Havana's Eighth

When I asked Havana what she wanted for her birthday she just said surprise me. She is by far my most easy-going child. She is just as happy with a stick and a spool of string as she would be with the most expensive toy out there. We opted out of the stick and string idea and got her this cool beach cruiser from a little ma & pa bike shop around the corner. It fits her like a glove and even in this sweltering heat she loves riding it up and down the street all afternoon.

For her birthday she had her two very best friends over for some fun in the sprinklers. A girl couldn't ask for two better friends.

Reward

Our reward for living through some really hot months.

Warm monsoon rain.

Wish you were here N.C. and Utah Robinson.

Funny Money

Havana Mae is a treasure finder. She often finds broken pieces of glass, funny shaped rocks, bottle caps, etc. It's all very magical and adventurous. So I wasn't surprised when the girls came home on the last day of school with talk of Havana finding treasure! But, this time it was real. She had found a $100 bill sadly discarded in the rocks as she made her way to school. And what did my sweet little Havana do with it?......She turned it into the school office. She was told that if it went unclaimed through the summer and then a week after school started again, she could have it back.

Monday she came home with a little white envelope containing her treasure. I was very excited for her and we talked about how she could spend it, that is until her father got home. He took one look at it and said, "O no, Havana, this is fake." After further inspection the little poser $100 was exposed. When you hold it up to the light the water mark is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and not our wealthier friend, Mr. Franklin. Plus, if you look really close at the security strip inside it says USA FIVE instead of USA 100. Its former life as a $5 had been revealed.

Havana took it all in stride. Easy come easy go. I, on the other hand was very mad at the counterfeiters for so carelessly leaving behind their doctored-up money and getting my little girl's hopes up. Shame on them!

I Almost Forgot

This last weekend we had our Trek family over for a "reunion". It was fun to relax and talk with them without having to pull a cart or cook dinner for a family of 17.

Seeing them reminded me that I never published my post about the trek. So here you go.

Trek 2009 (Tammy's Take)

What do members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do for fun in the summer? We dress up like Mormon Pioneers and reenact one of the most trying moments in their history, the trek from East to West in the hope of gathering and finding peace.

Pa Beeson and I were outfitted with 15 strong capable teenage oxen to pull and push as we made our way across the "plains". Different in many ways, our trek lasted 4 days not 3 months. We walked the first day and into the second, while the real Pioneers sang as they walked and walked and walked every day but the Sabbath. I pressed on, knowing that if anything horrible was to happen we would be taken care of by the ever present but never seen backup camp. The real pioneers had no such comfort.

Despite all the differences, I believe many of the emotions where the same. We laughed, we cried and our testimony of family and heritage were strengthened.

Once our rest was obtained in "Zion" we partied like only pioneers can, with taffy pulling, field plowing, hair washing (my favorite), rifle shooting, axe throwing and a good old fashioned hoedown. Sunday was filled with spiritual enlightenment, family time and dutch oven cooking. Cooking is not one of my strong points and dutch oven cooking doesn't even enter into my vocabulary. Thanks go out to my trek daughters for their knowledge and willingness to teach me all they knew.

When the sun rose on the fourth day I found myself torn. Part pulling for a warm shower and clean clothes and part pulling to stay put and enjoy the simplicity of pioneer life with my new Trek family.

Trek 2009 (Brigham's Take)

This is actually a copy of a talk Brigham was asked to give about his experience as a Pa in our Stake's Trek. It's a bit lengthy but worth the read.

Tammy and I were asked 4 years ago if we would be interested in going on the Trek as a Ma and Pa. We had to say no. Ruby was still too young and I had too much work, besides, I just wasn‘t interested. Last February, Pres. Miller called us in for a visit and asked us to go on this year’s Trek. We agreed, not really knowing if it was a good decision.

After several meetings, a Fireside and an overnight training campout, the first day of the Trek arrived. We got up at 3 o’clock Friday morning to pack the truck, pick up the McLeans and meet at the Stake Center for a 5:30 Ma and Pa meeting. Little did we know that it was the start of a 22-hour day.

