The Homestead

Every year my singles ward does a ward trip. The first year I went we went to Jackson Hole which was a blast. We camped out and went to Bar J's and river rafting. It was fun to be there with the ward and fun to experience a new place. Last summer we went to Martins Cove. We went with the two wards next to us and a a wonderful time. We danced, pulled handcarts, crossed the river, and made friendships along the way. This year we went on our ward trip early because we don't know how long our ward is going to be around with all of the ward changes coming up. It was a short trip, only Friday night and Saturday morning, but still fun. We went to the Homestead.

This place was also a new place for me to visit. It is up in Midway and takes about an hour to get there. A bunch of us met in Bountiful and then carpooled up there. It was a fun and entertaining drive. But I guess that happens when you ride up with two boys, one other girl, and no one really knows where you are going. You throw in some funny stories, entertaining music, and you are in for quite a ride. We made it up there around 7. We found our host and then went straight to the main house for dinner. We all gathered around and had hotdogs, burgers, chips, fruit salad, and dessert. Then the bishopric spent some time telling all of us how each of them met their wives and how long it was before they were engaged and married. Some of them accomplished all of this rather quickly. They had met, dated and were engaged in four weeks and then married two months later. The other couple had known each other for awhile but then dated four six weeks and then were engaged and married soon after. Only the bishop and his wife dated for longer then a few weeks. It was fun to hear the stories but I am not sure if it encouraged us to date or discouraged us to even try.

Anyways, after that we had the night to play. A bunch of us ended up going swimming. We played in the pool and in the outdoor hot tubs and mineral pool. And let me just tell you, it is not a very good idea to put 16 people in a hot tub that has a maximum occupants of 12. Lets just say that you all get very close when it is that full. When they kicked us out of the pools at 11 (and no they didn't kick us out for bad behavior, 11 is when they lock up the pools) we all decided to go back to the main house and play games. The games included Foosball, which I suck at, nerts, which I am pretty good at, and pit. We ended up playing games there until 2:30 in the morning when we finally decided that we might want to get some sleep. By the time we got back to our rooms and actually went to bed it was almost 3:30am.

After a night of weird dreams and waking up at random times during it I was more then ready to get out of bed at 7:30. We got up and got ready and were back at the main house by 8:30 for breakfast. Watching people you could tell that no one got any sleep and we all knew that it was going to be an entertaining day. After eating our mountain man burritos we gathered into groups to go on a picture scavenger hunt. Each group got a list of things to find and take pictures of. We had one hour to find all that we could and then get back to the main house. The things on this listed included a homestead pen, homestead employees, whole group going down a slide, whole group in a mirror, jumping on a bed, licking a fire hydrant, drinking water out of the stream, a team member stuck in a fence, American flag, a tractor, spring flowers, a couple holding hands, group hug, whole team on front steps, standing barefoot in the snow, chicken fighting, afterglow cd, a fox, a dear, a white horse, group in a tree, team member wearing Tyler's swim trunks, two people kissing and one had to be from your group, and so many others. All of the groups went running off to take pictures and see how many points they could earn. My group did pretty well and were quite creative when it came to things on the list. We ran around like crazy people jumping, singing, hugging, snowball throwing, climbing, and most of all laughing, just like I am sure every other group did as well.

When the hour was up we all headed back to the main house to count up points and go through everyone's pictures to see how we each did. The pictures were fun to go through and the comments on them were even funnier. My favorite comment was "you would rather lick a fire hydrant then kiss a team member?" It was said because so many of us had people licking fire hydrants but we didn't have people in our group's kissing. It made us all laugh. Needless to say that the group who did actually kiss won. After the fun of photos we all headed back to clean out our rooms and drive back home. I rode home with the same people I went up with so once again I was in for an entertaining ride.

All in all it was a great trip. A trip full of laughter, love and friendships. I think it is great that my ward does these trips and am glad that I can be a part of them. The rest of Saturday went something like this: Running errands for linger longer the next day, baking cookies, showering ( I still smelt like a pool), Picking up 3 six foot subs, also for linger longer, dinner with a friend, and then crashing after a long day with no sleep the night before.