Crafting with crayons

Maren was in a crafting mood and made some fun pictures with melted crayons.

This is a sight that makes me happy...Jay isn't much for reading so to see him enjoy a good book is great.

It was dress up as your favorite book character at school. Gwen made her own costume and I'm sure you are all wondering who that character is...Hank the Cowdog of course!

We have a lot of construction going right by our house it can be noisy, the dump trucks actually shake the house. Construction is literally everywhere here. I wonder if we have the most cranes being used at one time in the world here.

Safari?

The mission president and his wife thought it would be good for the missionaries to get out of the city for a little while to appreciate the beauties that we have around us here. So one very early morning on a P-day we headed out of the city about a 90 minute drive and we got to this "safari" park. I was invited because I'm so much fun....okay not really, they needed transportation.

We were lucky to see these zebras far off in the distance my zoom worked really well! And we saw an elephant-sort of- he was hiding behind a tree. And we saw a variety of deer and a few wilderbeast and some monkeys.

Sadly, this picture doesn't show all the missionaries because of my zoom lense was on the camera.

This river goes all the way to the other side of Africa and filters into Victoria Falls.

This was the tall missionaries last day. He has been here for 1 year and has been such a great missionary, we will really miss him.

Feliz Natal

We had a wonderful festive Christmas, with our annual Christmas Eve Party. Maddie entertained us all as the littlest angel. Jay was a "star" Charles was a bit "sheepish" (haha!)
Grandpa and Grandma really had us fooled as the "real" Santa's
There was plenty of family craziness to go around. Sadly it was very short lived and in the blink of an eye we are all back to our various corners of the world.

Fourteen!

It's hard to believe my second son is now 14! He has grown so much and is just a few hairs shorter then me. Even though he has gotten bigger...

He still loves food........

and he still likes to relax.... (sorry I couldn't get the picture below any bigger.)

We love you buddy! Happy Birthday, thanks for being such a great person.

Third Year of Whale Watching- see pictures below this post

We were told to not even try to go out and see the whales because it is really late in the season. We had friends that went out during the week for 3 hours and saw nothing. We took some friends and hoped for the best.

We get to use a nice boat that has a screen that shows any activity that is going on below us. Sure enough the Captain spotted some whales.

The boys climbed up to for a better view.

The girls were so excited.

And wow, we got up close to some whales. I don't care how many times you have the chance to do this it is always so amazing.

Here are the pics for the above in backward order!

Happy, happy Birthday!

I alway knew you would fly!

We all are thinking of you and hoping that you are having a great day. We miss you very much. Thanks for being YOU, what a joy, delight, breath of fresh air you are to us all. Thanks for your kindness and thoughtfulness and goodness. Hodeeho!!