Sunday, July 17, 2016

Naadam and Camping

This week Brooke went camping for the first time!!  She loved it too, though she did have a hard time napping in the tent... too many interesting shadows to try to play with.  Camping comes at the end of the week, so more on that later.


To start the week it was Naadam.  Naadam is one of the big Mongolian holidays.  They have big tournaments for the three manly sports, wrestling, archery and horse back riding.  I believe there is also some independence day/founding of the Mongol empire celebration mixed in with it as well.  When I came home from work Monica had hung up our Mongolian flag!

We also had Huushuur for dinner!  The ones we made are stuffed with meat or mashed potatoes, and then fried.  They were delicious!


We also had our own mini Naadam for FHE!  We started with the horse race since it was almost time for Brooke to go to bed.  She did a good job rolling the die on her own and she even won the race!  And to the victor go the toes!


Or I guess really a gold medal.  Brooke promptly bit her medal to ensure it was indeed made of gold when she received it.


On Tuesday I believe we tried out the pizza oven again, and the results were spectacular!  Two big improvements, we didn't make the crust as thin, and we used corn meal to keep it from sticking to the metal paddle thing.  It was amazing!


The work week was a little bit crazy.  We went to youth conference on Thursday night, and I worked a bunch of longs days to try to avoid having to use vacation hours.  The week kinda blurred by.

It was nice to go camping again.  I don't think I've been camping in quite a while, and it was very nice.  It was also pretty great to be able to see the sky so clearly out in nature, and it was almost a full moon so it was pretty bright at night too.  I could walk around without a flashlight most of the time.


On Friday we hiked up Mt Quandary, which is a 14er.  The youth had a great time, and it was very pretty on the hike.


I took this photo sphere at the top.  This picture isn't great, but I couldn't figure out how to get the real thing in here... sorry.


And here's me at the top!


Here's Brooke and Monica in the tent!  Brooke slept in her little bear outfit and it kept her all nice and toasty!  The first night we didn't use it and wrapped her in a lot of blankets.  The second night we used the suit.  It was a much better choice.


Brooke had plenty of time to play with Monica in the tent while I was on the hike.  Really she was probably supposed to be taking a nap, but as I mentioned before she did not do well with naps in the tent.


And here she is in the morning, loving camping life!


We even got to spend time playing together!  She sure loves a little toss now and then!


She sat in this chair happily playing with a water bottle while we packed up when it was time to go home.


And here we are, in the wild!


All in all youth conference was a great experience.  The youth all seemed to have a lot of fun, and we had good devotionals and spiritual moments, and the food was fantastic!

I hope everyone is having a superb week!  Till next time!

No comments:

Post a Comment