Trek part 1

(this is really long because it's for my journal)

The post a day in May was supposed to get me back on track. No such luck. We've had kind of a crazy last couple months. First of all, our ward set up a trek. It was the week of the 4th of July. Toby and I were back and forth on whether or not we were going to go, but ultimately decided that it would be a really good experience for our family. When I say a ward trek, I mean everyone in the ward that wanted to go. This wasn't just for the youth, it was for the whole family. So, we packed up our buckets and hauled our kids off on the ward trek.
Before I get into the whole trek experience, I'd like to preface it a little with what has been going on with me. I have been completely exhausted lately. I finally decided to go to the doctor and have them check my thyroid and stuff. This was about 2 weeks before trek. I also had been holding off on getting pregnant again to make sure my body was ok. I took a pregnancy test and it was negative so off I went to the doctor. The blood work came back and the doctor told me that my adrenal glands are not keeping up with my body. Basically, I was supposed to take it easy, sleep as much as possible, not really exercise and let my body catch back up with my life. Then, two days before trek, when I still hadn't started my period, I took a pregnancy test again and it was positive.

Then we left on trek.

Oh, I forgot to add that Saturday night before trek, Zeke had night terrors all night long and then Sunday night before we left, the kids were up every 20 minutes except for 2 hours between 2 and 4am. Monday we left early and rode a bus for about 6 hours to the campground. We set up our tents, explored the area a bit, had a fireside by the missionaries, and did some line dancing. It was a fun first day but I was already pretty tired from the lack of sleep from the previous 2 nights. We finally got to bed that night around 11pm and were woken up bright and early at 5:30am.

Tuesday was our 14 mile hike up rocky ridge. We were blessed and cursed to be in a really strong company. There were two other families with us that had a lot of really strong teenagers. I say we were blessed because they were really strong and we were cursed because they were too strong. They took off practically running the trail. We were put at the front of the group and eventually they gave us the medical cart to pull along with our other two to help slow us down. Both my kids rode in the handcarts the whole time. Well, almost. Zeke was happy as can be sitting, sleeping and spraying water during the 14 mile ride. Porter was not quite as happy. If you know me, you know that I can't just stand by and watch other people do work for my family without helping, so against the will of my doctor and probably what I should have been doing, I pushed and pulled the first 7 miles. I was starting to get pretty exhausted. Physical things have never really been hard for me. I've always had enough will power to just push through it and keep going. At least that's what I thought it took. Just will power. Sometimes, however, our bodies are not in the position to do what our mind and spirit and telling it to do. My body was shutting down. Porter had finally fallen asleep in the wagon so I took a break from pushing and decided to just take it easy for a bit. Unfortunately, just then we hit this dip where we had to push the carts through this huge mud puddle and up a hill and Porter decided to wake up screaming. I pulled him out of the cart to call him down and he immediately fell asleep on my shoulder. Like I said, my group was a blessing and a curse. By the time I grabbed Porter and he fell asleep, my group was gone. Therefore I had no choice but to carry Porter the last mile into the lunch spot.

At that point I was done. I broke down crying (because that's what I do when I'm completely exhausted) and Porter was awake now and screaming and inconsolable. The medical guys came to check on me at that point. I decided it was best to tell them that I was pregnant and let them know what was going on. I must have looked pretty pathetic because they told me to go get in one of the cars. Do you have any idea how much that went against every fiber of my being?!! I don't give up! I don't cave in on hard things! I realized, however, that I was learning a hard lesson in humility and that it was stupid to do this to my body right now. I cried and cried and took Porter and went and sat in the car. I only made it 8 miles.

One of the priesthood leaders in our ward was checking in on us and asked if I would like a blessing. I said yes and in the blessing he said that I would have no side effects from that day. That turned out to be an amazing comfort to me later on when I miscarried. But more on that another time.

A couple of spiritual highlights for me during Rocky Ridge: One of the families in our group had their grandma with them. She was the oldest one on trek and decided to take off ahead of us to try to make some headway before we caught up. We caught her at the top of a hill and she had a little fall. We put her in our handcart with Porter. It was my privilege to pull her up Rocky Ridge. At the top of Rocky Ridge, the missionaries there stopped us and told us some of the stories of the handcart company. They told one story about a small woman who was determined to take her failing husband (large husband) with her to Zion. She put him in a handcart and pulled him up that ridge with the help of angels. Then the missionaries had us turn and see a lady in our ward pulling her big husband up the ridge. She didn't make it more than 2 minutes before her children and other primary children couldn't stand to watch it anymore and ran down to be her angels to pull her up. It was amazing.

After everyone dragged into camp that day, and the cars finally got un-lost and found our campsite, we had dinner and set up camp. A few devotionals later we finally fell into our beds around 11pm exhausted.