The many faces of Keaton

Not too proud to be a dork and pose with his mom's sunglasses in public. Friendly, happy-go-lucky pose at Multnomah Falls.
Down right intimidating!

Keaton is turning out to be such a fine young man. He is always willing to help around the house and I can always count on him to babysit for me when I need him.

He has such a great sense of humor, and sometimes he says things that are so funny I can't believe he made them up on his own. (I wish I had written them down!)

He recently was chosen to be in student leadership and that's been pretty exciting for him. He'll have the opportunity to travel to Eugene for a leadership conference this spring. Do you think it would be uncool to tag along?

I'm just wondering.

He's Alive!

Well, our pioneer came home today. He's tired and DIRTY, but doing well. He was one of the lucky few who didn't get any blisters on his feet. This picture of him is right after they finished. They were in the sun the whole time with no shade, but they finished at this park where there was three things they hadn't seen in four days: grass, trees and shade. They were so happy to be done! I went up to help them with their celebration. They had several different games and activities, but I have to say that the one I did was the most popular. I worked at the bath house where everyone could have their hair washed and the girls had their hair braided. When we got there and started setting up people gathered around and practically drooled at the sight of shampoo, even the men. One woman cried for joy when she heard that we were going to wash her hair. It's amazing the things we take for granted every day, but when it's taken away for awhile you come to really realize how lucky we are! They were arranged into "families" for the week with a ma and pa and about 8 kids. Keaton's parents were some really neat people from Umatilla, and he said that everyone got along really well. It was weird for me to hear him calling other people "mom" and "dad". I accused him of cheating on us. HAHA. We are supposed to hear a full report tomorrow of everything that took place. I don't know if you can tell, but his lips were VERY chapped. Why didn't I pack lip balm for him? Duh! So I let him use some of mine, then took it home with me. He still had 24 hours until he would come home. Hello McFly! What kind of mother am I?

Just so you can gain a full appreciation of how dirty he was, I've taken some close-ups of his clothing.




Yeah, I'm sure you really wanted to see that! But I was just so amazed at how dirty all these kids were! Keaton went straight to the shower when he got home.

Keaton's trek

This morning Keaton left for the trek. For those of you that don't know, it is a reenactment of the trek that the Mormon pioneers made across the plains in search of a safe place to live. They faced persecution and hardship and many people died. Lots of them didn't have animals to pull their carts so they used handcarts, meaning the people pulled them themselves. This is what Keaton is doing this week. It is for kids age 12 to 18, and Keaton turned twelve in March, so he was very excited to be included in it. Each person had to fit all their belongings (other than their sleeping bag) in a 5 gallon bucket. We were very surprised to find that he fit everything in easily and still had room to spare. So we threw an extra shirt in there and called it good. Here he is this morning dressed in costume and ready to go. Just one last look through the fridge is all he needed.

Then he did a quick scan of the horizon and he was off! What a goofball.

Please remember him (and all the other kids) in your prayers this week. They are walking 34 miles and it's supposed to reach 94 degrees by Friday. I almost feel like I shouldn't use my air conditioning in solidarity for them. Almost.