This last weekend, Robert and I got the opportunity to go to Youth Conference with our new Stake and be grandparents! Last year they went on a 2 day Trek and now they had arrived in the Muddy River and were going to settle! When we arrived at the place we chose families and we ended up with 5 girls and 5 boys in our family. We had Hallie in our family and she chose a few of her friends and then most of them she didn't know! They had us camp in a plowed field that was really hard and full of dirt chunks. We slept with the boys on one tarp and the girls on another and then Robert and I in the middle. After we got settled we had a meeting all together with all of the families and then we had to go and prepare dinner! What an experience! For dinner we had to get our chickens, kill our chickens, pluck and clean our chickens and then cook and eat our chickens! I meant to keep the instructions they gave us as how to do this, because it was very funny, but i can't find it. It went something like this: "To kill the chicken take a knife and stab it through the neck and then let it bleed. It will take patience because it may take some time to bleed completely and be dead. After it is dead, grab by feet and dip in the scalding pots several times and then take and pluck feathers off. Then skin it clean it and cook! " It was a lot more descriptive than that but i can't remember it all! I never thought the kids would go for it but we had a bunch of adventurous boys and they did the whole thing and the chicken actually tasted good. That was another surprise because i thought for sure that none of the girls would eat it but all of them did and it tasted good! After all of this, they had a square dance and taught them several dances and all of the kids had a good time dancing with each other! That night was so cold, about 42 degrees probably, and i froze all night and couldn't sleep. It didn't seen to affect the kids though because i didn't hear a peep out of them all night. In the morning we awoke and were to fix lovely oatmeal and ash cakes which none of the kids wanted to eat and so we ate the smores from the night before! YUMMY!!! Throughout the whole day we went to different stations to learn how to make soap, butter, candles, bread, how to purify water, make ropes, what plants to eat, how to plow a field and we helped clean up a pioneer cemetery. We even had to shoot for our dinner and hit a target in order to eat. The kids were so hot and tired and hungry because we didn't get to eat until 2:00! All in all everyone had a good time it was just a little long on Saturday. We finally got done around 5:00 and headed for home! I was going to take some more pictures but after this one of Hallie - my batteries went dead! FUN TIMES!!!
