Major Catch Up

As I was catching up on some blogs last night,

 it made me want to do a quick post...if that's possible?

It's been 3 months since I've posted, so this is just highlights of whats been going on.

 We had a busy, but fun summer. We loved having our family come to our "new" home. Jacob and Janette & cute little Zayne came for a few days in July. We basically lived in the pool to keep cool.

 The first part of August I flew into Las Vegas and my sister Christine picked me up and we drove to Ivins. We spent 5 glorious days together and had a great time. We attended "Matilda" at the Tuachan, but I was NOT impressed. For a children's show it had a lot of crude things in it. 

 The morning Christine left we had 13 more family members show up for 5 wonderful days!

The kids literally lived in the pool!! We were fortunate enough to have all our kids there, but Jacob

and 7/8 of our grandkids. They had so much fun together.

We attended the "Prince of Egypt" which was VERY good and the kids loved it.

Its amazing it can be 10:30 at night and its still close to 100 degrees!!

 We were home for about 5 days and then took a short 4 day road trip. We went North and did a loop up around the North Cascades. We were going to do some hiking, but there was so much smoke coming down from Canada from the fires, that you could barely see to the end of the road.

Darlene Jones is a lady Russ' and I use to visit each month. She's never been active, but always loved our visits.  Her husband is not a member of the church & whenever we visited her, he would be sure not to be there. She moved over a year ago to Wenatchee, about 3 hours away. The cool thing is, is that she still calls us on a regular basis to see how we're doing. When I found out we were going to be close to her home, I suggested we go see her. She was SO excited when I called and told her. Now here is the amazing thing...when we pulled into their driveway her husband came out and greeted us and said Darlene had been waiting all day for us. He lead us in the house and sat and talked with us for over an hour!! Darlene is a very simple person & probably someone Russ and I would never have associated with, but we really grew to love her over the years. That's the whole point of ministering that I love, so we can LEARN to love others:)

When I look back, it was a real blessing that we didn't go hiking on our road trip. While we were in Chelan I tore my meniscus!! Now you would think this would happen hiking, NO I was in a shop and turned & poof!! 

To make a long story short I was truly blessed to have it feel WAY better in a couple of weeks. I had an MRI, but I told the Dr. that its not hurting now so I'm going to wait to have surgery. Its been one of the things that has put a damper on my exercising though.

 On Sept. 8th Kelston was baptized. I'm so grateful we were able to attend his baptism and that he asked me to talk on the Holy Ghost. What a sweet family they have.

 We were home one day from Kansas and then flew to Kauai where we had a GREAT trip with all our kids and their spouses. Tyli got to come along since she was still nursing (yeah!)

One afternoon all of us went kayaking. We went up some river and then hiked into a waterfall. Fortunately, it was pretty flat, but there were lots of roots & places you had to cross the water. 

I was worried about my knee, but Russ was a BIG help!!

Tyli's first time eating pineapple and she loved it. She looks pretty underfed, doesn't she? LOL

She's SO cute!!

 I made a video of the last 4 years of our family & all the things that have happened. Here's the gang in our room after we'd watched it. LOVE these guys!!!

 Napali Coast....SOOOO beautiful!!

Just before we left for a Luau

Russ & I left a day early from Hawaii so we could attend a special devotional in Safeco Field with President Nelson. There were close to 50,000 people there!!

Since Russ is a Stake President he was invited to a special dinner with the prophet, his wife and Elder Eyring. The church invited many prominent people from the community and wanted us to go around and visit with them. We were able to meet several pastors from other churches and people in politics. It really was a great experience and evening. 

 After only being home a few days from Hawaii, I flew down to Utah to help with my dad's 90th 

birthday party! It was fun hanging out with my mom and 2 sisters one day. We had his celebration at my parents ward. It was so nice to see all the people who came to celebrate with him. I'm sure there were close to 100 people there. My dad still had a garden this year and brought lots of fruit and vegetables to all the neighbors and people in the ward. Everyone loves him.

 Here's my dad and his brother Karl who is close to 88.

 My immediate family.

These are a few of my relatives who attended. It was nice to catch up with some of them.

 As if life hadn't been crazy enough, we left for South Africa the day after I returned from Utah for

 18 days. It was an awesome trip!! 

The worst part of the trip was the 40 hours each way to get there!! Other than that we saw lots of cool things, learned a lot about South Africa and met some great people.

This was the group from Smartours that we went with. We've been on 6 or 7 tours with this company and this was the best group of all. Everyone got to know each other and tried to help each other. We met two couples from Canada that we really connected with and hope to see in the future.

 Table Mountain in Cape Town

 Who would ever dream there's penguins in Africa??

 We went to the last prison Nelson Mandela served in. He was in prison from 1964-1990. 

He became President of South Africa in 1994-1999. The more I learn about him, 

the more amazing I think he was.

 I took close to 2,000 pictures, so I picked out a few of my favorite. I love seeing animals living

out in the open and roaming free.

 Our first leopard we saw!!

 We walked right up to these zebras to take their picture.

 Cape buffalo

 We saw 100's of elephants!! They're SO fun to watch.

 You see birds all the time on animals. They eat the bugs, ticks, etc. off of them.

 I've never seen this bird before? I don't even know their name?

 One night at dinner as I was going through the salad line I noticed this bowl full of fried worms!!!

I DID not try them. 

 One of the coolest things we did was "walk with the lions". It was a little scary at first petting them. I wanted to wrap my arms around them and give them a hug:)

 Another highlight was going to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. We took a helicopter tour so we could see it from the air too. Its amazing!!

After our LONG flight home I felt like I never wanted to go on another plane again!!

 I am SO thankful though that I've been able to see so many of God's creations throughout the world. They really do bring me joy & wonder of how beautiful this earth is for us to enjoy:)

I've had some memorable experiences this past 3 months, but also some challenges. I guess that's part of growing old. I'm trying to stay positive though with the health issues that have come up.