What I Did This Summer part 1

In honor of the first day of school, and in breaking an almost three-month silence (except for the missionary posts) I am "writing" an essay on What I Did This Summer. Really, it will be mostly pictures. :-)

As most of my friends know, last year Bruce got a job teaching 5th grade at Maeser Elementary School (in Vernal, Utah). He drove three hours to Maeser every Sunday night, and then commuted back to us every Friday night for the whole school year—August 8 thru May 22. It was not very fun. So we decided to move to Vernal (Maeser).

In May we finished tiling the bathroom and painting the house:

We also got a message from a friend who needed to get rid of her baby rooster. She said she'd give us three hens that were already laying if we took the rooster. So we did!

Kaylie's got one of our new hens!

The chickens went to Vernal a few weeks before we did.

Then we started packing up all our stuff, which took all of June and a lot of July. On July 4 we rented a U-Haul and started packing stuff into that, we drove away on July 7, but that wasn't the end of it by any means. 

Bruce did a pretty good job backing the truck up to the house
—but he missed the lightpost by only about 5 inches!

Brandon uses his manly muscles to pack up an important item.

Our friend Ralph and his wife Jamie helped a lot with
loading the truck. Ralph just started hauling the piano out
by himself, but that thing weighs about a ton.  Instead he
lifted it up to let Bruce slide a dolly under it.

This was our brand-new refrigerator for the weekend.

This is just a small sampling of the stuff we left behind,
until we could make another trip. Moving is a pain!

All last year, while Bruce was working away from us, he stayed with some new-found friends, Daniel and Wendy Ray. The Rays very generously invited us to move into their house while we got things settled—things like selling our own house—so that we could all be together. They cleared out the entire top floor of their house for us to move into. So when we got to Vernal late Tuesday night we unloaded the necessities into the upstairs rooms, saving the rest for the morning.

Tuesday night we moved the beds in.
Everything else waited until the next day.

So here's the story of Luna, our cat:

Luna was very curious and wandered all around the forests of boxes as we packed them up. She also  had to explore the moving truck as it sat outside with the gate open. But she did not like the moving of the big furniture; she hid out most of the day. Since we were loading the truck on July 4, our neighbors were also lighting lots of fireworks that evening. Luna raced through the house and then hid under my bed for the night. (The local skunks didn't care for the fireworks either. Just sayin'.) On moving day, after we gave up on packing all our stuff, I stuck Luna in a box, packed her in the van and we drove away. She complained until we got onto the freeway, and then she was dead quiet. Even when we took a short break from driving there was no sound from Luna.

The kids and I took a little break at the Duchesne Welcome Center—
2 hours in to our 3-hour drive. They wanted me to 
take a picture of the magnificent sky.

The cat stayed quiet as we unloaded beds and bedding from the truck, and got all our clothes and blankets out of the van. Not a sound. I was feeling a little worried. Finally, after we had everything in that we needed for the night, I grabbed Luna's box. I wasn't super careful, but still not even a little meow. Uh-oh. I tipped the box sideways. Nothing. I shook it slightly. Still nothing. Had I killed the cat with stress?! I got to the porch and opened the box and Luna looked up at me and yawned. I had not killed her. Thank goodness! So I closed the box back up and took her upstairs to our new digs. She totally freaked out when she got out of that box. She didn't know where or how to hide, or whether her curiosity was stronger than her fear. So she warily crept all around our floor of the house with her backside crouched low to the floor but her neck stretched as high and far as she could extend it. After a couple days she got used to our place and started exploring the main floor of the house.

It was another two weeks before we went back to get more of our stuff, but that's a story for next time.

Missionary Monday!

Well, I am (apparently) not so good at posting my Missionary Mondays on Monday.

This week Jason sent us some pictures! But none of them were of him. :-(

Elder Mattice
this is a great photo of him, I'm sure, but it's not Jason

That's Elder Villareal in the center.
Neither of the other two guys is Jason.

the ferry—still not Jason

But here is the week's news:

"So on Tuesday Elder Mattice, Elder Mahabeer and I got up and out early (10:00,) to help a less-active member remove his blackberry bushes. In Utah that would be an easy task, but in two weeks BC blackberries will get the same amount of growth as Utah blackberries get in several years. Imagine a hedge made of Rose bushes, but with blackberries instead of flowers and green thorns instead of red thorns. (Are rose thorns red in Utah? I don't even remember.)

