Scorching the World

Only the McGills and Knudsens were at the lake house for Christmas Eve (and us); sad to not have everyone, but sadly the days of all the family together are probably over. We did have a fun Christmas Eve with those who were there. Tom and I had prepared a bunch of games - actually way more than we could play in one evening and everyone had a great time either playing or watching. One game was the categories game where each person tries to guess something that the person who is "it" wrote down. The person who guesses, has to put on a mustache.  Everybody wanted to lose so they could have a mustache! We played competition games and their favorite was shaking bells out of an empty tissue box that was attached to their back side: We had a great time, but eventually it was time to go to bed. People were sleeping all over Tami's lake house. The Knudsens had set up in the livingroom, except for Caeli sleeping with Nina and Mila in their room. After t...

What a whirlwind this week has been - actually 10 days since my last post. We spent several hours of 3 days wrapping our presents that we had brought from Chile. When we handed them out, the kids thought we went a little overboard, but we told them we had shopped for this Christmas for two years and everyone seemed to like what they got. At one point Tanya told Caeli, "Just think, you're probably the only girl in the United States who got that for Christmas this year." So true! We left Tanya's house on Saturday morning, 12/20 to head to the Bay Area. We stayed at Trina's and got to prepare and shop for food for Christmas. On Sunday morning we drove up to Napa to go to church; we wanted to know what the ward was like there in case we decide to live up there. It was a great ward; we could really enjoy getting to know those people! We had Caeli with us and she had fun wherever she was; she's really easy to take along on a trip. After church we went to T...

We've been off our mission over a month now, but only actually at home (in Tanya's house) for a week.  In this week we've been taking care of STUFF that needed done. For example, my Miata has been in storage for 2 years. We went to it, took the battery out, and took it to get charged. It wouldn't hold a charge, so Tom bought a new one. He also got it insured (it's been on PNO) and took the paperwork to get it registered. But it needed smogged, so he got that done and THEN got it registered. Now all it needs is CLEANED and 4 new tires. That took 3 days. We have found most of the things from storage that we need to function like my SEWING MACHINE, a lamp, a clock, our coats, pillows, office supplies, and good stuff like that. Tom finally got to go to the chiropractor after 2 years and I got a real haircut! We're getting used to hearing loud noises without immediately thinking it's an earthquake. We are enjoying seeing airplanes, helicopters and jets fly ...

We all woke up by 7 in our lovely hotel at Circus Circus. That's a fun place to stay, but we were so tired last night and had to leave so early today that we didn't play at all, except in our room. I think we got to sleep earlier than any other day of vacation because we were all beat - I think it was before 11pm. Hooray! Anyway, we packed it up and moved it out by 9, which gave us time to go have breakfast at IHOP again. It's a good place because everyone has plenty of choices within their dietary choices. After, we bought gas and by 10 were on our way. We love the trip home from Reno to the Bay Area. Everything turns more green and lovely the farther west you get. We were so blessed in the trip to never hit snow or any harsh weather, other than the storm in Sacramento on our way to Utah. The rest of the trip was dry and not too cold. The girls played and had fun the whole time and we made it home with a full half hour to spare before Nina's horseback ridin...

Today was another long day; again we had a few people we were trying to see in a short amount of time. We slept in SLC last night in a hotel that wasn't as nice as the others we've stayed in. When we went to our room with our key, we found it hadn't been serviced yet. There was garbage in the garbage cans, pillows with head indentations, and towels on the floor. So we got a new room and it smelled really bad of cigarrette smoke. It was BAD! The third room they gave us was fine except the water in the bathtub ran non-stop and it had a couple of other little things, but we slept just fine. We missed the complimentary breakfast, and by the time we were finally ready to get out of the hotel, it was time to go do some visits. We went to see our new niece we just found out about - a daughter of Mary's that we never knew she had. It was a good visit because she really needs family connections. She was adopted as a baby, and raised by two wonderful, loving parents. She always...

Church doesn't start till 11 in Mike's ward, so we didn't have to hurry too much. That was nice for a change. Testimony meeting was really good and quite different from the branches where we attended in Chile. There were so many people there in comparison to the tiny branches in Chile. People kept their testimony to a few minutes so lots of people had time to participate. When there are only 30-40 people total, each person can take as long as they want and everyone can participate. I guess we're still adjusting because we are amazed at the differences in culture and the differences in the strength of the Church. We had brought a package from Chile from one of the missionaries whose family lives in Logan, so we called them and the parents came over to pick it up. It was nice to meet them and tell them a little about their son, the missionary! Then we took Geneva and Amy to go visit a friend from the mission - the woman who was the mission nurse. She's a great per...

We knew today would be the heaviest travel/visiting day, and we were right; It was a little bit much, but it turned out ok. We hurried and left Mike and Becky's by 7am, which wasn't easy since certain little girls wouldn't settle down last night till very, very late. But we got on the road and as we began to open different things like my purse, the food bag, the girl's bags, etc., in each thing we found a little note telling us they loved us and missed us and to have a nice trip. Such nice Saldivars!!! First we went to see Cai so Tom and I finally got to meet the married Cai and her husband Devon!!! It was great happiness!!! We gave them some little Christmas presents and had them show us some of the wedding gifts they got. We showed them the powerpoint on Chile and then went to lunch. The place where they had us go is called Gator Jack's or something like that. It's a sandwich place, but ever so good. It has a Louisiana theme; it has moss hanging f...

Today was really fun. At the Saldivar house, the day starts at 8am with scripture study. It was really nice and set the mood for the day. Right after that everyone had breakfast and got ready for the baptism. Those of us singing a special number had to go early to practice, then everyone else met us there half hour later. There were 6 girls getting baptized in the stake today; one from each ward (and 2 from one of the wards). They do it very differently here than I've seen it before. Everyone from all the wards start in the chapel where they have opening exercises run by the High Councilman over the Primary (in this case he wasn't available so a member of the Stake Presidency conducted). The Stake Primary led the music and played the piano. They had 2 youths do talks. After the opening exercises, one ward was invited to go to the Relief Society room where the baptismal font is; they perform the baptism, then move to another room for the confirmation and closing exercises. The...

We stayed at Renee's till noon. She made us breakfast, then we went for a  walk where we saw Elk and buffaloes!!! After the walk we packed back into the car and went to visit Olivia and Jerry, then Jo and Alex. We showed them our slideshow from the mission, chatted a little, then went to see Carmen. We didn't stay very long, but showed her the slideshow, too. Then we left for LOGAN!!!! THIS WAS CLEARLY THE most exciting part of the trip -- arriving at Mike and Becky's house!!! There was much laughter and lots of running, playing, and finally bedtime was hard to accept!