Crazy Family...

Two of my three brothers recently visited me - Billy (turned 50 while he was here!) from Las Vegsa, NV and David (oldest sibling) from Madison, Wisconsin. David was here for a photo conference (in Santa Fe). It was good to visit with them both. I did some sewing for Billy while he was here - he is an entertainer with many talents. I've made costumes and props for him since high school. This time I made pants for his stilt walking. He wanted a pair of "jeans" with 65" inseam. Here he is towering over us.

We also did some "sight seeing" - went up on the Sandia Tram to the top of the mountain (10,000+ ft). Billy always has his juggling balls so he can get a picture (he has pix of him juggling all over the US and world).

No More Grass!! (or as the stone turns...)

Well, Alan decided after babying our front lawn for 13 years - it was time to go! We've worked harder in our yard here (with a smaller lot) than any other palce we have lived so he dug out the grass and gave in to the ROCK. Barrett would have loved being here when the dump truck came to deliver the rocks. Here's some before and in process pictures.

Simple Randomness

Besides all our mission preparations - we have had a lot going on - 3 week trip to Utah and Denver, visit with family, family now in town visiting, work on the house, etc (etc and so forth...)

So here's some Random pix and updates on everything lately...

Summer was official when I had my first watermelon from Texas from this roadside vendor. I always have to look for him because the cops run him off from the side of the road. His watermelons are the best and summer doesn't officially start until I've had my watermelon (blessed by Jesus as his sign notes...)

I've been making these cool baskets lately. I use vintage potato mashers and pastry blenders. I thought I could find them at thrift stores but I have to go to antique shops to find them.

We had a great trip to Utah to visit family before we leave. We were going constantly - went to a couple of parades (here's pix for the BYU fans from the Provo July 4th parade), spent a few days at Alan's brother's cabin where a robin had just hatched some eggs, went to the Stadium of Fire and saw the Jonas Bros., and spent some time on Temple Square.

More mission assignments

We are getting more information as time goes on. I received a packet and letter from the General Music Committee asking me to find places in our mission area where I can teach conducting and keyboard. They sent me the conducting and keyboard course material to take with me. They also said there is a grant program to get keyboards for students. It will be great to be able to teach music while we are in the Philippines.

We also found out that we will receive some special medical training at church headquarters so our departure date to the Philippines has been pushed back about 5 days. We still go to Provo on Aug 17th but won't leave from there until the end of Aug.

We hadn't heard from our Mission Pres. yet so I was getting a little worried. I found an email address for the Pres.'s wife on the mission alumni page and have been communicating with her. She said they hadn't gotten our names from Salt Lake yet. Our information may have gone to the MTC Pres. At least now we have a contact so we can ask our questions...

Filipino language

Well we've learned our first Filipino phrase: "Bahala-na - which means what will be will be - their version of acuna matata (from Lion King - don't know how to spell it). That will probablly be our mandra - bahala-na!!!

Manilla Temple

This is the Manilla Philippines Temple. It is located in Quezon City and is right across from the Philippines MTC where we will be. Hopefully, we'll be able to go often while we are on our mission.

Finally - We Have Our Mission Call!!

We received our mission call today (Thursday, June 11th). We will be serving in the Philippines, Quezon City Mission at the Philippines Missionary Training Center. Not sure exactly what that means but we will receive more information in the next few days. We report to the Provo MTC on Aug 17th.

Quezon City is the "old" capital of the Philippines. Manilla (or as Katalina says "Vanilla?!?")became the capital in 1976. Quezon City is part of the Metro Manilla area. All I have to show so far is a map of the area. I'll have pix of the temple, etc. soon.

We are very excited about our call and are looking forward to serving in the Philippines. We did say we'd like to go to Southeast Asia...

We'll post more as we get more information.