The Coolest Pictures Ever

I am so happy with the pictures that my new camera takes. I got some really cool ones at the football game, and of sunflowers in our backyard, and, of course, Zoee.


Nathan is number 34. I'm sad, because his practice jersey was number 49, but they changed his number for the game. My dad would always call Nathan 49, even when they weren't practicing football. And 34 just doesn't sound as cool!

The coach's pre-game pep talk was awesome. He pretty much said, "We are going to win! No matter how big they are, or how mean they look, we can win. We are going to beat the snot out of those losers." And that was it. It was hilarious! The not so great part was that nobody must have been listening, because they lost by a lot (I don't know how to play football, so I can't say exactly how much.)

I spent about half an hour when I first got my camera, walking around outside and taking pictures of flowers. Here are my favorites:

Zoee is getting too big too fast! I wish that puppies grew at the same rate as babies, where they are so small and adorable for about a year, instead of a month. She is 22 inches long from in between her eyes to her rear, and she weighs 14 1/2 pounds! She has about a million chew toys and we have sacrificed a few balls and teddy bears to her. She will find an action figure and rip off a leg or something before we find her. Once we take it away, she finds it again and won't leave it alone, so we give up. It is so cute, because she loves to cuddle when she is sleeping. When she isn't sleeping, that's a whole different story! She chews on your hair, earings, wrinkles in your clothes, fingers, toes, bracelets, and her favorite, my glasses when I'm wearing them. But other than that, she is a super smart dog and is finally getting the hang of potty training.

This is our favorite picture of her . . . She really isn't that chubby, but the picture was taken in an odd angle.

I GOT A NEW CAMERA!

This is my amazing new camera. It is a Fujifilm s700, if anyone was wondering. It is a 7.1 megapixel and has a 10x optical zoom and 15 different settings, plus adjustable shutter speed and aperature. My dad and I have been looking at cameras since Lake Powell, because Uncle Matt had a really cool waterproof one that I wanted to get. But he found this one, which is way better. We were kind of stupid when we bought it, though, because we didn't realize that there is separate shipping for the memory card and the camera. So we paid 10 extra bucks for the memory card to come in two days when the camera came in a week, but we didn't realize it. As soon as it came, I laid down on the living room floor for about an hour and read the instruction manual.

The camera is great! It takes really good pictures. I was a little disappointed because I thought that it only zoomed in as far as my mom and dad's camera (which is a 4x optical zoom) but it goes a little bit farther and the pictures are about 10 times clearer. The only thing I really don't like is that it takes four batteries instead of just two. But then again, it runs for about 5 times longer than my mom and dad's. When I took a bunch of pictures at Nathan's football games, I thought that they weren't turning out. They were a little fuzzy and not very bright, so I was really disappointed. But I came home and put them on the computer, and they are perfect. So it was just the LCD screen fooling me. But I don't care how great the LCD screen is, as long as the pictures are good on the computer!

MY CAMERA IS SO COOL!

Zoee - The New Baby

WE GOT A PUPPY! I am so happy! She is a yellow lab/white lab mix and she is so adorable! We have had her for two days and I probably already have 100 pictures of her on my computer.



When Kipper passed away, we didn't want to get a dog right away because our yard wasn't finished and we would be going on vacations, and it was just too much to take care of. But we've been keeping an eye on KSL over the summer, and now that our yard is finished we've been looking a lot more often.



My mom was looking and we saw two litters of yellow labs in Riverton. Since we were going up there the next day anyways, we went and visited them. The first litter was giant for only six weeks old. They were cute, but they were hyper and chewing everything, plus they were $450.


The second litter was super mellow, adorable, and only $200. I had taken my money, knowing that my mom hadn't and she would fall in love with a puppy. So, I bought her and I'm waiting for my mom to pay me back.



Since my dad wasn't there to pick her out, we decided that we would let him name her. We were calling her different names all day, trying to decide which ones fit her best. It was between Zoee, Molly, and Lucy. After scriptures that night, my dad announced that her name was Zoee. It was a big deal!