"So we started by eating all the ripe blackberries, because why waste perfectly good blackberries? Then we proceeded to use pruning shears to cut off most of the branches, and we finished them off by breaking the thorns by the base off and then pulling them out like any other weed. Fortunately the earth was fairly loose and the bushes not too thick. In the middle of all this, President Burt called, specifically for me. He asked some standard things, like what we were up to and if we were using our time wisely (he doesn't like us to do service or anything else if there's no way it will lead us to fulfill our purpose of finding, teaching, and baptizing). Then he said that an elder was going home and he needed me to fill the vacancy, and he asked if I would accept the assignment. I wonder what he would have done if I had said no, I really like my new companions and working in Victoria. But I didn't and last Wednesday I was shipped out again (literally) and headed to Chilliwack. So my new new companion is Elder Villarreal. He is from Mexico, so we have Language study every day. It's really weird, he watches church movies and pays very close attention and sometimes asks me what a word means, and I find something useful to do for an hour.

"On Friday Elder Villarreal (say Vee-uh-real or -rill) and I met this interesting guy named Fred. Fred is paranoid I think. He has a very fancy door-intercom thing, it has a camera on it and a light for nighttime use so that when some one knocks on the door in the evening/night (like us) he can still see who it is. He met Elder Villarreal before, which I found out because he spoke like he'd met us before. Sounds like he's interested primarily in the apocalypse side of the gospel and the signs of the times, but he seemed interested in the Restored Gospel when we told him that God had restored his Gospel and Priesthood preparatory for the second coming of the Messiah. So we'll see him tonight. That should be good.

"So that's my week. We met other cool people but  I can't think of them right now.
Love you guys!
Jason

"Ps. I forgot my shampoo and conditioner, so I don't have honey bucket hair anymore. But I don't have conditioner anymore, I've been using elder Villarreal's shampoo.
Also Ferry Food is super expensive, so I hardly have any money for the rest of the month. Meaning I probably won't be replacing my Honey-Bucket scented hair product. Thought you'd enjoy the Trivia.  =) "

The Spirit of British Columbia

Missionary Monday!

Last weekend was kind of a busy one. On Friday we had to drive to Ogden (from Vernal—a 2½ hour drive) for an appointment, and then to Salt Lake (another hour) where we would spend the weekend. Saturday, in Salt Lake, we did a little school shopping, had lunch with my brother and sister-in-law, and then went to see the Provo River Falls (a 2 hour drive) on the way to pick up Lindsey from Camp Steiner, where she worked all summer. Sunday morning we went to church, and then had an open-house for Michael in the afternoon. That evening we went to a fireside meeting for the kids who participated in the pioneer trek our stake did. After that we went to visit Melanie and then my mom. Monday we dropped Rachel off to go to Camp Oakcrest, did a little shopping, and took Kaylie to the orthodontist. Kaylie is getting her braces off in September! Then we worked on the house until 10 p.m. Tuesday we finished cleaning out the house and headed back to Vernal—a 3 hour drive; we got home around 9:30 p.m. It was a busy weekend!

But the fun didn't stop there. Oh, no! Wednesday we worked on getting the kids registered for school, did some school shopping, and tried to organize the things we'd brought back from the West Valley house. On Thursday we drove out to Oakcrest (2½ hours) to get Rachel so she could go to middle school orientation that evening. Friday we did more school stuff, and I took Lindsey shopping so she'd be ready to go back to Snow College on Saturday (a 3½ hour drive). She was happy to get back to Snow, which makes me happy. All in all, we did about 21½ hours of driving in eight days. I've had enough of that fun for a good long while.

In spite of all that busy-ness, I did email Jason last Monday and heard back from him too. I just haven't had a minute to post anything. Now I could wait until tomorrow, when I expect to hear from him anyway, but I have some time now, so here's what he had to say last week:

"So Wal Mart doesn't really have a selection of men's shampoo. I'm not sure why I care so much since I never cared at home, but I will only buy men's shampoo now. So I was looking for men's shampoo, and actual shampoo not some stupid 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner. I hate those too. So I was having no luck, and I searched and searched, and I finally found some Men's Shampoo. But no conditioner. There's no such thing as men's conditioner apparently. I guess if you want to condition your hair you have to smell like a woman. But then I saw a non-gender biased brand, and it had shampoo and conditioner! I guess since it's plant based it's not gender biased. So I bought that instead, and it was pretty great.
"Until I used it. It smells exactly like a clean honey bucket back from Steiner. But I have it now, and my hair is very clean, eco friendly, and soft! But it smells like a porta potty. So I guess its a good thing people don't get close enough to sniff my hair."