Everyone met at the trail head to get ready to go. The youth arrived on buses and the Ma’s and Pa’s performed skits in front of everyone to introduce themselves. What kind of skits? To give you an idea: The LaMunyons sang a Trek-inspired version of Abba’s smash hit, Super Trouper (renamed….Super Trekker). Then the families were announced. There was always a question among the Ma’s and Pa’s about how many youth we would have. The Beeson’s got 15, including our big brother and big sister. From the beginning, I was a bit discouraged about the number of youth we would have. How was I going to connect with them in only 4 days?

President Webster testified to us that we would grow very close to the youth in our Trek family. President Miller also said that each family was put together after much prayer. I believe that because we got to know our family members quite well and quite quickly. They were a perfect mixture of different personalities, and Tammy and I love every one of them. Our first duty as a family was to come up with a family name. We decided on: Plan B-son.

Loading our handcart was a challenge. The cart was about 6’x5’ We had to fit 17 5-gallon buckets, 17 sleeping bags, 2 5-gallon water coolers, 2 propane lanterns, 2 dutch ovens and another 12 gallon bucket with other misc. supplies. All secured with a tarp and some rope. No bungee cords allowed. That’s where I murmured. We were allowed to have propane lanterns, but no bungees. It has been made clear to me that the invention of the bungee cord has robbed me of any knot tying skills that I may have learned in my early scouting years. I’m glad I still know how to tie the square knot, it came in handy. That, and the Beeson Hitch, which is any combination of three improperly tied knots all mixed into one big lump of twine, the sight of which would make the ward scoutmaster cry. I could go on and on about my poor lashing skills. We eventually got our cart loaded and somewhat secured with the tarp and then pulled out onto the tarmac. Everyone else’s carts were nicely wrapped and tied. The Beesons looked like a bunch of hillbillies, but we didn’t care, we were on our way to ZION! We then gathered in a circle to offer the first of many family prayers. We asked specifically for strength and patience on the long walk. Then we joined into the convoy with 10 other handcarts and started moving. At this point I don’t think the youth knew that this was probably going to be the longest day of their lives.

Along the trail, I learned that hard work and service can bring a pretend family together just as it can a real family. Within a mile after starting, our family was really getting to know each other. They would take advantage of every opportunity to serve one another by getting water for each other, encouraging the group while going up hills and offering to trade positions on the cart. Tammy and I were becoming proud Trek parents with stewardship over a righteous family.

Before the Trek, we had heard so much about the women’s pull and its importance. It turned out to be a spiritual experience for everyone involved. We had been walking for about 5-6 hours and the fatigue was starting to set in when we were all notified that the men were being called to serve in the US military and would have to leave the women for a short time. We had a family prayer and specifically asked for the women to have sufficient strength for the trial ahead. They would need it. The hill they climbed was a ½ mile long, by far the longest hill on the whole Trek. Our handcart weighed at least 700 pounds and we only had 8 girls to pull it. Us men were told that it would be hard to watch the women struggle up the hill without being able to help them. And it was, our cart started to slide backwards a few times and the men were right there, but we weren’t allowed to help.

I asked the kids in our family to email me some of their favorite experiences and one of our girls, Danielle wrote: "The hardest and most spiritual part of the trek was the women’s pull. The girls in the family said a prayer before we left and we didn't have that much of a struggle (well, to me. But we ARE the Beesons. We could probably have pulled it with our teeth!) When we got to that sandy hill I thought we were gonna fall back, but we worked together and got through it!" I also spoke with a young man from our Priest Quorum on Friday night about the women’s pull. He said that the fact that the men couldn’t help in any way reminded him of the importance of being worthy to use the Priesthood. If we aren’t worthy to use it, then we’re just as useless as we were while the women were pulling the cart up the hill all by themselves.

