Westminster Ward Youth Conference 2009

We had a fantastic experience last week. It had taken so much planning and effort to arrange the meals, the drivers, the host homes, the activities that we were all worried about it actually coming to fruition as planned. We had 27 youths join us on Monday morning, for our first activity, a service project, at the dry pack cannery. They had taken orders from ward members for food storage items and collected the money, we filled the orders and returned to the church. Where we had a taco dinner and Family Home Evening, with two speakers. Then their favorite activity, Dodge ball!!! They are crazy kids, and with a 30 something Bishop they were in Heaven!!!

Tuesday we went to a water slide in Irvine, and got our first dose of H2O and sun.
Then a spaghetti dinner at the church and more volleyball, until 6p.m. when we headed to Angel Stadium for a baseball game.

By now we had two more join us so our number was 29 youths and about 10 leaders.

On Wednesday we had another service project at the beach, just picking up trash for about an hour then playing and lunch at the beach. Some of the kids aren't really into water sports all that much but they were pretty good sports. The kids were just loving the down time in between activities at the church gym. So back to the gym until the next activity, which was a guest speaker and bar-b-que at the Davis's house.

One of our most special guest speakers was Brother Chris Jones from Newport Beach. As a hobby he searches for and buys church historical artifacts. He has purchased two of the first 5000 original copies of the Book of Mormon, which were published in 1830. He has a tremendous knowledge of church history, a great testimony of Joseph Smith and of the miraculous events that lead up to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. He brought his precious treasures to share with the kids and even let them handle them. (These books are worth at least 90 thousand dollars each)


When Brother Jones was testifying of the restoration of the gospel, of the wondrous and heroic acts of Joseph Smith and of the miraculous gift of the Book of Mormon the youth were all very attentive and reverent. As you can maybe see we were in between swimming events, first the beach all day, and before a back yard bar-b-que, and swim party. They were hot, tired and anxious to eat, but very interested. One young man said in his testimony on Sunday that this speaker and his testimony was his favorite part of the whole week, and we did some really fun stuff.

Our sweet Paige, excited to be photographed with the original copy. They all got a whole new appreciation of the Book of Mormon. As you can see it is a substantial book, in size, and only cost $1.75, the price was set by Moroni himself.

Hunter, being shown how to handle the book. All of the kids were very appreciative of Bro. Jones time. He stayed and had dinner with us and even hung out for another hour or so.

Here is a picture of the two original books and Kenny is holding a reproduction of the originals.

Wade Does Like Grandpa Gene After Aall

The other night we got to have some one-on-one time with Wade. The other three kids went to Fallon with Dorothy. Gene always says, "Wade really doesn't like me very much," but we have proof, that he really does.

It doesn't really look that Gene is all that into playing here but they had had a lot of fun running and chasing each other around.

I think Wade still has a lot more energy and it looks like he got he best of Grandpa.

Julie's Birthday

Tonight we celebrated Julie's birthday at Buca di Beppo, a really fun italian resturant where you order family style. We all went, minus the 3 older Stockard kids, who are in Fallon.

I asked our professional photographer, Kevin to take some pictures because he was at the end of the table by my purse with my camera in it. Sadly he only got a few good shots. I can't understand why, we're all so photogenic.

Her's the birthday girl with her complimentry birthday cake and candlabra with candles for blowing out. There's cute Wade at the end of the table, he really didn't like being that far away from the action.

Brandi and Dane, horsing around, imagine that, guess who won . . . Dane says that he won, because his mom quit. I wonder what his mom would say.

Aren't they all so cute?

This was the first picture Kevin took,

I just couldn't resist when they both wanted to sit on my lap.

Swimming fun

Today I had 6 of our 10 grandchildren together for a few hours and of course they wanted to swim. You can see that Ema and Dane have already spent a full week in the sun at their annul summer trip to Clearlake with the Romberg family. You can see that we aren't too worried about those two getting sun burned. But the poor Stockards got a pretty bad sun burn last week on one of the very first really sunny days, that they spent at the park. That caused getting into the pool this summer to get off to a slower start. We wait all winter for the few months that our pool gets a really good work out. We have so much fun and have some really good swimmers. On this day we only had Wade (2) who was a non-swimmer. We still need to keep careful eyes on Abby and Ella too, but they were home with their mommy today.

