Britannia Rules

I think that we are finally getting over the jet-lag and the 12 loads of laundry and all of the other chaos associated with returning home from a week away in a foreign country. First of all, MANY THANKS to all who helped take-care of our kids while we were gone. We're pretty sure that it wasn't easy. Thank you for your sacrifices and all that you did for us. We couldn't have gone without knowing our kids were in good hands.

I plan to write more details in journal/email form but these are the brief highlights: The original reason for this trip was that Michael was invited back to train the Church Public Affairs representatives from each of the countries of Europe. We had met many of them last year when we attended the same conference in Frankfurt. They are amazing people and we have grown very fond of them. I also liked being able to watch Michael do his training workshop. He's done it for many professional groups and I never get to see it, so I enjoy that part too.

The day before the Conference we were able to go with this group on a tour of Church history sites in Lancashire. I love Lancashire because I have a lot of Lancashire blood flowing through my veins. We visited two places: Avenham Park in Preston, the site of the first LDS baptisms in England in 1837 and also the site of Michael and Amy's first conversation (one that was both brief and awkward as we were both missionaries at the time.) It was very cool to return there together and this time to be able to hold hands.


We also visited a little town named Downham which looks nearly like what it would have looked like 170 years ago when Heber C. Kimball was teaching the gospel there. Some special stories associated with that site that we can share with you sometime. Also special about it: I have ancestors from that town! It's one of my favorite places in the world and we loved going back!!


The other wonderful reason for this trip was, as mentioned above, we both served missions here and this was our first time going back. Wow, it was so emotional. I've dreamt of what it would be like to go back to Manchester and Lancashire for years - it was amazing to finally have the opportunity. We visited started the trip in my 'greenie' area and were able to spend a lot of the day with Michael Mellor and his wife Shaziah. My companion and I found and taught Michael before his baptism. Wonderful to see him again and to see him so strong in the Gospel. Shaziah is from Pakistan and was raised a Christian there. They are recently married. We loved meeting her - she is a special girl.
The area I stayed in the longest as a missionary - 6 months - was the Isle of Man. It is really expensive and time-consuming to get there from England so we sadly knew that we couldn't go there in the short amount of time that we had for this trip. In one of the greatest tender mercies of my life I found out, just days before we went, that a group of members from the Isle of Man would be at the Preston temple the very weekend we were there! It was truly a miracle as I was able to see my dear friend, Tanya, who I also taught as a missionary, and to attend the Temple with her. She is an amazing example to me - facing a huge trial in her life right now with so much courage and faith. Michael and I both felt inspired by being with her.
Seeing the Temple itself was a wonderful experience for us. Michael was there for the ground-breaking and it was under construction the whole time I was in England as a missionary. So this was our first time to see the finished product!
Another great visit was with Ken Cummerson, a sweet man that Michael taught as a missionary. He has since been active in helping the missionaries and working in the Temple. I loved meeting Ken. He was such a lovely man! He and his wife took us to a pub for a meal. (Another first for us as we didn't get to eat in pubs as missionaries!)We spent a lot of our time tracking-down and visiting people. Members of the wards we served in, people we taught as missionaries, and former companions. None of whom we had seen for 12-15 years, and yet it instantly felt as if no time had passed in between the last time we'd seen them. It was so wonderful! Some instances were exhilarating to see them doing so well, and some instances were heart-wrenching, to hear that things in their lives had been very difficult since the time we'd last been together. It made for a very special, but emotional week. On the last night of our trip we were staying in Wales and through some really miraculous circumstances we found Teresa Jones, a woman Michael had baptized in Colwyn Bay, Wales. I loved meeting Teresa! She is one who had been through some incredibly difficult times since Michael last spoke to her. We were able to spend some time with her and gave her a ride that night. After we dropped her off, I felt so strongly that the Lord really is mindful of 'the one who is lost' and I felt humbled that Michael was given the opportunity to find her again.

In between all of these people we did do a little bit of sight-seeing. The Lake District was wonderful. We stayed in a charming Bed and Breakfast in Ambleside where we made a wonderful new friend, Bob. He was awesome! :) We'd be happy to give you his number if you're going to the Lakes anytime soon.
In the Lakes we took in some gorgeous scenery and even drove past Beatrix Potter's farm. (Thank you again, Michael.)

Our last stop was in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. My first time visiting there. Absolutely gorgeous! (Quite the contrast from Liverpool where we'd been the day before. Although, Liverpool has charms of it's own -mainly the cheeky people.)

Here is Michael at Ros-on-sea with Colwyn Bay behind him.

