First real email from our missionary

I know most of you don't want to read a long email, so I'll stay with a summary paragraph for you. 

I arrived last Wednesday and have been constantly busy ever since. I talked to some of my closest friends from home, ate lots of food, smelled the famous awe inspiring cream soda tree, and taught my first "investigator." 

So I've talked to 5 people from home that I know, and out of the hundreds of people here, they put my friend Jace "Elder" Anderson in the room right next to mine. We've talked a lot and hung out a bunch. I even got to go to the temple with him today. I'm so grateful that I have a close friend to talk to here.

They really so feed us a lot. Every meal is all you can eat. They have great chocolate milk too. The most amazing drink though is a concoction an elder showed me. It's 75% Sprite and 25% orange guava juice. I can't complain about the food. 

Now the most amazing thing I did all week was smell the cream soda tree. I don't know what species of tree or is, since sort of pine, but it smells just like cream soda. I don't know why but it is amazing. 10/10 experience

Me and my companion Elder Hodges need some work teaching people, but overall we're doing pretty good. We got to teach an "investigator" named Ben. I put the quotation marks in for two reasons. They could be actors or they could be real people that need to be taught. It's about a 50-50 chance from what I hear. The other reason is that we aren't supposed to say investigator any more. They are now just called people, which makes way less sense. Anyway, we had a good lesson with Ben yesterday about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. It went well. We had the spirit there and he accepted an invitation to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. 
Oh yeah, and my district is amazing. There are 3 sets of elders, Elder Berry and Elder Thornok, Elder McKenzie and Elder Johnsen, and Elder Hodges and I. There are 3 sets of sisters, Sister Corder and Sister Rhoton, Sister Rima and Sister Stottart, and Sister Cobb and Sister Durham. We have a lot of fun and always sit together for meals and sit together in meetings. There's never a boring moment when we're all together. 

Overall a great week. The three hardest things were not having free time ever, being away from home,  and seeing all the emails come in all week without being able to respond until today. 
 Here are some pictures.

1. The cream soda tree

2. The most lovely, majestic elegant tree at the MTC. Also, it is a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

3. Me and my companion

Some other happenings

Wedding and mission and school has seemed to consume a good portion of my life this year. BUT . . . there are other things happening in our family.

Nate finally got his license. It took some finagling to get his driving time in but he was persistent.

Ash got some braces but not before having to be fitted for a mara. I'm not even sure if that's how that is spelled. It's device that is stretching out her mouth. Apparently, her teeth on one side don't line up.

Nate is going on his first date to a "fake" homecoming. Since his Boise cross country trip was over homecoming, the cross country kids are holding their own in a few weeks.

I've been in the throes of drying peaches and finally succumbed to the amount that are left behind. I simply didn't have the time to get to all of them. I was plenty happy to get 15 bottles, the same amount as last year.

Ash has been my Betty Crocker, making meals and fixing dinner. She also inherited some lice from Beehive Camp. That was a fun experience trying to get rid of them. Not! Her long, THICK hair made it so tedious to comb through.

I finished up my first parent teacher conference and have to say I actually enjoyed it. I loved meeting my students' families and praising them in front of mom and dad.

Tyler got a promotion at work. It's not quite official, but he's expecting to know for certain this week.

Kiersten and Jason are moving into Grandma and Grandpa Ellis's basement which will be a huge financial blessing for them.

Ash has been a busy sewer, finishing up a personal project making cute personal progress holders for all the new beehives coming in. When she broached the subject of sewing these for a project, it was during a time where I simply couldn't add another thing. Grandma Jules was so helpful to have her come to her house and get her started.

 

The fire season hit our little community last weekend.

Due to a massive fire and terrible air quality in Utah County, Nate's cross country race last Saturday was moved to Logan. Alex and Ash and I made the trek where we met up with Grandma and Grandpa

who also happened to be in Logan. And then we had to make a quick visit to see the puppies at Natalie's.


Before Erik left we did one last family activity to Lagoon. Turns out Labor Day was a pretty good day to go. I don't do crazy rides so my kids were super excited to get me on The Rocket.

And Elder Leary . . . Ahhh, I can't wait for Tuesday. I sent my first official mom email today. He left me with quite a mess to conquer in his room. But we miss him.


This last picture of him walking away without looking back made me tear up again. Dropping Kiersten off at college was hard, but I knew I could call her or text her and I'd see her sometime in the near future.

This is different and harder than I thought it would be.

First missionary email

Well, the past crazy nine months quietly slipped into oblivion today when we dropped Erik off at the MTC. 

I'm not an the emotional type. I did get teary-eyed as we hopped out of the car to quickly give him our hugs and goodbyes. That last scene of him walking in his gray suit with luggage in tow following his escort through the doors to the stairs will always be etched in my heart.

He's been nervous and apprehensive about this day for about a week when the reality of it finally hit him.

Is he going to be a good missionary? I hope so.

We all took the day off and met Kiersten and Jason for breakfast this morning in smoky Orem, and then captured some last minute photos before all piling in the van to turn Erik over to mighty fortress of the MTC.

The ride home was rather subdued as we each contemplated life without Erik for two years.

Who's going to teach Alex how to comb his hair?

But I got that first email shortly after getting home. I was overjoyed that they allowed him to email home so quickly. We can expect more on Tuesdays which is his P-Day.

Anxiously waiting . . . 

I'm still here

I think one day I'll catch up on my blogging. Totally missed the first day of school pictures that happened three weeks ago.

My very own first back-to-school picture in A LOT of years.

Today I had the cutest thing happen at school. I have a penny economy in my classroom where my students get to earn pennies for being on time, handing in work, good behavior . . . pretty much whatever I want. They can also lose pennies and I finally started taking some away this week so they know I mean business. But man, I can't tell you how much they love their pennies.

Today I had a teacher down the hall bring one of my students to me at lunch recess to tell me that this student had brought toys to school and had been playing on the playground with them with a friend.

**I didn't know this was a rule that they couldn't bring toys to school. I don't allow it in my classroom but didn't know it was a school-wide rule.**

This poor student was just about in tears. After the other teacher left, I consoled her and told her I would walk down to get her toys at the end of the day. A minute later she was sitting at her desk and quietly took her penny box out and said, "I guess I owe you two pennies," and began to get two out to give me.

Oh. my. heart. I quickly told her she didn't need to pay me any pennies. I explained that since I didn't know it was a rule, I couldn't tell her to not take her toys outside.

These kids are so funny. And so honest! They practically beg me for privacy folders in order to take their tests. "Because we don't want to cheat!"

Some days are hard, but most days are oh so rewarding.