She slept in my room the first night, and woke up four times to go potty, and then woke me up at 6:00 wanting to play. The second night, all of the Young Women came over and slept in a tent in our backyard, so she started off in Morgen's room. But Morgen ignored her when she woke up, so when my dad brought her out at 1:00, and we were all awake, I brought her into the tent. In the morning, each girl said the exact same thing - "It was so cute! She came and slept with me and cuddled with me!"


When she is awake, she is super hyper and wants to bite at everything. But when she is sleeping, tired, or just woken up, she is really mellow and loves to cuddle. She loves being outside, too. She whined at the door one time, and everyone was so excited that she was whining to go potty. But we let her out, she trotted over to the shade, and plopped down. This morning, she slept underneath the playset for about two hours!


Once she gets a little older, my mom and dad want to breed her with a boxer and get boxador puppies. Some litters are adorable, and some of them are hidious, so we're hoping for the adorable kind! Zoee is so cute that there is no way her puppies would be ugly.

Zoee is pretty small. That's lucky, because we don't want a huge dog. We want her to be fairly small because then she can be an inside dog and not take up the whole space.







Gus isn't quite sure what to think of her. When we first brought her home, he went to the far edge of the window sill. While she was sleeping for an hour, he slowly edged himself closer, eyeing her the whole time, until her was next to her cage.



When we brought her home, Morgen called the entire neighborhood and told them that we had a puppy. So of course, everybody came over. Later, Morgen couldn't stop whining about how everybody had come over, and they wouldn't let Zoee rest, and they were all hogging her, and she needed to get used to her new house. It was pretty funny!

Girl's Camp

Girl's Camp was so awesome! Everything was so much fun! I have never felt the spirit so much in my entire life! We had devotionals with guest speakers (such as the Osmond's second generation and Reno Mahe's wife) each night and did tons of service projects and crafts.


This was part of first aid certification - we had to learn how to tie a bunch of different bandages.

Canoing was so much fun. We weren't allowed to swim in the lake because of a 'bacteria that gives you a rash', but a lot of people 'accidentally' tipped their canoes over.

The skits were awesome. A camp joke was "Do you like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise better?" because two friends were arguing over them. Their skit was hilarious! One girl was dressed kinda crazy, and she was Tom Cruise. Another was cool, and she was Brad Pitt. They were on a TV show and they were being interviewed. These are all of Tom Cruise's kids!

The priesthood's skit was awesome. They did a retelling of David and Goliath. The guy with the hoody is Gangster Goliath, and the guy with the pink feather thing was fighting him. They were doing a thumb war. A bunch of crazy dressed good guys came out and did different things to fight with Goliath until David shot him with a bow and arrow because he 'forgot his sling'.

The hike was so pretty! We did the three mile hike, and we thought it was pretty hard until we saw the third and fourth years on the side of the mountain doing their five mile hike! We were lucky that we had overcast for four days.

This is me and our 2nd counselor, Sister Dieterle, by the lake.

We did a bunch of service projects. One of them was shoveling woodchips to different areas of the camp ground and spreading them out. It was pretty fun, if you can believe it.

Me and Jenessa in our bunks. I was on the bottom and Jenessa was on the top.

These are the YCL's getting ready to canoe. They are so cool!

This is me, Maika, and Kayana eating dinner around the campfire with the bishop. Almost all I can remember of that night is playing "Spoons and Forks" and bawling around the campfire during our ward testimony meeting.

The zip line was so fun! I wish that it was longer, though. The worst part was walking across the beam on the right side of the picture. You had to climb up a pole on the other side and walk across the beam to get to the place that you actually zip line.

This was at the Challenge Course. We did eight different rotations, and this one was pretty cool. There were two cables hooked onto one tree, and on the other end, they were hooked onto different trees. You and your partner each stood on a cable and held hands, then slowly walked the other side, getting farther and farther apart. It was really hard, but fun!

This is Kelli Day, my mom, and Melissa Thayne.

The food was so good! We had a camp cook, and she was amazing. We were eating gourmet every night!