Pioneer children sang as they walked...

...and walked, and walked, and walked...and WALKED! i have so much more respect for that song now that actually became one of those pioneer children this weekend. our youth conference was a 5-mile pioneer trek that was pretty intensely legit. at first i didn't want to go, but my dad told me i had to...jk i ended up wanting to go. so i was in a family full of people i didn't really know and because of that i met a bunch of new people because i met their friends and then their friends and so on. so the day started off totally great and i was all excited to get started and so my family and i got our little hand cart ready and then i hear people say something like "look out for the mouse" and then i feel something rustle my skirt. so people start looking for the mouse in my direction so i feel around in my skirt and i feel the effing mouse!!!!! i know, so gross right? so i yell out to everyone that the mouse was in my skirt and so my "big brother" garbs my skirt where the mouse was and starts hitting it and then the mouse crawled out and yeah that was really gross. the later i got a lizard up my skirt but that wasn't as near as exciting as the mouse. so after that every little movement of my skirt bugged me. so we started off on our trek and there were these missionaries there and two of the girls in my family started talking about how cute they were and stuff and i was like "oh brother" so i start telling them to stop talking about missionaries like that and they shut up. so were trekking and then we rest and do some fun activities and ten we start up again and we come across this gully that we have to cross. so we had to take all of our stuff out, make an assembly line to take it across, take the hand cart across (that wasn't so easy), and then repack the hand carts. the first one took forever, but after that they were easier to get across. then we got to the camp and that night we had a hoedown. yeah, so legit, right? way better than a dance. so the girls all slept in cots made out of rope and the guys slept in pig pens with hay in them. then in the morning the girls had to do the first little part of the trek by themselves while the guys went off to "war." i sorta wish i got to watch the guys because they had a mock battle...that would've been fun. so we finished the trek and played games, had a speaker and went home. it was a great experience. i don't know that i'd do it again, but i did learn a lot and i would tell anyone who is going on a trek to go!