Sea, Surf & Service

So I am trying to get myself on track with keeping this blog better. It's been a busy week. Church was great on Sunday. It was Sister Schexnayder's last Sunday on the mission, so that's a bit sad. She gave a lovely testimony.  We had the Lamprechts in town, as they were visiting and doing interviews with the elders and sisters. We had a mission correlation meeting right after church, and then we went home. We Skyped with the kids at 4:30, and that's always fun! This time we had Hayden and Parker online. Hayden is getting ready to move out of his BYU apartment (Friday) and is staying with some friends for a few nights. He is staying over with Joni and John on Monday, and then he moves into his new apartment at the University of Utah the next day! We are excited for him as he starts law school. Parker is keeping busy with work and running. He took a vacation to Whistler, Canada a little over a week ago, and he had a great time. He hiked and used his new DLSR camera to tak...

Happy American Independence Day! Freedom and independence are really excellent entities to celebrate. I have always known how lucky I feel to be born in the USA, and it has been made even more clear to me over the past year how much I celebrate those qualities of freedom.  I celebrated by baking sugar cookies 'til 1am in the wee hours of July 3rd. We realized that we had nothing to bring to our morning meetings with the young missionaries on July 4th, and thought they might be missing home and need some little way to celebrate...and what is more fun than eating, right? So I ran out the night before, right before the stores close (they all are closed by 8pm; some closed by 6). I bought some extra things I needed to make the cookies. Then I came home to bake them! Baking food items is a bit trickier here! I do have an oven and stove, but they don't work great. The oven bakes about 25 degrees cooler than needed (I am thrilled with my Celsius conversion chart I keep on the fridge)....