After the women’s pull, it was dark and cold. A demoralizing combination. Sore feet, sore hands, sore arms and hunger were some of the complaints. At that point, we had about 4 more hours to go. A while after it got dark the moon started to rise over the horizon and one of our girls, Breanna, thinking we had been walking all night, thought it was the sun coming back up.

Towards the end of the trail, it was really cold and everyone was very tired. The handcart train was stopping every 20 minutes or so. When we would stop, some of our kids would lay down right on the dirt and sleep even for just a few minutes. At one point I dozed off while walking, had I not bumped into Tammy, I would have hit the ground.

We finally reached the end of the trail, ate our chicken broth and dinner roll and went to bed, it was around 1:30am

At base camp the next day, there were plenty of activities for the youth to participate in. There were no iPods, Jonas Brothers, X-Boxes, Halo 3 or internet and the kids still had a great time. The activities included, rifle shooting w/ black powder, tomahawk throwing and there was even a workshop on how to make a snare. After seeing Tammy throw a tomahawk, I’m a little more fearful of her. Two of our kids made a snare later that night but came up empty-handed. I’m sure the snare was perfect, but they were limited in their choice for bait so they used a grape.

We also had a hoedown, complete with square dancing and some line dancing, like the Virginia Reel. One of our girls, Breanna, emailed and said: "The funnest part was the dancing. I had never danced like that before and I loved it!"

Sunday night we had a testimony meeting. It was real cold so there were two big fires in the front on each side of the makeshift amphitheater with the pulpit in the middle. It was the perfect environment for the spirit to testify to the youth of the truthfulness of the gospel and of the pioneers and their heritage of sacrifice. There were at least 50 kids in line to bear their testimonies and they all got their chance. The meeting was 3-½ hours long. Poor Bro. Sharp. He was sitting on a bucket the whole time. He probably suffered some nerve damage in his legs.

On the last day we did an activity called Champion the Cause. The purpose of this activity was to tie together the whole Trek experience with our family. Each member of the family would say something positive that they noticed about another member of the family, and we would take turns until everyone had been “championed“. The kids loved it. They loved hearing what their family members thought about them. I would imagine some of them don’t hear those things very often.
I learned quite a bit on the Trek:
I learned that the Peoria Stake has some amazing youth.
I learned that after a 16 mile walk pulling a heavy handcart, that these youth are stronger than we give them credit for. I believe especially after this Trek, that they can be trusted with greater responsibilities.
I am impressed with the Young Men and Young Women of our ward that participated in the Trek and with their strength and desire to achieve the goals the Trek had set for them.
I learned to respect the early Pioneers. We hiked 16 miles in about 12 hours, under perfect conditions, with a backup crew ready to handle any emergency.
The Pioneers walked 1500 miles in 3 months, under any/all conditions, with nobody to help should something go wrong.

Another part of our girl, Danielle’s email said: “My favorite part of the trek would most definitely be all the family time we shared together. We all got along so well and it made the experience just that much better. I couldn't ask for a better family!”

Well, we couldn’t have asked for a better group of youth with whom to share this experience.

So back to our meeting w/ pres. Miller last February; I believe Tammy and I made a very good decision, we feel it was a very special opportunity. One that we'll always be thankful for.

The Mountain Cabin

Up on Cedar Mountain my Grandma and Grandpa Robinson have a cabin. Growing up I don't think a summer went by without my family spending at least a week up the mountain. We would fish for Rainbow Trout at Duck Creek and race homemade boats in the meadow sinks. At night we would play the longest games of Monopoly known to man. We would gather wild flowers for a bouquet that would be proudly displayed in a paper cup on the windowsill. With the exception of a couple of teenage years I loved every minute of it. I hope my kids love it as much as I did.
This year the famous cabin swing recieved a shinny new rope. Nathan had the pleasure of scaling the old pine tree to replace it.

Taking a walk down to Duck Creek and over to our tree.

Bing was a fan of the four-wheelers.

Because of this:
We were in dire need of one of these:

Green Eggs and Ham is a cabin staple. Every Robinson grandchild has sat on the couch and read that book at one time or another.