Joy

I taught Relief Society today. I taught a lesson on joy and how to get it. I'm a firm believer that whatever we do in life, we need to do it joyfully. But, sometimes that is really hard. We came to the conclusion today that a major part of having joy is having gratitude. About 15 years ago, I read an article that said, "When gratitude fills our hearts, there is no room for unhappiness." I try to live by that motto.

As part of my lesson I used the song, "Come to Jesus" by Kenneth Cope. Here's a link to a beautiful youtube video which uses that song. Listening to this song and/or watching the video brings me great joy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq7IwPj2-kY



After church, Kyle and Whit and family came over for dinner. Now everyone's gone home and the house is quiet. Eric is in his room, Brenna and Coryne are upstairs and Joe and I are the only ones downstairs. It's been a wonderful Sunday full of God and family.

Grandchildren!!!!!

Being a grandma is absolutely the very best thing I've ever experienced. It's even better than everyone told me it would be. Here are some random pictures of my very favorite grandchildren. (That would be all three of them!)

Gavin at Seaworld Halloween. He's Batman, but lost his mask after only a few minutes.

Parker! Absolutely the happiest baby I have ever met in my life.

Finny! What a cool dude. He is such a love.

Ewwwww!

Finny looking handsome as ever.

Birthday Weekend at Great-Grandma's house

This weekend was my Mom's 71st birthday. Since she spent her last birthday in South Africa/Namibia on a mission with my dad, she wanted to have a BIG birthday celebration this year with all of her children. Joe, Brenna, and I (and Gavin) flew out to Washington Friday morning. Eric had a water polo tournament, so he couldn't go. Coryne had school, so she couldn't go. We flew to SLC and then caught a flight to Seattle. LaDonna and Rusty were on our connecting flight, so we all got into Seattle at the same time.

One of the first things Gavin did when we got to GG's house was to explore the huge backyard. He found a bunch of tiny little pumpkins and was fascinated by them.

We rocked in GG's (Great Grandma's) and GGP's (Great Grandpa's) porch swing. It was fun.

Once we were in the house, he made a beeline for the huge wooden hippo that GG and GGP brought back from Africa with them. I think he thought it was made especially for him to ride.

A little later, the neighbors came over with their horses. Gavin was a little tentative, but he had a great ride. I called it a "pony ride", but was informed that this is not a pony.

It is a miniature horse.

After the pony ride, Gavin and Brenna went home with the neighbors to visit their farm. Gavin was pretty excited as you can see. (Note the duck swimming behind him in the watering trough.)

This one of Gavin's newest farm friends.

Gavin petting his friend, the goat.

Fresh raspberries right off of the vine. Aren't they huge?

Gavin enjoyed them. Many, many, many of them.

This is where the teeny little pumpkins came from. Brenna and Gavin enjoy the neighbor's pumpkin patch.

Gavin even got to bring one home to GG's house.

One of the best things about visiting is getting to meet your silly cousins. This is Brenna and Sophie.

Brenna, Richard (who is an engineer and married to a doctor, but still a silly cousin) and Sophie.

Right outside GG's back door is a huge patch of peppers. We went out to pick peppers for the chicken fajitas we were making for dinner.

Gavin got right into the swing of things.

Brenna putting hot red peppers to good use.

Brenna and Yuki hiding in the flowers. (You have to look very carefully for Brenna.

She's on the left.)

Uncle Keith took a bunch of us on a tour of the valley and showed off many of the beautiful crops that are currently being harvested. This is Brenna and Sophie in a BIG berry patch.

Brenna in the grapes.

Finally, Saturday night, we all got together for GG's birthday dinner. It was delish and followed by homemade icecream with some of those ginormous raspberries.
This is Yuki, Kendra, Steve, Karin, Chelle, Abby, and Keith.

Joyce made an amazingly good carrot cake and GG blew out the candles.

We had a great weekend. Karin made an hour long DVD of all our African pictures and gave each of us a copy. We all watched it on Friday night. It was great. The only sad thing was that my brother Steve couldn't make it. His oldest daughter, Lauren, had a very important piano recital on Saturday night in Dallas. We were sad, but we understood.

On Sunday morning, we walked into church, and there was Steve. He had flown into Seattle late Saturday night and slept in Ellensburg. Got up early and drove so he could surprise Mom (GG) at church Sunday morning. He was able to spend all of Sunday with us. It was great!

Then, we got up early on Monday morning and drove to Seattle to come home to San Diego. Gavin was pooped. He fell asleep in the carseat on the way home from the airport and didn't really wake up again until morning in his own bed. He was very happy to be home.

Final Africa Chapter

I can't believe what a dork I am. It's a good thing that we took pictures in Africa, or I would have forgotten everything that happened by now. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to finish these blog entries, but better late than never, right?

