Sasha's 5kay

by Sasha

The 5kay was awesome. It took a long time and effort but we did it.

And how we did it is we trained at my school this year we had a club called Girls On The Run. Every Wednesday we stay at school we check in at the gym and then we get snack go to the field. Whence we get to the field we talk about what the lesson is we do warm ups and then we run. We either run as a activity or just to run sepretly. We run for about 45 minutes after we run we do energy awards wich is we pick someone who worked hard or focused a lot then we go home. Every time at the end of the year we have  a practice 5kay and a real 5kay. Are practice 5kay was the jogathon and are real 5kay is may 20 and its at sugarhouse in salt lake

Whence you get there you get there  you have a row for your school are row was row 11 and my school that i go to is walden elementry. It took about 50 minutes to finish it was 2 times around the park.

And at the 5kay you have a running buddy to support you and the running buddy has to be 18 and older my running buddy was grammy who is my grandmother and she was so fun to run with and the5kay was so fun!

Sam's Trip to Yellowstone

by Sam

 As part of the last few weeks, my school usually does an expedition to somewhere cool. This year I went to Yellowstone National Park.  Here are pictures of some highlights.

We first went to Yellowstone bear world, a place more than an hour from Yellowstone (Confusing, I know). It's one of those drive through Safaris, and we got to throw food at the bears. Seen here is a bear sitting down.(The guide said they have learned that gets them more food, and he was very right)

The next day we went to see old faithful. You might have heard of it, its supposed to be famous or something. Its not obvious in the picture, but that is spewing water more than 50 feet!

Seen here is a bacterial mat. Those mixing colors are the result of different bacteria living in different temperatures.

Right here is a steam vent. It is very tall, as exhibited by the people standing to the right of it

Yellowstone really looks scary, almost alien

This is a picture of the Grand Canyon (Of Yellowstone). The Grand Canyon (Of Yellowstone) was carved by a river running through it. This waterfall is massive. If you look to the top right of it, there are people standing there.
Please note that The Grand Canyon (Of Yellowstone) is nowhere near Arizona or the actual Grand Canyon

I might be a dirty rotten liar, because this picture isn't actually from Yellowstone. It's from the Grand Tetons National Park. It was on the way home, so we went to visit.

This is a picture of a stream. It looks pretty.

 I think it was very fun to go to Yellowstone, and it was cool to see just how weird the earth can be

A Tale of Four Friends

Confession: I don't have a lot of friends. I'm an introvert. I have 4 kids. I work full time. I take kind of a long time to get to know. I value depth over breadth in friendship. And once I latch on to you, you're stuck with me for life.

The Beehive Tearoom, 2010

Once upon a time there were four friends. They met weekly and prayed for each other, held each other accountable, and walked side-by-side through a whole bunch of tough years. For reasons most of us can't comprehend, two of the four moved from Utah, but throughout the years they kept investing each other. And they kept investing in a joint vacation fund.

Somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, 2017

That's right, after seven years of investing $10 per month in our vacation fund, we finally took our fantastic, amazing, unbelievable girls' vacation!!!

And it was everything we dreamed it would be.

Five days. Four friends. Zero cooking. At least one nap daily. No cell service. Everything necessary for a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

It was a blessed, amazing time together. Deck boys brought us fancy drinks served in pineapples. We got sunburns. We read books (Books! With two hands, two eyeballs, and nobody needing anything from us! Who does that?!? Not us!). We prayed. We laughed. We cried. We ate. A lot. We went to the spa. We drove a jeep around Cozumel. We ate ceviche and etouffee and beignets. We snorkeled. We saw dolphins and a whale. We watched the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico.

Seriously. Who does this? These girls!!! Backed by amazing families who make it all possible.

Stop1 - New Orleans! We got photobombed by a bear. Who thought photobombing us was hilarious. Which we thought was hilarious.

Beignets!

Stop 2: Cruise ship! Pic from our balcony.

Bingo and other festivities upon the ship

Stop 3: Cozumel!

Back on ship - formal night and more gallivanting

It's hard to fully express my gratitude for this trip. For these women. For time and money for such decadence. For families that love us enough to keep things rolling at home while we run away. For 9 years of friendship and counting. For sisters.