This is one of the only pictures that I got with Dane and Weston. They were all over the pool horsing around, and I guess I was mostly focusing on Wade. I need some more practice with my new camera.

Here's cute Payton who's 4 1/2, she can swim "just like Arial" really, she's a great swimmer, she's safe in any part of the pool.
Ema was really cute with Wade, he loves the pool so we really need to get him safe in it quickly.
Here he had jumped in from the side, gone under the water and up into Ema's waiting arms.
There's Kylie, she was hard to capture too. They don't hold very still when they're playing in the pool. Someone is always within arms length of Wade, right now!
There's Kylie and Payton just having fun in the sun in Grandma's pool.
Waders, hopefully before the end of the summer we will have him swimming on his own, that is between good swimmers, of course.
Ema (12) is growing up too quickly. Here's another picture of the boys, Wes (6 1/2) is closer to Ema and Dane (11) is further out. Boy those two could pass for brothers. Wes is catching up to Dane in size very quickly too.
Now for any of you who may be thinking, "they have 10 grand kids and have a pool in their back yard, man they are just asking for an accident!" We do have a fence that is normally around the pool making our backyard and home with a pool safe for our loved ones!!! It is removable, but it's normally up and keeping everyone safe!

My Own Lap Top

I'm so excited because I finally have my own lap top. Dustin and Julie are such computer techies, and they are always up-grading their systems, so they offered me one they no longer needed. They spent a lot of time fixing it all up for me with programs that they thought I would like and be comfortable with. As with anything new there's always a transition period. I have Gene's lap top all fixed up to my liking with my games and pictures and favorites. Much to his dismay, he's been so kind to share with me and let me play when he needed to work. But now I have my own and need to fix it up too. It will be a challenge but I'm sure I can do it.
Gee thanks you guys, you're the best, I love you both!

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The main reason for going to Utah this time

Another Duclos wedding!

This is my beautiful sister Laurie and her wonderful husband Jerry. They have 6 boys, Kendall is number 4. All these years of adding boys to their family, now they have added 4 beautiful and sweet daughter-in-laws and 3 darling grand daughters. The girls actually out number the boys now in the Duclos household. Yea!

Newly returned, Chinese speaking missionary Kendall (Nov. 08)

and his darling bride Megan,

at the Timpanogos temple, aren't they are just beautiful!

More pictures from "Zion"

This deer was walking along side us for a long way on the "River Walk" trail. It took a while but I finally got a picture of him. When I was finally focusing on him, Gene said, "Holly go closer to him!" So of course I started walking closer and all these people who I hadn't noticed before moving toward the deer, yelled, "Mam, don't scare him away!!!" I was really embarrassed. But I got the picture.

Here's a cute pose of Greg and Jess.

Gene and I as we started out on our water trek, it was fun!

Trip to Utah

Last week we went to Utah for our annual Summer trip. Greg and Jessica meet us in St. George for two days. We went to Zion National Park and hiked in the narrows, and went to the Tuacahn Amphitheatre where we saw Footloose. We had a great time with them. Aren't they so cute. They left their kids in Provo so they could really enjoy the time together and with us hiking and just being grown-ups without the kiddies for a few days.
Here we are in the "Narrows", I had heard about it and always wanted to go and see the wondrous sights, but we were always in such a hurry to get up to see everyone in Provo we never stopped to enjoy the journey much.
Greg was so cute, offering to hold my hand while we walked along in the water. The water was pretty cold but worst of all there were grapefruit size and larger boulders all over the river bottom. The walking was really slippery and scary. While we were hiking to the river there were all these really pro-looking hikers with walking sticks and special shoes, and I kept thinking why would you need a walking stick? Well now I know, next time I will take or rent a walking stick. It would have really helped stabilize the experience. Instead this time I had my wonderful son, holding my hand. It was an awesome feeling, remembering and reflecting about when I held his hand and worried about keeping him safe when he was little. Now that he towers over me and is so strong he kept me safe and from falling down in that slippery cold river bottom. It was a really beautiful experience in so many ways.
So many beautiful sights and so many pictures of them, which ones to share?