17 Aug 2008

Aug. 17, 2008
Dear Elder Sean,
Well, we're finally back home after about 10 days on the road. We had a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the cool, cool weather. The highest it got on the coast was about 67 degrees and now we're back to 100 degrees here. I'll send some pix in another email.

How was your week? It's so fun having you back on email again. I'm loving Mondays again getting to hear from you. Any progress with any of your investigators this week? Have the Gonzalez family come back to church? I'm glad to hear that your interview with the president went well. We can't wait to meet him and his wife.

I'm also glad the concert went well. How fun to have them perform in your sacrament meeting too.

My sister Patrice wrote me yesterday and said that she and Dennis are now engaged. I'm really happy for her. She's been doing so well for the last couple years and she seems so happy. She's working full time at the Winn and my dad says she's a great worker. Grandpa even said that Dennis came to him about a week ago asking to marry Patrice. They're planning on getting married next August so you'll be around for that.

We had a new family move into the ward (finally) and they spoke today. However, the Jensen's are speaking next week and it will be their last week in our ward. They'll be moving to the 8th ward. The Poulson's across the street from us have officially moved out also. The Friday that we left on our trip we went to Jason Campbell's wedding and he had his reception at the Poulson's new home.

We sent you a package from Oregon. Just use what you want and feel free to give away any of the "stuff" we send you. It's just fun for us to put the packages together and send them off. If you're in need of white shirts or socks or anything else at this point, just let us know along with your shirt size too. That would be easy to send.

Kirk is working at the fair this whole week for Travis. Remember those good ole days. I'm sure he'll be across from the Vitamix group again and he'll hopefully come home with some fun recipes like you did. This week is the get-ready-for-school week. Alex and Kristina need to register for school, a couple of the kids need new shoes, new pants, new shirts, new backpacks and tons of pencils, pens, paper, etc. Alex is getting his senior pictures taken this week also.

The itinerary for our trip went something like this--Fri and Sat night we stayed in Portland. Sunday we went to church in a ward in Portland (they were very friendly). Sunday afternoon we started driving down the coast of Oregon which was a very pretty drive. A different topography than the California coastline-lots of trees, cliffs, light houses. It took a couple hours to get to Florence where we found our cabin on Collard Lake which was about 2 miles outside Florence. It was an older home, but right on the lake. They had a small boat and a canoe there for us to use. There were a series of 3 small lakes connected together with lots of lilly pads scattered throughout. The water was warm enough to swim comfortably in and the kids took full advantage of that. I went out on the canoe a few times exploring the area. It was in a secluded enough area that even when there was fog and wind at the beach, the lake was calm and clear.
One morning we went crabbing, but it was so cold and windy and we never caught anything large enough to keep. Another morning we went on a wild dune buggy ride across the sand dunes. A professional driver took our family in the dune buggy and it was such a fun, wild and crazy wild. Kind of like a big roller coaster. The dunes are a National Park and they are right on the coast so part of our ride was along the water. Out of everything we did, most the kids said that the dune buggy ride was the best and they want to do it again. Even Nikki who was very scared at the beginning was laughing and screaming and you know me, I was screaming the whole way. I loved it.

We also walked the downtown area and shopped, went to the Heceta Light house, went to the Sea Lion caves and the aquarium in Newport.
Friday we packed up (after cleaning up the mess that a bear had made with our trash cans) and headed to Bend. Along the way we stopped and hiked to some beautiful waterfalls. This hike was easier and not quite as adventurous as the first hike we did in Bend, but the waterfalls were beautiful, some of the blueist water I've ever seen.
In Bend we stayed at a private resort thanks to a Brother in the ward who works with Jack Nicklaus building golf course resorts. We were treated like royalty. Dad, Kirk and Alex played a round a golf, were given new golf shirts and personalized golf bag tags. Alex thought he'd died and gone to heaven. Kristina and I were given passes to the spa. We also were given golf carts that night and we got to tour the area in golf carts. You'll see pix of all this.

Anyway, it was a fun family vacation. It was a great break from the heat of our summer here. Last Sunday was our stake conference and we missed it, but I'm going to get copies of Pres. McCauley's and Pres. Stafford's talks. I heard they were excellent. I'll pass copies along to you too.

I hope you are feeling a bit better this week. How is your head? Our prayers are with you always. I'll pass along something I learned in Sunday School today. We were studying the letters that Helaman wrote to his sons and we discussed some of the advice we learned from our own parents. One person said that his mom always told them that this life's test is to see if our spirit controls our body or if our body controls our spirit. I liked that and it's a good thing to think about each day.

Have a great week, let the spirit guide you.
I love you,
momxoxoxooxoxox