My 3rd Speech with Speechcraft

This speech was fun to give and I loved how it reminded myself of the priceless memories we made this past year!! God is an Awesome God!!

Priceless Memories

Many of you know the commercial on TV for MasterCard, where it shows or mentions events or objects with a dollar value placed on it. Then at the end of the commercial it has something that is priceless. Well I want to share with you about some of the priceless memories our family made on summer vacation last year. My facebook status on July 13 was this:
Days gone = 24; Miles driven = 6,289; pounds gained = ??XX)#(%(%; money spent = don't want to know; Memories made = PRICELESS

Our vacation started out without my husband Brad, because of the responsibilities at work he could not be gone for 24 days. My mother left with my 3 boys and I and we drove to Arborg, Manitoba to Grandpa and Grandma Plett’s house. What a blessing for my mother to accompany me on this 1100 mile drive. She was there for 5 days and then flew home. We spent the first 10 days partying with G&G, Aunts, Uncles, cousins and friends. Brad then flew into Winnipeg and then the second ½ of our vacation started. We headed WEST. Brad has 2 single sisters living in Red Deer, Alberta so we arrived there. We made many priceless memories but I want to just highlight a few from our time in the West.

First were our Geocaching adventures. Brad’s new found hobby of geocaching fast became a family favorite as we found 22 during our travels. 4 in Manitoba, 1 in Saskatchewan, 9 in Alberta, 3 B.C. 1 in Wyoming, 3 Montana and 1 in Utah – we drove 150 feet into Utah to get this cache just to say we were in Utah and could cross off this state for a find. The most memorable geocache adventure took place in Radium Hot Springs, B.C. we were there just for one night before we were heading back the U.S. and were going to have to say goodbye to the boy’s favorite aunties. Brad’s GPS showed a cache its name “slippery Slope” close to our motel. We arrived at a campground and the GPS took us on a hike to Sinclair falls. What made this memorable is the hike to see this amazing hidden falls, what a beautiful reward after climbing up muddy trails and down slippery slopes all with mosquitoes buzzing all around you. It also was memorable because Bryson hiked the entire way. Because of his disabilities he does not normally go on the rough terrain geocache hunts, but he did this one, it was hard but he did it!! And yes, finding the cache that was cool too.

A second highlight was being flexible and having fun. I am a perfectionist and slightly a control freak so I like to have things planned out and structured, but not on this trip and how much fun we had. On one of our day excursions from Red Deer to Drumheller to see the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Canada’s Dinosaur Museum we saw a sign beside the road that said World Famous Gopher Hole Museum 2 miles. We decided to see what this was all about!! It is located in Torrington, Alberta and what fun. The museum, a little white building not much bigger than this room, and a sweet little old lady greeted us. It consisted of a room with shadow box displays of real stuffed Gophers depicting different scenes of life from Torrington. Favorites were the camping box, fireman, hunting season, the Torrington Hockey arena, the Torrington bank, this box was showing a bank robbery in progress. We got many laughs during our stop and I would suggest if you are ever driving through the rolling hills of Alberta and are close to Torrington, it is worth the stop!!

A 3rd highlight was the mountains. Each time I have been privileged to see the Canadian Rockies I am in absolute awe at the awesomeness of God!! As you have been watching the Olympics these last several weeks, have you not been amazed at the scenic views. It is breathtaking and I always gravel with the thoughts of how you cannot believe in the power of our creator God and his handiwork.

When we arrived home we were exhausted and glad to be home. But my fun didn’t quite end. I am an avid scrapbooker and just recently have changed from traditional scrapbooking to digital so the next weekend I got to relive all the memories as I sorted through the over 1500 pictures that Brad and I took and made 2 scrapbooks from our trip. I have them here today and would love to show them to you and share more of the priceless memories we made on our summer vacation.