DECEMBER 2017 JANUARY 2018 FEBRUARY 2018

OK...so it has been a very busy few months, and I have not updated.
Sorry!  More about this photo later...











This was our DECEMBER 2017 APM DINNER GROUP!

Way too much fun and a BABY!!!
Jessica Scott, Andrew, Alex and baby Griffin Pehrson, Lance Cabral, Emily and Adam Murry, Caleb Brown, and Christina Muhlestein

Alright...remember how President T and I would always coordinate our clothing to match??  Well, our MTC missionaries make sure to check each time they see us.  One night, I had not seen the tie Pres T chose, and ended up at the MTC wearing like burgundy and he was in yellow.  So, cute Sister McClung drew me a yellow PANDA to match his panda tie so we could be matchy!  Awesome!!

It was pretty  much GIRLS NIGHT for our January APM Dinner Group.  Lots of cancellations left us with the most beautiful group of girls to spend the evening with!

Lise Bennett, Sarah Jensen, Christina Polander and Crystal Bailey.
We laughed all night!

Early February we took a much needed trip for an ARIZONA FIX!!


First stop...the PHOENIX TEMPLE

Next stop, our favorite past-time of HIKING near the temple!

And we followed up with going to the temple with our dearest friends, the Janulis.  Nothing better!!

Who remembers Hannah from LDS Family Services?  Our lifesaver in so many ways!
Well, she came to an open house in our old ward and it made our night to see her and Greg and their two adorable adopted kiddos!!
Missions have a way of bringing people into our lives that we were always supposed to know!

Just one of our LIZARD friends...

We had a lovely luncheon with our dear Mission friends...


the Morris and Williams...

The Kiggins...

The Elcocks and Lyons...who just cannot stop serving missions!

The Rodgers and Cherry's...

And the Kings near their new home they are building.
OH HOW WE LOVE THESE PEOPLE!!!

We arranged to meet President and Sister Collins before they were going to dinner with the Waldrons for a Presidency meeting.

They are wonderful people and so happy to be serving in the BEST MISSION IN THE WORLD!

We arranged to stop by to say hello to our dear neighbors the Kluempers who live across from the Mission Home.  Cutest Family Ever!!

Our challenge in Relief Society in AZ was to get our pictures onto our LDS Profile so people could know who we were...

...Dana and I took the challenge and got our photos updated on our LDS accounts!!

We stayed with the Janulis family during the weekend and just had the BEST TIME!



And, to culminate a lovely weekend, we met with a few RMs in the area.
Karalee(Glenn) and Aaron Darrow and boys, Maureen(Keelin) and Chris Hirsch, Amy (Folsom) Wurm, Zach McCook and Steven Hunsinger.
WONDERFUL time visiting with all of them and getting updated!  WE LOVE YOU ALL!  Come visit or sign up for dinner!

 OK,  Here is our fun group from this month's Sunday Dinner Group!

Chris and Tiffany Stott, Amanda and Tanner Gardner, Laura and Landon Bouwhuis, Garrett and Brianna Nuttall, Brooke and Nathan Wainwright, Caleb and Elizabeth Leonhardt and us!  We had a great time visiting!

President T happened to be at Frontrunner at just the right time to get to ride up to SLC with our Albanian District as they left for their mission assignment!  This group was one of those amazing groups that we really connected with.  They reminded us of you!  Fun, Loving and Obedient!

We ended the month in the best way ever...at the sealing of Jesus "Fredy" Castro to Mandy Halloran in the SLC Temple.







We were joined by GregMcCuch and Jake Parry too, so it was a triple blessing to be there!
CONGRATS TO Fredy and Mandy! 

NOVEMBER 2017

Fun month seeing great RM's from the APM!

We had Trazer Sutcliffe and his fiance over for a visit and loved that!
We found out that one of her former mission companions from Colorado lives in our neighborhood so we went over to meet the parents too.




Here is our November Dinner Group!
Front: Clark and Alec Livingston, Autumn and Conner Dickson, Jesus Castro and fiance Mandy, me, Alex, Mariah and baby Ian Newton.
Back: Jonathan Timm, Taylor and Juan Castanos, Joe Cannon, Greg and Tegan McCuch, Jake Parry, Joseph Fife and President T.

