The Symons Family

I'm Finally a Blogger! WhooHoo!

Ok, Becky did a fabulous job of designing a Blog for me, so the least I could do is use it, right?! I love the header she gave me! That's a picture of my family's feet hanging off of the bridge at Catherine Creek park in Union, OR. We wanted our latest family picture to be unique, and I think we got it! Becky's pretty good, huh! Many families are photogenic enough to display their faces, but it takes real charisma and charm to display your feet!

Here are some pictures and highlights of my very exciting month!

Woops!

This is a picture I took of Del to remind me what my hubby's cute rear end looks like! A few weeks ago, I went to visit him on a job site and when I got to the home they were building, I saw him bent over in the doorway laying tile. Because I just can't resist teasing him, I tiptoed up and grabbed his butt! Imagine my surprise when he stood up and it wasn't Del! The other guy, Jeremy, was wearing the same kind of jeans, same ugly gray T-shirt, and baseball hat! We just stood there staring at each other for a while (which of us was more in shock?) and then I started to giggle and said, "I'm so sorry! I thought you were my husband!" He didn't even laugh! I was so embarrassed. He just kept staring at me and finally said, "Del's in the kitchen." I ran to the kitchen, gave Del his lunch, and got out of there! Unfortunately, one of our good friends is the contractor, and so he told everyone about it, and apparently after he got over his shock, Jeremy also thought it was hilarious, and he told lots of people, too! You can imagine that I've been teased a lot about men not being safe around me!

Twin Falls with the Phillips

Two weeks ago, we went with Becky's family to the Twin Falls Temple open house, and we had a great time. The temple was beautiful and it was a neat experience for the kids to be able to go through. We have great pictures, I'm sure, but they're all on Becky's camera!

After the open house, we took the kids to Shoshone Falls and Dierk's Lake. We had so much fun! I had no idea that Dierk's Lake even existed, and it's great! For only $3.00 a carload, you get to see the falls and play in a lake that has a lifeguard, diving board, wading area for small children and cliff diving for older ones. It's a great park! My pictures make it look like they were doing some really impressive (and dangerous) cliff diving off of the falls, but it wasn't too high. Just high enough that they were pretty nervous (except Devin), and it took some encouragement and peer pressure to get them to jump. I was so proud of them all! You'd never catch me doing that! I'm way too chicken!

Girl's Camp

I am the 1st counselor in the Young Women's presidency, which means I got to go to camp this year! Yeah! I always loved girl's camp, both as a leader and as a girl. It's so fun to get away from all responsibility and worry and just enjoy a good time with friends. Next year, Maren will get to go, and I'm so excited for her! I could only go for 2 days, so I picked the first two because I hate the clean-up part! Packing up tents and cleaning up greasy dutch ovens is not fun! We had just set up all of our tents and sleeping bags when a HUGE hailstorm hit! We went running for the

cabin, being pelted with hard marble-sized hail the whole time. It stormed for about 2 1/2 hours, and then the flooding started! One ward had 2 tents with all of their sleeping stuff inside start to float away down the path. They were able to salvage them, but most of the stake slept in the cabins that night. It was pretty exciting! You always want to have a good story to tell back home, and we got it! I took lots of pictures at camp, but I forgot to have any taken with me in them, so the only picture of me at camp is this one of my muddy foot that I took. Gross, huh! The girls thought it was pretty impressive! The only bad part for me about girls camp was going home. I don't know why, but I was born with the unfortunate inability to navigate. I think it's some kind of genetic defect or something. When it comes to directions, I become a complete idiot! I was coming home by myself and took the wrong road out of Victor, ID and ended up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming! As I pulled into the city, I thought, "Dang, this isn't Idaho Falls!" I asked someone in a grocery store if there was a shortcut to Pocatello, and he told me he was sorry, but I would have to cross the pass again and go back the way I had come. An hour and a half later, I pull into Victor, right where I had started! By this time it was 8:30, and Del told me just to go back to camp and sleep for the night because it's about a 2 1/2 hour drive, but there was NO way I was going back there to admit how stupid I'd been! I just kept driving! I still haven't told them!

Enrichment: Sniper Training

In our ward, we take our talents seriously! In the quest to better ourselves, we have taken up shooting! It's been fun! So far we only have 5 women in our group, but I'm sure that when they see how much fun we're having, they'll be lining up in hoards! After all, what woman is complete without her sniper training?! We had a policeman and a competitive shooter take us out to the police range. They brought us lots of different guns to try out, including an AK-47! I'd blog my terrorist pose picture (that's the kind of gun terrorists like to use) but I looked really stupid, and not scary at all. Bummer! Even though I was a lot more accurate with a rifle with a scope, my favorite was this Luger! I love handguns! I shot a golf ball with it and sent it flying! That was fun! It did take me 7 tries to hit the golf ball, though. The trainer told me my shooting was excellent and I had "tight clusters"! Sounds good, right? I think I upheld the honor of all of the Nielson girls! You'd be proud! I know the picture is small, so you'll have to take my word for it that my "cluster" was "tight"!