We had a fun activity Wednesday evening.  The girls had wanted to go hiking so we decided to take them to Donut Falls.  

We had a pretty cool experience  Monday evening.  I was outside talking to Stacey and she said Steph wanted to go for a walk. So we met up with her and walked around the Taylorsville park several times.  Then as we were heading home,  we saw Darilyn with some people there on 5400 talking.  We walked up to them and she said 'This is so strange, I was just telling them that I used to be a young women leader, but the other leaders are really great...then you guys walked up!'  She was talking to this girl we have been trying to get to come out to young womens for  several months.  The ward missionaries have been over to their house lots of times and they keep telling me about this cute girl named Madison that we need to get involved.  We have reached out to her many times, have done a "heart attack" on her front porch, and always invite her to everything, but she hasn't come out.  I think Darilyn is her mom's visiting teacher so she was taking her a pie (she's so great like that)  Anyway, we introduced ourselves to her and her family that were all standing out there and told Madison about the hiking activity we were having this week.  She seemed really excited about it, but we didn't really think she would come because of the past experience we had had with her.  Well the next day, I get a text from her asking questions about the activity.  (she had thought it was at 6 am?)  We text back and forth about some different things and she said she would for sure be there.  We found out later, that Calle had gone the extra mile to make her feel welcome and had picked her up for the activity.  She is an amazing young woman. I think it meant more to Madison to have her peers reach out to her.  She seemed to get along great with all the girls and fit right in.  I was so happy to have her there.  I hope she had a good experience and will want to come out again.  We were thinking afterward how it almost seemed like the whole situation with us all meeting up like we did just at the right moment had all been set up...I do believe maybe it was, but not by any of us!  Heavenly Father is truly mindful of each of us!

Steph text us and said she wouldn't be able to go cause Jeff wasn't getting home till later and she wouldn't have anyone to watch Connor.  I was mentioning it to Kelley and Katie said "I'll watch him" She is such a sweetheart!  Steph was sure grateful and happy about that and brought him over about 5:30.  She is kind of a nervous new mom and hadn't left Connor with anyone except Jeffs mom, so she was giving Katie all kinds of instructions on how to take care of him.  Kate was sweet with her though and just went along with everything she said, reassuring her he would be fine.

We had a little bit of a hard time finding the road to turn off to Donut Falls.  I had never been there before and I was driving with Stephanie and she didn't really know where it was either.  I told my phone to help us find it and it took us to a place on the road up to Brighton where there was a little place to pull off.  "you have reached the destination!"  Ha!  We just kept on driving by thinking it must have a road to turn off or a sign or something.  I tried to get a hold of Tina or Stacey, but didn't have service.  Then we drove past a road where you could turn off and Stephanie said " I think that's it!"  So just then one of the girls got service and called Stacey and she said she had gone too far and was coming back to the road Stephanie had thought was the right one.  

So we all went down this road and came to some signs that said Donut falls and other hikes were up ahead.  There were a ton of people there...so many there was no place to park, so we had to park up the road a ways and walk to the start of the trail.  It had been kind of rainy all afternoon and started to sprinkle a little as we started out.  

Charity and Cami both brought their kids and weren't worried about taking them on this hike at all, so I figured it wasn't going to be very hard.

It's not a very long hike at all and I think within about 30 minutes, we were there....along with about 50 other people!  The trail was seriously packed with people!  It was kind of trecherous walking across the river on rocks and logs cause everything was pretty slippery from the rain.  Some of the girls started climbing up the really steep rocky part before the falls and we had to holler at them to come back!  It was really dangerous and we didn't want to be responsible for any of the girls falling.  They complained  a bit, but we were just like absolutely not...not on our watch.

 A cute girl offered to take a picture of all of us.

 As we were walking along, we ran into  Tori with a cute guy.  He had just got home from his mission last week.  Tori said she had written to him on his mission but hadn't met him till he got home.  She is such a cute girl.  While we were talking to them, it started to thunder and lightning.  It felt like the storm had moved right over us.  A minute later, it was pouring buckets on us.  We hurried down the rest of the mountain and made sure everyone was down safe, then made a run for the cars.  It was really pouring now and we were all drenched.

 Pretty drive down the canyon and a beautiful sunset.

We took the girls to dunkin donuts  to finish off the night.  These last few activities are pulling at my heart...I'm going to miss these girls and the association I have with these amazing women.