We got together a couple of our older-timers from the mission!  Joe and Alex were companions once upon a time!

This is a current missionary, our niece Elizabeth headed to Sacramento.

And this surprise was at Calvin and Rachel's reception.  Sister Crandall was one of our MTC missionaries who served in Italy Rome mission!
She happens to be Rachel's cousin!

 Look who Scott ran into this month, remember Tracy Watson who came to Phoenix to introduce the iPads??
He did some pretty awesome trainings with us as well!

Calvin and Rachel Madsen!
Congratulations!

One of our big groups of Italy and Romania bound missionaries this month.

And Kellon Parkinson and his wife Alice at thier very cool reception down in our neighborhood.

This is a fun photo.  The end of the month we were reassigned to the German/Hungarian/Albanian/Turkish/ALS branch.  Whew!  I cannot hardly remember the languages they speak let alone as many missionaries as we will most likely have with that variety in one branch!

We had a deaf missionary leave on his mission via Frontrunner and President T saw him on his way to work and saw him safely up to the Trax transfer on his way to his mission assignment!
No, we don't speak ASL, but we now know how to say "Amen" in ASL and hope to learn more.

And, we found out from Wes Larsen that his little sister was coming to our branch headed to Italy...and then we got switched!

But, we hunted her down anyways to get a picture with her!  We love to meet the siblings of our RM's!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

OCTOBER 2017

HAPPY OCTOBER!
We had a great month that passed way too quickly!
We go to the BYU games and our first October game we ran into NAMA, COURTNEY and baby ALEXA KAMISSOKO.  They live in the area now and we are so excited!

Our latest branch at the MTC for October headed to Italy and Romania.  Great group of missionaries!

President Taylor got to go see the new MERIDIAN IDAHO TEMPLE this month before it opened to the public.  Beautiful!

Then we had a trip to SEATTLE to visit our son and his little family in their new home.

We welcomed visits from a couple great RM friends!
AARON JONES joined us Sunday afternoon and we had such fun talking with him!!

Then REBECCA CARTER came too and we kept up her Sunday afternoon tradition of baking cookies.
My granddaughter Brooklyn just ADORED her!
They were baking buddies and just all around buddies!

Meanwhile, Rebecca's brother Kevin has been taken over by our grandson Evan...they are looking at an EYE SPY book here. 
What a great kid!  We found out he served in our friends, the Shumway's mission in Oklahoma!  SO cool!

Here we are all together with our little crew of friends!
I was so glad I messaged Rebecca about being in her area, because I did not know she was even home!

When we got to the BYU game later in the month, we found Braden sitting with our dear Zach Jensen!  We loved sitting together and chatting the whole game.  It was a beautiful day in every way...and it did not hurt that BYU had a great game!

Our SUNDAY APM DINNER GROUP was all couples this month.  Fun how that worked out!
I am going to share couples along with advice they give for marriage!!
Dani (Robinson) and Neal Butler- Laugh together daily...mostly at each other!
Andy and Rachel Marble- Be REAL, Be HONEST and no playing games in communication.
(In back) Ben and Haley Crane- Never Stop FLIRTING with your spouse!
(Next in back) Christian and Megan Blake- CHOOSE YOUR LOVE AND LOVE YOUR CHOICE!              Have a date night weekly!
 (Far right back)  Jessica (Turner) and Dillon Selee-  Listen to the SPIRIT!  Accept differences.
(Middle front) Austin and Chelsea Bartleson- COMMUNICATION IS HUGE!  Keep it positive!
(Right front)Parley and Heather Scott- Talk CALMLY.  TALK all the time.  OPEN UP!

We could not have said it better ourselves!  It was like listening to ourselves talk about advice for marriage because they NAILED IT!  THANKS A BUNCH!!

We love seeing our RMs looking at the Mission Quilt. 

