pioneer trek

Kyle and Kailey went on our stake pioneer trek a couple of weeks ago. They were in separate families. Kyle was with the Lambert family and Kailey was with the Turley family. They seemed to have a really good time. I must say that I was a little disappointed with the whole thing. I was hoping that is was more like the one that I did when I was a young teenager. I wonder who planned this? I don't want to rip on them or anything like that but basically all they did was pull the carts the whole entire time and then had only a few hours to be in "Zion". I appreciate all that went into planning it and for the time that my kids "parents" took helping them with this experience. Way back when.....when I went we got up at the crack of dawn met where and who our families were and started our trek. We did it as a stake and split families up according, so we weren't ward families but stake famlies. This was hard for me because I didn't really know anyone in my family all that well. But we pulled the cart until the wee hours of the morning and was given broth of some sort. We didn't have snacks the whole time. All we had was water, it was brutal. Not to down play my kids experience but they could eat the snacks when they wanted. I am guessing because that was all they did pull. So then the next morning we woke up packed up our cart and pulled a few more hours until we got to Zion. Then as a family we had to pick where we wanted our camp to be. Everyone ended up being in a HUGE circle once everyone arrived and then the rest of the time we had sooo many activities. We plucked chickens, shot guns, made soap, butter, chop wood it goes on and on. Then we would meet together as a family and read scriptures together. We slept together as families not divided girls, and boys. Well the boys had a tent in the family and the girls had a tent. They let older people in the wards go as brothers and sisters who helped chaparone. At night we would all meet down with the stake and dance and sing. We stayed during sunday which was of course the day of rest and we wrote in our journals, read scriptures. I don't know...we just really felt the importance of families and working together. We really bonded. I don't mean to be debbie downer just I was hoping for my kids to experience this and they really didn't. They thought it was alright but all they said about it was "all we did was pull the cart". Not what I was hoping them to get out of it. I guess maybe this is the difference between being in a city and small town. Maybe most people from the city wouldn't want to do those types of things. Ok enough of my ranting....I am posting some before pictures and some after pictures.