By Choice or Chance?

Last night for mutual we did an activity I called By Choice or Chance. The goal of the activity was to drive to the temple. But here's the twist: the car turned left, right or went straight based on the roll of a die. For our YW group, we split into two cars and saw who could get the closest. Since we live in the valley north of the Los Angeles temple, I decided that we should start down closer to it. We took the freeway down and once we got off on the exit to the street with the temple, we started rolling the die. I wrote a list out for both cars: 1 and 4 were left turns, 2 and 5 were right turns, and 3 and 6 were straight. It really doesn't matter which numbers you use. We had a few rules, like be safe (don't cut across traffic to make a turn at the next light), don't turn if the spirit tells you not to, and don't get back on the freeway. So whenever we came to a light or a stop sign we followed the directions on the die.

Our car ended up in a neighborhood a few miles away. Once we turned into the neighborhood we were stuck and just couldn't seem to get out. The other car said they stayed pretty close to the temple and passed it a few times, but just couldn't get the right number to turn into the parking lot.

After about 30 minutes of trying to get there, we called up the other car and we met up at the temple. We did a few activities at the visitors center and talked to the sister missionaries there. I meant to have treats there at the temple grounds, but I was running behind and wasn't able to pick anything up beforehand. So instead we had treats that I had someone else pick up for me back at the church building. There we discussed how the YW need to make the choice now to have the temple as their ultimate goal. They won't be able to go if they don't stay on the right path. Turning off the path can get you trapped in a neighborhood that is hard to get out of. Sometimes you come close to the temple but close doesn't cut it. There are lots of parallels to draw from this activity.

The girls had a lot of fun (at least we did in our car). They were getting so frustrated and realized within a few minutes how hard this was going to be. I think and hope that it made an impression on the young women. Getting sealed to my husband in the temple has been the greatest joy and blessing in my life and I am always grateful to know that our family will be together forever.

Combined-Movie Night: Wreck-It Ralph

Last night for mutual was our combined activity. We set up a big screen on the stage in our gym and brought in a projector and speakers to watch Wreck-It Ralph. Our YM president has a popcorn machine, so he popped some kernels for us. We also had drinks, M&M's and red vines.

People wore their comfy clothes and some brought pillows and blankets. The couches from the lobby were relocated into the gym also. It was a fun night and we ended up watching the whole movie.

Cupcake wars

Last night for mutual we had cupcake wars! We were inspired by this blog post. So we gathered together some ingredients. Some not pictured include strawberries, a few candy bars, nutella, and vanilla yogurt. 

We invited a sister from the relief society who is an awesome baker to help us out and teach us some cupcake decorating tips. We split into two teams and had each team pick 3 items that they had to use, and we specified that not all the ingredients could just go on top for garnish. Team one chose fruity pebbles, rolos, and bananas. Team two chose strawberries, yogurt, and nutella. 

Team one added rolos to bake within their cupcakes. These sunk to the bottom. 

Team one actually made two different kinds of cupcakes. The ones on the left are also theirs and they have fruity pebbles mixed in. The ones on the right belong to team two and have yogurt substituted in for most of the oil called for in a cake mix. 

Team two scooped out the centers of their cupcakes after they were cooked and filled them with nutella.

Here are the cupcakes ready for the judges. The purple one and chocolate one belong to team one and the strawberry one belongs to team two. Team two actually grabbed a few extra ingredients to top their chocolatey cupcake. 

Here are the cupcakes ready to go the judges. 

Sister Reed was our Relief Society helper. Her husband was nice enough to be a judge for us. 

Here is our Relief Society Sister Schneiter president deliberating over what score to give. 

We had the judges rank each cupcake on taste and presentation, and then combined the scores for an overall score. Team one's purple cupcake came in first for taste. Team two's strawberry cupcake came in first for presentation, and also won overall! 

Don't forget to clean up!

It was a really fun night that everyone enjoyed. All of the cupcakes turned out delicious!

Menchie's (Out of town)

Last night for mutual the girls went to Menchie's for frozen yogurt. I, unfortunately was out of town and could not attend. We originally had last weeks activity planned for this week, and a trip to the Getty Museum planned for this week, but since I had to leave town kind of unexpectedly, things got switched around and the girls ended up at Menchie's. Yum!

PPP Party: Patriotic

Last night for mutual it was the first Tuesday of the month, so we had our PPP party, this month with a patriotic theme for the 4th of July. We brought red, white and blue nail polish and let the girls paint their nails. We also used metallic sharpie markers to draw designs on our painted nails.

We played a round of Patriotic bingo, found here. We forgot to print the state cards, so we had to come up with all 50 states to write down and cut up before we played. We used M&M's as our pieces and snacked on those all night.

We also printed out these Patriotic conversation starters just for fun.

We also made these red, white and blue drinks. We're not big fans of pina colada flavor, so we used a white powerade drink instead that worked fine. Everyone was very impressed, even thought we only had small cups to make these in.

Since I'm over personal progress in our ward, I sat down with each girl individually and talked about how their goals are going. We are still working on our Book of Mormon Challenge. We are all still in 1st Nephi, so we haven't earned any rewards yet unfortunately. 

At the end of the night we went outside and played with those little poppers to get even more in the 4th of July mood. It was a great night and everyone had fun. 

Saturday Skip: Camping

For our combined activity this month, we went camping. I believe this is a yearly tradition for our ward. Last year they went camping on the beach. This year we went up to the Angeles National Forest to the Angeles Crest Campground.

We met at the church around 4, left around 5 and got up to the campsite about 6. One of the cars in our caravan ran out of gas a few campgrounds away from us. Luckily they found us, but not after we started worrying about them having gotten lost. My husband was coming up later and so he was able to bring up a gallon of gas with him so that they could get back down to a gas station.

We set up the girls in one tent on one side of the campsite and the boys in another on the other side. The leaders mostly slept in their own tents.

The girls pranked the boys by putting rocks under their tent after it was all set up. The boys made gifts for the girls on Tuesday night. They painted little first aid kits, gave a box of matches with a striker, made fire starter in an altoids tin, and also made fire starters out of cotton pads and parafin wax. We were pleasantly surprised.

Luckily we were able to have a fire up in the mountains. The young men were in charge of dinner. They brought chili and cornbread. For dessert we put marshmallows, chocolate chips and fruit in waffle cones and let it all melt together over the fire. That was delicious. The young women were in charge of breakfast. We brought danishes and muffins and also cooked bacon and eggs. All the food turned out really well.

We played mafia around the campfire after dinner. I think everyone enjoyed that. In the morning after we got all packed up we had a bocce ball tournament. That was also a lot of fun. We headed back down to town around 11 and stopped at In'n'Out for lunch before heading home. I would say the camp out was a success.

Adam (1 year old) loved camping

Bocce Ball

No mutual - Saturday Skip

Last night for mutual we skipped because all the youth in our ward are going camping on Friday. I'm excited!