Best Day Ever!

 Some days are full of awesome busy-ness.

Saturday was one of those days.

I ran a spontaneous 10 miles (and could still-I've been taking it easy lately:))

Then I talked the family into a service project I signed us up for.

We went to pick up trash in Rancho Santa Margarita.

No one was excited about it.

Our ward leadership has encouraged us to extend ourselves by serving others and provided a bunch of options. I really feel strongly about teaching my kids to serve others. It's a great way to learn to think outside of yourself. But I was nervous about this being a terrible experience.

Luckily, a few days prior, Ben and I had watched Lift.

It is awesome, and a great motivation!

Anyway, we met the cute mayor of the city at the beginning, he is so fun. Then the kids each got little grabbers (they look like toys...). It got a bit more interesting to them...

I had bribed them with slurpees...

A sweet woman stopped on the road and offered the kids cans of apple juice and thanked them profusely, which made their day!!

It turned out to be FUN!

A couple of times during our trash picking upping Macey exclaimed "This is the best day of my life!"

We got a bunch of trash all around several blocks, got some exercise, had fun together, and served!

Then we went to our awesome waterpark by our house for a couple of hours. It's the "water bucket park" because a huge bucket dumps every few minutes and the kids love to stand under it and get pummeled.

Then we got to go to two baptisms.

I played the piano at one.

Macey's teacher was even at another one of the baptisms. (She has 10 members in her kindergarten class this year!! Crazy!)

Our stake has us write little notes to the kids while they are changing. I love their little notes:)

Pardon the non-editing.

Later that night I made Ben x-ray my thumb because I thought I broke it. I skipped all the thumb notes of the piano music I played that day:)

We got the pictures, and there's definitely something there...just don't know what it is!!

Here are some recipes you should try. Drive to the grocery store and buy the ingredients to try them now, they are amazing!!

 I love Mackayla's artwork. She's taken to writing letters in all of it lately, and asking me what it says:)