Conway Castle built in the late 1200's in North Wales.
Michael did a great job driving a clutch on all those narrow roads on the other side of the street. The first day was kind of scary, but by the end of the week Michael had regained his form and we were even getting good at navigating our way around. I love those round-a-bouts!We also had great food! Good old fish'n'chips, KEBABS!, pub grub, Wagamama's in Manchester, Vimto, curry made by Shaziah (Michael's favorite), and British crisps and sweets. I also brought home a suitcase full of many more favorites (Hobnobs! Lion Bars! Jelly Babies! - I'm hiding them from the kids so I can ration them to last a really long time.)

It was also funny to hear ourselves start talking like Brit's again - not necessarily the accent, but the words and inflections. I love it, me. It was right lovely. Cheers to you all!

There are more photos and commentary for those who are interested at this WEB ALBUM.

My parents are home............. at last.

My parents are home! I'm soooooo glad! Okay, I admit we had fun while they were gone. When jenni came down to watch us she brought the movie Robbin hood and we loved it. Now we've propably watched it about 10 times. Anyway, WE were watched by 6 babysitters during the time my parents were gone. But now we are glad to have them home.

Were we really there?

We just got home last night from our fabulous visit in Great Britain. It was an emotional return. Not really a vacation, as we felt like we were running the whole time, but a special reunion with people and places that are dear to us. There is a piece of my heart that lives in England - I think partly because of many progenitors who left at great sacrifice - and part because of the experiences I've had there myself. It was nice to return and find that piece of me again, to get reacquainted, and and to carve my love for that place even deeper in the part of my heart that stays with me.

More to come. Today is laundry, clean-up, catch-up-with-the-kids day.

Keeping little boys busy

I have needed to scrub down our grimey kitchen chairs for a long time now. One day I was trying desperately to get the boys outside on the beautiful day and get this long needed job done at the same time. So I put on their suits, gave them the hose and the plastic outdoor chairs and let them go at it. Win-win-win. I got something done, the kids had fun with the hose, and popsicles were consumed.


I have found that if I don't keep them busy I find things like this:

(David)
Or this:

New York, New York

Well, there is very little reason to spread the news at this point since I left and returned months ago, but I had a great time and these pictures, so I figured it was worth a post. At the end of May I went BY MYSELF (the quiet time on the flight alone would have been a lovely break) to visit my sister Sarah and her husband Nathan in Manhattan. They were the kindest of hosts in their one-room studio apartment in Greenwich Village. I really like the neighborhood they lived in (well, there are a few dodgy streets in the area, but most of it is really cool) and it was fun to visit one more time since they were 'movin' on up' to the Upper East Side where they could live in an apartment with a real bedroom with a door and another room for their new little one.

Here we are in Times Square on the way to the lottery for Wicked tickets. I really liked Wicked! I don't like Times Square, however. My least favorite part of NY. Michael doesn't love NY and I keep telling him it's because he's only ever been able to stay in the Times Sq part.

Other great adventures included a sneak-peak at their new apartment that Nathan was in the middle of painting, a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, The Frick Gallery, Central Park, window shopping in SoHo, a cool sample sale at an interior design firm, church on Sunday, the Temple, and lots of good eating establishments - including 'street meat.' Also very cool was running into friends from BYU at Church on Sunday and randomly in front of Jasper John's Flag on Friday Free night at the MOMA!

This is another really cool place that I'd always wanted to visit in NY and finally made it there. The New York Tenement Museum. It is an original tenement building built in the 1850's that was condemned in the 1940's. Parts of it have been restored to look like apartments during different periods of history. They were so tiny! I got choked-up in the one restored to look like it did when an Italian family lived there in the 1930's. Even though they did not live in a tenement building in NYC, it made me think of Michael's grandparents (and my own children's ancestors) - both children of Italian immigrants - growing up in Portland, Maine during the Depression. A really cool experience if you are ever in NY. Below is the picture I took of the wrong building! Whoops! :) The museum is the one on the right.



After that experience I met Sarah, Nathan and my cousin Mike for lunch at the famous Shake Shack in Madison Park. Being a gorgeous weekend, we had a bit of a long line to wait through, but the company was good, so we didn't mind. Afterward we got to see Mike's cool new apartment a few blocks away. He has a great terrace that overlooks Sixth Avenue below.
Ever since Study Abroad in London many years ago, I LOVE riding buses in big cities, so after our lunch, I took the bus down to Battery Park at the bottom tip of Manhattan. I didn't ride the Staten Island Ferry this time, which I also love, but I did enjoy the view of the water, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, etc. On the bus ride back I went right past Ground Zero and could see all the construction starting there. It's a massive site!

One of my FAVORITE parts of my visits to NY is always the FOOD! (Including Sarah's fabulous homemade food.) This time we ate at a cool Middle-Eastern place called Moustache (delicious chicken kebab/pita), Pinkberry Yogurt, the afore-mentioned Shake Shack, Pret-A-Manger, take-out pizza, and Gray Dog Cafe in the village (see below) before I had to head back home.

