Utah

We spent the last nine days in Salt Lake.  Mark went mainly to start his next temple project in Cedar City, working in the Church Office Building most of the time, meeting and talking with those who will be involved in the project.

I went mainly to be with family.  Friday evening, Rebecca was in charge of a girl's camp fundraiser BBQ, so we went to support her in that and ended up also bidding on a couple of desserts for the cause.

We celebrated Mark's birthday by taking the family to Hoagle Zoo.  It was especially great because not only were we with our children who live around the Salt Lake area, but our son, Sean and his family, were there from Texas.  It's the first time since Chris and Charity got married that we've all been together.  It meant a lot.

After the zoo, we stopped by and got six large pizzas and bread sticks, while Chris and Charity got drinks, cupcakes for dessert and napkins, plates, etc.  We met everyone at Sugar House Park, near the playground equipment, which made it perfect for us and the kids.

We ate every last one of those pizzas!!  We all sang to Mark and the grand kids did their rendition of Happy Birthday "We will, we will rock you   Happy birthday.  Grandpa!"  Very cool!

Sunday after church we had everyone over for dinner.  We just had crock pot BBQ chicken and baked potatoes.  Rebecca brought salad and watermelon.  Chris and Charity brought cornbread and Lyndsay brought pop for everyone.

My parents came down from Idaho to see us and that was wonderful because my mom hasn't seen all of my family probably since the last reunion we had.  She was not able to come to Chris and Charity's wedding.

Lyndsay took some wonderful family pictures!  Our last family picture was taken in California at the beach house we rented in May 2007.  We've had several additions since that time.

Our house in Salt Lake is starting to feel like home.  There are some things we will do to update it, but it is a comfortable house and we feel at home in our ward.

Chris came over Monday and throughout the week to build shelves in our garage.  It will enable us to organize camping gear and other things so we can turn one of the basement bedrooms into a  food storage room.  Mark helped, of course, but he did most of the work!

Mark and I drove to Moroni to see the wall mural for the Fort Lauderdale temple.  It is beautiful Florida landscape with native plants and animals.  It was a pleasure to meet the artist.

We drove on down to Cedar City so Mark could meet with people who will be involved in this project and to see and spend time with our partners and dear friends Tom and Brenda Pugh.  The property chosen for the temple site is not very far from where we used to live.  Cedar is a great place for a temple and it's very much needed there.  We're so excited that Mark has been asked to do this project.

One of the benefits of living with our kids is being able to play with Eva.  I got to tend her on Friday so the kids could go to Lagoon.  Mark's dad came down from Idaho and Mark was able to have lunch with him and two of his brothers.  Later, we spent some time outside with Eva, weeding and fixing sprinklers.

We left Saturday morning to come back to Florida.  It was kind of hard to leave, but I have to say that the time in Florida has gone by so quickly.  We still have things to do here.  We found everything fine, except the birds had taken over our porch and there was bird poop everywhere!

Sunday and things are back to normal.