Summer Pictures

Thought I would just share these pics that our neighber brought over. She is a budding photog and he is a sailboat guy. They live on this lake, and we live across and down the street from them. We can see the lake now that the leaves have fallen, but in the summer they are so thick you wouldn't even know there was a lake. We hear the geese all the time though. Not a bad thing. Different for us. There is a resident flock that hatches goslings every year and migrant geese that come and go. We watched the fuzzy little babies grow up as we drove back and forth before the house finally closed. Anyway. Here is Tom and Jesse on their little sailboat.
These pictures are taken at a Labor Day picnic. Someone brought their pet Tarantula and Sarah played with it. Most of the boys wouldn't even touch it. Pansies. Well, Sarah of course, has no fear. Enjoy!

Elder G

The ward mission leader from Dallin's last area sent me these pics. Dallin lost his camera before he even got to Texas so we haven't have very many pictures from his mission. It is so exciting to see him! These remind me of the boy we sent out nearly 2 years ago. He comes home in 46 days. It is hard to believe that he has served most of his mission. We are counting the days till we can be a complete family again. Emily comes on the 17th of December and Dallin on the 28th. He will stay a week and then the three of us will fly to Arizona on the 7th of January (our flight lands at 11 pm) I hope that everyone will come to the airport to welcome him home. I know it is late (our original flight was a lot earlier, but the airline bumped us), but I am sure those of you who knew him will want to be there. We will try to get him all set up at ASU and then I fly back to Delaware on the 14th. We will celebrate his 21st birthday before I leave. Then......WOW! I can't even think of what is next for him. He won't be my boy anymore. The ward mission leader and another family in Mexia say really nice things about Dallin: as a missionary, man of God, and a friend. I think it will be a strange adjustment for him. The world he left doesn't exist anymore....so many things have changed since then. He is resilliant though and will be more than fine. We sure do love this boy....oops, man. (weird to even write the word)!

"House Call"

Darrin and I attended the Health Care "house call" at the Capitol in D.C. yesterday. It was amazing to be a part of something so deeply heartfelt by so many people. You could literally feel the "buzz" in the crowd. There were many speakers, some were democrats who opposed the bill, but most were Republican congressmen who gave moving speeches about our liberty and freedom. Actors Jon Voigt and John Ratsenburger were also there along with Mark Levin. The only media that covered the event was Fox News. I haven't heard any mention of it from other people either. My guesstimate is that about 20,000 to 40,000 people were there. I walked all around and couldnt see the ends of the throng on one side, so my guess may be way off. After the rally, we were invited to go across the street to the three Congressional office buildings and visit our congressmen. The lines were hours long. They handed out 2 copies of the bill (all 2,000 pages). Everyone took half a page and asked there representative to explain that half page to them. We didn't stay to see the very end, but it felt good to be able to support such a good effort. Wish everyone could live close enough to do that once in a while.
Here we are on the METRO!



This is the view coming up out of the Metro onto Capitol Hill.

FALLBACK!

For the first time in my life, I am setting the clocks back throughout my house for the end of Daylight Savings Time. So I woke up at my usual 4:30 this morning and now I realize that it is really 3:30. That is fake time though, just on paper (or just on clock), cuz it is really the same time we are just trying to fake that we have more or less time in every day. SO WEIRD, and stupid, if you ask me. Nobody asks me, of course, so I am setting all my clocks back an hour this morning. One nice thing about it is that now it is only 2 hours different from AZ instead of 3. So when Emily calls at 9:00 her time it will only be 11:00 here. Yeah!