On our 7th day in Africa, we spent the day sightseeing in Capetown. Capetown is absolutely beautiful and reminded me a lot of San Diego. We had a great tour guide who took us all over the area. Our first stop was Table Mountain. When we got there, we were to ride this tram to the top.


I don't know if you can get the big picture, but the Tram goes WAY up, very fast, while rotating 360 degrees. It's a great ride if you aren't a chicken, but cluck, cluck, cluck! I am such a hen.

I hate both of these pictures, but I had to put them in because they show you how totally nervous I was headed up on the tram. Although I knew intellectually that I was safe, I was really scared. (What a baby!)

This is the view out of one of the windows of the tram. Notice that I'm not looking. :-)

This gives you a pretty good idea of how high we were and what the angle of ascent was.

The view from the top was spectacular. (I was fine once I was out of the tram :-)

After we did Table Mountain, we went down to the Waterfront to do some tourist shopping. My dad is the best at this, so we all just kind of followed him. He's a great bargainer.

Next stop was the Cape of Good Hope. I still find it hard to believe that I was actually there. As a kid, I read so many adventure novels in which the hero or heroine had to navigate the Cape of Good Hope. I never dreamed as a child that one day I would stand right there. It was so cool.

This is all of us at the top. Kendra, Mom, Dave, Dad, me, Abby, and Karin. Oops, no Joyce. She must be taking the picture.

Baboons were everywhere. They are like squirrels or rabbits around here.

I don't know if you can see the baby, but there is an entire baboon family on this poor guy's car roof. It was completely caved in.

As we walked out of this building, my mom was carrying a bag of dried fruit.
A baboon ran up to her, fullspeed, jumped up on her, grabbed her bag of fruit, jumped down, and ran off. It all happened so fast that no one got a picture of it, but they are pretty bold.
There are employees that have the job of walking around with big sticks trying to scare the baboons away so they will not frighten the tourists. We weren't scared, just startled.
(Well, maybe Mom was scared. The rest of us thought it was funny.)

After we went up to the lighthouse, we drove down to the Cape Beach. It was beautiful. A storm was blowing in, so we got a little rained on, but it was worth it.

True to form, Dave had to walk out to the very edge to take a picture.

Our last stop of the day was the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. It was almost dark and they were ready to close, but we had heard that they were incredibly beautiful, so we paid our money, put on our raincoats and ran through the gardens.

Notice that there are no men in this shot. They were smart and stayed in the car. We got really wet and didn't really see much. (It was pretty dark.) But, it was a fun experience.

That was the end of our time in Africa. The next morning we flew out for London. Next post - London in two days!!!

Elephants, Monkeys, and Birds

Our next stop was the Elephant Sanctuary.

We could see elephants out in the fields.

We were momentarily distracted by these adorable meercats that came up out of their burrow and started wrestling with each other. We all wanted to take them home. They were way cute.

After a brief presentation about the elephants, we all got a chance to walk hand in trunk with an elephant. This, for me, was the coolest! Elephants have two little "fingers" on the tip of their trunk and this sweet thing actually held my hand. It was amazing. I think that out of all the animals we saw on this trip, the elephants grabbed my heart the most. They were so beautiful.

Once you were finished with your walk, you had a little "elephant love" on your hand, but that was okay.

Dad, me, Mom, Dave, Joyce, Abby, Kendra, and Karin

Me and Mom (How cool is this?)

Joyce and Dad checking out an ear

After we got up close and personal with the elephants, we got to feed them. They are very smart and would find the food no matter where you were. Those trunks can reach a LONG way!
Finally, it was time to ride. Whee!!! As you can see, I'm not letting go to wave. It was very high and a pretty bumpy ride, but what fun.

Joyce, me, and Dave with our guides.

Grandma on an elephant!

Grandpa on an elephant! Getting up and down was pretty scary. We had to hold onto the guide for dear life and they had to hold on the the elephant's ears.

After the Elephant Sanctuary, it was off to Monkeyland and Birdland. There were monkeys everywhere. There was no way to get a picture to show that because they all move so FAST!

This guy was king of the forest.

This is a ring-tailed lemur that really blended into his surroundings.

Karin's looking a little worried here. These were tiny little Vervet monkeys and they were not at all afraid of us. (It was raining, so we put on our lovely rain ponchos. We were thankful to have them. It got pretty wet.)

Kendra and Abby get up close. Right after this, one of the Vervet monkeys jumped right into Abbys lap. We were all so shocked and it happened so fast that nobody got a picture. Darn!

In Birdland, there were all kinds of birds. It was dark and raining pretty hard by this time, so the pictures are not great.

Animals of all kinds LOVE Dave. These two would not leave him alone.

So, all in all, it was a fantastic, exhausting day. We all fell into bed that night.