And, just for fun...our HALLOWEEN COSTUMES this year were:

BYU FANS going incognito since we had such a lackluster football season...hence the bags over the heads.  (Of course, they did win the day of this Halloween Party so it was good!)


Happy October!  Please go to the FB page and sign up on the pinned post for a dinner group soon!

WE LOVE YOU!!

SEPTEMBER 2017 and REUNION!

 

SEPTEMBER was amazingly busy!

We started it off on September 1 by attending the sealing of Dale Bolinger to Marleis.  Such a beautiful day!!

He looks pretty great in his uniform too!

We then arranged a visit for Karalee Glenn Darrow and her sisters one evening while she was in town for a GIRLS WEEKEND!!


They are just delightful and we had so much fun laughing and talking!!






We planned a long overdue Mexican
LABOR DAY DINNER with Breanna Wells Whipple and Nicole Okeson Elkins and their hubbies and little ones...about a week before Breanna had their second baby!!
WONDERFUL pozole dinner!!YUM!

We love these personal interactons with our RMs!!

Scott was able to meet up with one of Nicole's former companions, Katie Alvarez Spurlin and hubby Jeremy in FLORIDA when he went to cover the efforts the Church was making in clean-up and President Eyring coming to visit areas all over the state.


You see Pres Eyring here in this photo he took.






And the man in action!!

Meanwhile, I was back in Provo hosting one of our MONTHLY APM DINNER GROUPS.
We broke out the flag this month and had fun trying to find everyone's signature.  We have it sort of geocoded on a list, so we found everyone!

And, we found everyone on the quilt the same way!






Super fun group we had here!!  I'm the creeper sneaking into the timed photo here!
Lise Bennett, Jessica Scott, Lance Cabral, Jason Hutchinson, Johnny Cook and Caleb Brown.

Later in the month it was REUNION TIME!

We were so excited to see the KINGS who were up for their Canada Chinese Mission 10 year reunion at the same time!

And, of course we were delighted to see the GRIFFINS again!  We had visited the mission home about 3-4 times while they were serving, so we feel like old friends!

We didn't get photos of everyone we knew, but quite a few!

Conner Albrecht coming early to help!

Christina Polander there to help as well!

Wil Buechter came down to visit.

Us with Christina

With Andrea Jackson Pettingill and Tim Pettingill

Jihun Jeong, Wil, Caleb Brown, Me, Jonathan Timm and Conner.

Us with Melissa Chord and her boyfriend Andrew.

One of our cute mission babies Ian Newton.

Alex Newton and his wife and baby.

Us with Heather Belnap Ostler
(Man, we have to remember a bunch of names!!!)

Us with Alex Cordero and wife Nancy

Shelby Hixson Lane and hubby Trevor

Parker and Mia Geren

Caleb and Elizabeth Leonhardt

Elizabeth Young

Lindsey Brewer Jensen

Nicole Barton Olson with hubby Jim

Brooke Zollinger Murphy with hubby Mikey and baby Hugh.

Tanner and Amanda Gardner

Some old time groupies

Melannie Palomino

Tyman Weiler

Clark and Alec Livingston

Us with Motekiai Langi who went out while we were at the MTC and met him there.




















Jake Goehring with Camila

Crystal Turner, Karly Manwill Kinnison and Camille  Brown

Emily Walker Murry, Elizabeth Young, Jessica Turner Selee and Natalie Dayton.

Nick Cardoso, Jake Parry

Dallin and Kaila Harris Anderson

Marshall and Karly Kinneson

Dallyn  Zaugg

Kalen and Alex Gapinski, Cody Silcock and Kelly.

  Camilla Clark and Crystal Turner

Zach and Lexi Searle

 Kristian and Taylor Pearce and baby Kiya.

Backyard football game with Joseph Barley, Michael Sieverts and Blake Mullenix and the Walches.




And...not even trying to put names to all these faces!!  But we know and love a few of them!!

Saturday night PRIESTHOOD SESSION at home with Jesus Castro and Braden and the Kings!

So good to have Jesus join us!

And as always, the Kings!

We had our traditional "LADIES NIGHT" activity making these cute signs!