Olle at General Conference

Yesterday Olle and I went to General Conference in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. It was beautiful. And Olle was great fun to be with.

A nice man took our picture by the fountain before we went into sit down.
Olle and I played Tic-Tac-Toe while we waited. Olle is good at that!
We sat at the feet of the prophets and were taught. What blessings. What a great day!

Running With Champions

On a late summer evening last week I went to BYU to watch Olle and Leif run in a mile race with other elementary school children. It was beautiful. Everybody ran a whole mile and ended at the finish line on the BYU track. A mile is a long ways to run.
Olle and Leif checked in, got their numbers, and were ready to race.

Then we discovered that McKay was there, too.


Leif ran even without having his inhaler. He was brave and fast.

McKay ran even when his legs got tired.

Olle ran till his face got red and finished in the best time of the three boys.
Leif also lost his two front teeth this week. The tooth fairy found him, I hear.
Cosmo the Cougar was at the track meet. Liesel and Elsa were a bit apprehensive of him, but Olle and Leif were brave.

Two Winners This Week

Liesel is walking all over the place. And she loves it so much. I know the picture can't do justice because you can't see her move, but the happiness on her face lets you know how much she likes this new trick. Way to go Liesel!


Liesel, walking at 10 months.


The second winner this week is Zach! Last night he competed in The Westridge Idol contest at the school carnival. He sang "Life is a Highway" and he won! He had to audition last May long distance from England to even be allowed to compete, so the whole event was pretty intense.

Here is Zach with his prize, a guitar and a trophy! Way to go, Zach! We're proud of you.

Cousins Encounter

After six months apart in London and Lindon, the London cousins have come home. The first time they see the Lindon cousins is at a gathering to celebrate a Mommy's birthday at a restaurant. The cousins are so glad to see each other that they talk and laugh and play and revel in being together. Here are some pictures. Olle, Mr. Cool, always pleasant, always polite.
Liesel gets reacquainted with Sadie, who always loves to play with the babies.
The boys play with their "guys" while they wait. Leif and McKay always have "guys."
The girls chat and laugh and look.
Zach, Mr. Conversationalist, always has several things to talk about.

Leif, Mr. Creative, can think of something to do anytime, anywhere.
Liesel, growing so fast and being so fun.
Lucy, the friendliest little girl around.
Lucy and Elsa discover each other again and decide to be friends.
McKay, Mr. Personality, has ideas for games to play.

What fun to have them all together again. We're grateful for safety and learning and promises of future adventures and we're grateful for times we are together. Welcome home, family!

Argentina Adventure

I went to Argentina with Laurie Swim. We had a wonderful eight days seeing old friends and new sights. What a beautiful country! What beautiful people!

Here we are at the Buenos Aires Temple, beautiful, gray, soon to be enlarged.


Some sights of the city, here a statue in the midst of the busy roads.

Here a professional dog walker. They sometimes put the dogs in an enclosure in the park to play, then when they need to go they collect them back together like this. I'm surprised the dogwalker gets the same dogs he came in with.

A beautiful little white church with ancient Gregorian chant music inside where priests used to learn such things.

A large cemetery called Recolleto. This is Evita Peron's mausoleum, remember, from the musical Evita. Lots of interesting history in Argentine politics. Some of it still occurring today. A large demonstration by farmers against the government just before we got there.

Their White House is actually pink, and beautiful.

Colorful houses from a section of the city near the waterfront called La Boca. Here is an artists' colony of sorts, with the story that after captains painted their boats they brought the leftover paint here and painted the houses. Very delightful, very hip. Like the Left Bank in Paris during the sixties, or like Prague and the Karlsbruecke in the nineties. A place I could happily fritter away my days writing stories of interesting locals.

More of my favorite section of town, La Boca. It means "the mouth," because the river flows into the bay near here.

We flew to the north to where the Brazilian border, the Paraguayan border and the Argentine border meet. The place is spectacular, called Iguazu Falls. Huge, beautiful, thunderous, delightful. This is a picture of "The Devil's Throat. We stood right there and felt it all. Amazing!

It took us all day to see the falls from several different hiking vantage points. At the end we got into a rubber boat, covered ourselves in plastic, put our shoes in a large bag they provided, and rode with 30 other foolish people to the base of the falls. Soaking wet and screamingly delighted. I couldn't see anything though because my glasses were covered with water. But it felt fun!

The night we stayed in our hotel in Iguazu Falls we had an absolute torrent of a rainstorm complete with thunder and lightning. They reminded us that this is a rain forest and it falls from the sky in hundreds (maybe thousands) of inches a year. It was some storm!

A little street in Iguazu.

Flowers in Iguazu.

On Saturday we went to Pilar, a suburb of Buenos Aires to visit my former student Alin Spannaus and his wife Andrea and two daughters. They invited two other families who had gone with us all to Jerusalem two years ago, Andre and Sandra, and Pablo and Laura. Such beautiful people.

Alin cooked beef, chicken, pork, bratwurst, and bloodwurst on the barbecue for us. Marvelous, though even after all my years in Germany I can't do the bloodwurst yet.

Alin and Andrea live in a beautiful planned community that offers open space and nature.

Alin and Andrea treated us to ice cream at Freddo's. Excellent!

We got to go to Church in Alin and Andrea's ward. The children are their two daughters. Alin is the bishop here.

Our Argentine friends.

Our Beaver friends, Noal and Linda Robinson, who are serving as the doctor for 14 missions in the Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay area. They were so kind and thoughtful of us and we marveled over and over again how far it is from Beaver to almost anywhere else. Yet, here we were. We heartily recommend the adventure and are glad to have had it.

Family Reunion

Leif is learning to sew for his summer project. Here he is, having learned to thread the machine all by himself, beginning his hotpad for his mama. Remember, Sadie? He's fearless, and made a very nice green hotpad.


Saturday we went to the family reunion in Beaver. About 80 people came. Some camped in tents on Grandpa Terry's lawn. Some brought their trailers and camped there. I stayed in a motel. The best night's sleep I've ever had at the reunion.
Liesel seemed to love everything. She loved crawling around on the kitchen floor and she loved eating the little muffins someone brought for dessert. It was fun to watch her.
Leif and Olle spent some time in the Maiden Blush apple tree. They are super climbers. A big limb broke out in a windstorm this spring, but the tree is still the best climbing tree ever.

Sally did some face painting on whoever wanted it. Olle's spider was a real hit. Leif was content to just color on himself. He may have learned that from his mama.

Elsa LOVED stringing her necklace. She was really good at it too. She also decorated a visor hat that she enjoyed.

And when she finished putting stickums on her visor hat, she decorated herself! Good job, Elsa!
We barely had enough shade on a hot day. even under the big old tree. This is just one side of the crowd, the other side was just as big.
When all was said and done, Elsa found Great Grandma's chair and settled in.
Getting through the reunion makes it seem like the summer's half over! Amazing.