Ba-hahaha! At least his hair didn't smell like a dirty honey bucket! That was definitely worth the few minutes it took to read! :-D  Jason was also just transferred to a new area:

"I'm in Victoria again! Vic Third now, as opposed to Vic First. I like it a lot better. It's still a big city, kind of like being in Cottonwood as opposed to Salt Lake for size, but it looks like it's in the middle of the Forest. I technically live in a city called Langford, but it may as well be Victoria. Even locals basically say it's Victoria. My new companions are Elder Mattice and Elder Mahabeer. Elder Matice is from New Brunswick and Elder Mahabeer is from Jamaica. We almost all have the same initials, except my last initial is overshot a little. We've been working hard meeting the members and talking to everyone. We don't have anyone to teach right now, but the ward is very friendly to us and we have four dinners planned with them! So I'm excited to be here.
I love you guys!
Jason"

Missionary ... Tuesday!

Jason warned me last week, but I was still caught by surprise; he had Tuesday (today) as his prep-day instead of Monday this week.  I did spend a few hours haunting my email on Monday before I remembered.

This picture is from pretty early in his mission. No recent photos. 

Here's the latest:

"It's transfer week, and they caught me completely by surprise. Elder Richards is going home, he'll be on the plane tomorrow, and I'm going to Victoria Third ward! I wasn't expecting that!
I'm a bit sad to leave Vernon, I really didn't expect to leave already and I was looking forward to the next couple transfers here. But I am going to have a lot of fun in Victoria I think. I'll have two companions there, Elder Mattice and Elder Mahabeer. I don't know either of them, but that's the way my mission goes. I don't know anyone and I'm not going to know anyone. My mission is about the work. I met a really cool family this last week, they are Christian but don't go to church. They believe a lot of interesting things, like we're here to learn from experiences and we will progress to become like God in the next life. It sounds familiar to me for some reason, not sure why. ;-)
"They were actually a referral from their neighbors who are also super cool Christians. But the neighbors were moving to West Kelowna, so we helped them move. And I rolled my ankle almost as soon as we started. But I'm pretty much better. I can run, though I don't run much just in case, and I can stretch it and turn it in nearly every direction with no or almost no pain.
I'm with one of my zone leaders and another missionary right now, we've all sent companions home this week. We met some cool people, but one guy threw a temper tantrum and kicked down part of his railing. That was a little scary. But he called later and apologized.
"So that's basically the week. I love you guys! Have a good week.
Jason"

So Jason is doing all right. And he'll be coming home in eleven weeks! :-)

Missionary Monday!

Well, I'm a day late posting this one.

Michael is home, safe and sound and ready to go do more good things. Bruce and I drove from Vernal to Salt Lake last Wednesday, the 22nd, so we could attend the temple with him and other missionaries who were also leaving the Orem mission. That evening we went to a testimony fireside, and on Thursday morning we drove to Orem so we could bring him home. I think he's learned and grown a lot, but really he should be the one to tell you about his experiences. :-)

And here is Jason's latest:

"I have sent ninety weekly reports to my mission president as of today. That's really weird. 
I've been doing good here, working on applying the principle of the 'Growing Zone', where you do things that you know are good but you are nervous to do and when you do you grow! It's really hard! But it's the most rewarding thing that I can think of to do, especially as a missionary. 
Elder Richards is going home next week, so I have him for his last week in the mission. It's kind of sad, I've known Elder Richards throughout my mission and I've been his companion kind of twice now (you may remember I was with him when I left Victoria to go to William's Lake). So we're working as hard as we can and doing as much as we can to help other people to receive the restored gospel. We met a cool lady on Sunday...she was super nice and had all the right questions! She and her husband have been sort of in the market for a church and they're an energetic young family with three energetic boys! So I really hope we can help them develop their faith in Jesus Christ and repent and be baptized, and receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost and endure to the end. Because that's the goal!
Thanks for all your prayers! I appreciate everything you guys do for me, it really is a lot and I've been wrong in not acknowledging it very much, if at all. I love you guys!
Jason"

What a nice guy. I also got a phone call from the Vancouver Mission yesterday saying that Jason will be coming home on October 21!!!! I can hardly wait to see my son again!