to come talk to the whole ward, it will be a great fireside so I hope he is able to arrange it.

I know this picture is kind of small, but it was just funny pictures of all the girls along with Brother Sheets with his grey ponytail attached to his hat. The picture of him is too funny, so I had to do this layout with the saying "One of these faces is not like the others." You know, like the old Sesame Street song.......... You can click on it to see it bigger if you want.

I missed the compass challenge course the 2nd day because of Travis' wisdom teeth and they did skits that night I believe. Oh, we had the girls drop their buffs and mixed up the teams with new buffs before that challenge.

I went back up on Friday morning since Travis was doing so well. The girls went on their hikes and I set up my Survivor obstacle course. It was fun although one of the girls fell and twisted her ankle. I felt bad, but I think she still had fun at camp anyway. For my course the tribes had to use their buffs as blindfolds and all link arms together with thier own tribe so that they stayed together. By the way, they had to drop their buffs for the 3rd time for this challenge and mix up tribes again. There was a course laid out (4 courses identical, one for each team) with orange cones and one person on the team that wasn't blindfolded had to give the team directions to get through their course. It was hard to hear their specific leader because all 4 team leaders were shouting directions at the same time. If they knocked over a cone, the leader had to direct them to pick it back up and set it back in the proper place.

After they got through that course, they could unlink and take their blindfolds off. Next they had to cross a balance beam. If they fell off they had to get back in line and cross again and they couldn't move on to the next station until their whole team was across. Liz thought walking across was too easy so she had them hop across and this is where the twisted ankle happened.

Next they had to line up across from each other and toss water balloons down the line and put in a bucket at the end of the line. They had to get 4 balloons to the end intact without popping them.

After that they had to shoot down 2 bottles with a sling shot and then tie two certification knots and then someone else had to untie those knots.

Next station had a cooler with a frozen t-shirt in it. They had to somehow thaw the T-shirt and someone had to put it on before moving on.

The next spot was BB gun shooting (which was a hit by the way). They had to shoot down 4 cans before moving on.

They then ran to the camp fire area and had to set up a teepee fire and a log cabin fire and then get a spark with flint and steel.

The very last thing was a crossword puzzle. The girls names were the answers for the puzzle and the clues were some unique thing about each of them. It was fun for them to get to know each other a little better.

Friday night, we had another guest speaker, Glen Judd, who came up and talked to the girls and had them do some challenges to find out a little more about themselves, whether they were a follower or a leader and why each of those things can be a good thing. We had our testimony meeting that night and it was amazing. I think everyone there (except the two girls who fell asleep) bore their testimonies and it was a great evening. I think everyone had fun!

Saturday morning they had a quick breakfast, took down camp and came home.

Temple Open House

For LaMarr's birthday this year, Sharlynn got us tickets to go with them up to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House. It was so beautiful! It was the boys first time going to an open house and they loved it. They were a little leary about having to dress up in church clothes in the middle of the week, but they were all glad they went. Travis was a little concerned that there wasn't an aisle for the girls to walk down but then decided that the sealing rooms with the mirrors made up for it! It was a great experience. We also loved the refreshments and the refreshment tent was beautiful too! I've never seen a tent with chandeliers and a player piano. Tyrel said it was every boy scouts dream! Endless cookies and water and enough room to play football in! I really don't think the scouts will be getting a tent like that anytime soon though. We went with Diane and LaMarr, Sharlynn, Adam and Kristi, McKenzie and Alexis. Then we met up with the rest of the family and had dinner together for the birthday.

So sad........no blackmail pictures!

Really, I'm glad! But I did want to get some puffy cheeked pictures. Travis had his wisdom teeth out on Thursday and it couldn't have gone better. He was really nervous. I think he was mostly afraid of them not being able to put him out. Our dentist has an oral surgeon and anesthesiologist that come to his often once a month and because Travis' roots were 3/4 of the way down, he wanted them pulled immediately. So, we scheduled him for the middle of girls camp (luckily we were having girls camp close so I was able to come down for the surgery and still be able to have fun at girls camp, more about that later). I left instructions for him to eat breakfast before 7:00 because he couldn't eat or drink anything for 6 hours before the surgery. He was too lazy to get up so he didn't eat or drink anything since the night before at dinner time. Not the best choice he found out later. We went to the office and they took him back. They tried getting the IV in, but since he hadn't been drinking anything, his veins were dehydrated and she had to fish around to find it. She told him in 30 seconds he would feel drowsy and after about 5 seconds he giggled once and was out. They had me leave once they had him out and I ran to the pharmacy to get his pain killers. It was a 20 minute trip total and by the time I got back he was waking up! Amazing! They pulled all 4 in less than 20 minutes. We were there longer getting him to wake up than the actual surgery. Once he was ready to walk, we got him to the car, drove home and got him situated with a movie. The only funny thing he did was tell me that he scored 4 goals. No idea why he was talking about that, but the nurse said that the anesthesia affects everyone differently, they have people singing, laughing, yelling, you name it. When Travis heard that before he went in, he said, "Mom, if I say anything mean or rude, I don't mean it." I thought that was cute that he was apologizing beforehand.

I sat down and wached Mission Impossible II with him so that I could change the gauze in his mouth every 15 minutes. After the first hour it pretty much stopped, but we kept going the full 2 hours they told us to in order to make sure that we got it all and that he wouldn't be swallowing blood and getting sick. I gave him his medicine and stayed down from girls camp that night to keep him on his medication schedule through the night. He said he didn't really hurt though. The next morning before I went back up to camp I got him up to give him his medicine and to take his puffy cheek picture and lo and behold, no puffy cheeks and no pain. He said he felt really good an his arm where the IV was hurt more than his mouth. He wanted eggs and sausage for breakfast. Even after I had bought gallons of ice cream for shakes. Who would have thought.

I thought maybe it would be worse the next day, but he appeared with the rest of the family Saturday morning to pick me and the trailer up from camp and was still feeling fine, in fact, he had gone to the "Stomp" at the high school the night before. It was simply amazing.

So, if you want to see what Travis looked like after getting his wisdom teeth out, I hate to disappoint, but you will have to scroll down and look at the pictures of him in the previous post because he just looked like Travis always does!