There are more pictures at this brief web album for those who are interested.

After I wrote this post, it dawned on me the significance of writing about New York on the anniversary of 9/11. Having visited there, it is amazing to me how recently a city can experience such a horrible tragedy, and yet continue to live so vibrantly. God bless America!

Cascade Springs

Labor Day weekend here consisted of crazy weather. Saturday afternoon Michael took Catherine to the BYU football game and they were both balls of sweat sitting on the aluminum bleachers in the 100 degree sun. By Monday morning we'd had a ton of wind and rain and there was snow on the peaks of Mt. Timpanogos! By Monday afternoon the clouds had cleared out and we decided to take the kids on our annual trip up to Cascade Springs. We grabbed our coats (it was still unseasonably cool), stopped by the KFC drive thru for some dinner, and headed up Provo Canyon. It was a gorgeous evening.




David and Spencer had to stop and look at every sign we passed - which was ironic since they are the only members of our family who can't read!

Last night at the Pool

The week that school started, which was still the middle of August, we headed for one more trip to the pool. Michael got off work early and we ate dinner and swam on a gorgeous end-of-summer-night.


Michael finally talked Spencer into going down the big water-slide with him.

And David turned into the little dare-devil that night. He wanted to go down the big water slide with Dad too, and loved it. After watching Catherine jump off the diving board, he wanted to go off that too! So Catherine "helped" him jump to Michael before Michael was ready and David went under the water a few feet! (I would have freaked-out if I hadn't been in shock when I watched it happen!) I was so worried about him being scared of ever going back in the water, but I didn't need to worry. He got out of the pool and started running strait for the water slide again!

Summer Recap

This summer I took SO many pictures of outings and adventures and everyday stuff thinking, "This will make a great blog post!" and then I never got around to posting them. So here are a few of the highlights and if you want to see the rest, you can click HERE to go to the Summer '08 web album. (I promise it's not overwhelming.)


Visiting This is the Place State Park (or what we fondly call the Pioneer Village) with Grandma, Abby and Isabelle Cannon, and our friend Elisabeth who was brave enough to join us. This is always one of my favorite things we do each summer. The kids love it too. The village is in such a pretty spot at the mouth of Emigration Canyon and now that the trees are more mature and shady, it is really pleasant up there. They've also added some great new attractions for younger kids that has really made it fun for us: the 'train' that takes you around the whole park, the live animals including pony rides and petting zoo, and the mini-village of play houses. That's where we always end our visit. Here we are having free ice cream thanks to the generosity of the Huntsmans! There are more pictures from this trip on the web album.Another fun outing that is becoming a yearly tradition is visiting the Olympic Fountain at the Gateway. It's obviously fun for a lot of other people too, as you can see by the crowds.

Here is Spencer showing his sweet moves to the accompanying music:

Swimming lessons. This consumes two weeks of our summer. This year I did the Mom and Baby class with David, so it meant that ALL of us were in the pool everyday. :) It amazed me how all of us gearing-up for a half-hour swimming lesson and then showering and changing took up the entire morning. By the time we got home, changed, ate lunch, and David down for his nap, I felt wiped-out for the rest of the day. It's always worth the effort though as all the kids made BIG progress this year- esp. Emma and Spencer! It was great to see them learning to actually put their faces in the water :) and swim. The last day of the two weeks the whole complex is opened up for the whole morning to everyone who took lessons that session. Michael always meets us there and we have a fun, free swimming time with Dad.
The Thanksgiving Point Childrens' Gardens. We went with the Cannons. It was one of ThP's $2 Tuesdays so it was pretty crowded, but we hadn't been for a few years, so everyone thought it was exciting and new.
The Zoo. We also hadn't been to the Zoo for a few years and the kids had a great time. We went before it got too hot. We went there our first day of summer, thinking we'd beat the summer crowds since our school district got out of school a week earlier than many in the state. Instead we got there for tons of schools' end of the year field trips - so basically the Zoo was a zoo. But we liked it. That place sure is a lot nicer than it was when I was a little kid. There are still some areas that look the same, but so much of it has been redone and improved. For some reason the exhibit the kids were the most excited for was the albino alligator in an exhibit titled: "The Ghost of the Bayou." David kept calling it the Ghost of the BYU.


As I've looked at all these pictures I think to myself, "Oh, that's why I felt so wiped-out by the end of the summer!" I am also glad that we did so much at the beginning of the summer as I definitely started running out of gas by the end. :)

**Blogging disclaimer** I'm suddenly feeling a little more self-conscious about the Blog. I'm always afraid of it sounding 'braggy' or self-promoting. So please take this little blog for what it's worth: basically an update for all of our family members and friends-who-are-interested and now, my substitute family scrapbook/history. We love you all! Thanks for taking us as we are. :)