Ward Culture Fair and Trip to Denver

March has been a fun and busy month for us. Bryan had an Environmental Law Conference in Keystone, CO that he attended for about five days. He has learned more than he ever wanted to know about being "green" and "global warming". I met up with him just for the weekend. We went snowshoeing on Saturday and went to a big time lawyers' dinner that night at the Keystone Ranch Restaurant. We had a seven course dinner there and all the people attending (except us) were saturated with wine. It was an interesting dinner. Most of the courses consisted of names and items I'd never heard before. It's funny how people will spend hours on eating a meal.


Here are some pictures from our snowshoeing excursion. Both of us had a little bit of altitude sickness. We were twice as high up as SLC. Keystone is beautiful!



Despite the sign saying "Do Not Feed The Bears", Bryan felt it was his environmental duty to take care of the animals by feeding them an environmentally safe trail mix bar.

Bryan didn't learn that trees were good at the environmental conference and is trying to push them down. He's contributing to global warming.

Striking a pose after a fun hour of snowshoeing. It's basically hiking in snow. It was a good workout and fun to get out into nature on a sunny day.

Bryan strutting his snowshoes. Looking good Bry! We went for about a two hour excursion.

Next time we'll have to go snowboarding. It was fun hiking around in the deep snow. We had a good time!

WARD CULTURE FAIR

Our Winder 5th Ward is so culturally diverse! They started having a Culture Fair each March just to showcase all the different countries our ward represents. We have people from England, Germany, Austria, Norway, Mexico, Korea, Japan, China, and the Polynesian countries. Bryan and I are on the activities committee so we helped out a little with setup and food, but we also decided to sign up and show off some of our culture. Bryan displayed things from his mission to Lisbon South, Portugal. He has all kinds of knickknacks, maps, pictures, etc. He even wore his Portugal shirt. I displayed rugs, jewelry, baskets, etc from the Navajo Nation (mostly from Bob French Navajo Rugs :). It was a lot of fun to talk about our missions and heritage with the ward and share in their heritage.

The best part was the food! I have to say Mexico always has the best food! I made Navajo Fried Bread and had some honey for them to eat it with. There was food from Italy, Norway, Poland, France, Japan, and the Philippines, just to name a few. We also had a couple of Polynesians perform Hula dancing and other native dances. It was so fun and it really brought us closer as a ward. Our ward is so great at creating a "neighborhood" feeling too. They invited non-LDS people from our ward boundaries to come and join in the celebration. We had a couple from places like Kenya who decided to do a display. Our ward is great about taking care of everyone in our area and creating a safe neighborhood network.

All the flags represent all the countries that were displayed at the culture fair. Our ward is very diverse. It's fun to be around so many different kinds of people!

The Portugal side of the display. Bryan had fun talking with people about his mission experiences!

The Navajo side of our display, complete with Navajo Fried Bread and Rugs, courtesy of BFNR :)

Bryan and I in front of the display. We really enjoyed this activity! We have such a great ward!

The total display. It was fun to talk with people about the little bit of culture/heritage we have. It was even more fun to talk to others about their culture!

All in all, March has been a great month. I am now an advisor for the Young Womens group in our Ward. It has been fun to get back into YW and remember all the great times I had and also all the important things I learned at that time in my life. I get to go to Mutuals on Wednesday, Girls Camp, Youth Conference, etc. It will be a fun experience. We still teach our little 14-17 year old class too for Sunday School and are enjoying it more each time. We still have our struggles, but overall the class is great. I am grateful to be a part of such a fun, humble ward. There's a lot for me to learn from them. We are blessed to be around great people.