up and after I got
the blog posted, we started getting ready for the
Christmas Day Brunch for all
of the senior missionaries from the
area and temple. We ended up serving 34 people.
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| Ready for the Brunch. |
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| Table #1 |
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| Table #2 |
Mom spent a lot of the morning making a
Waldorf salad and then
she forgot to put it out and so we made everyone take a
bowl of
salad home for an afternoon snack.
We also cooked two spiral cut
hams.
It was a nice get-together and we sang a few Christmas
carols after we
had our meal. These are great people who
sacrifice
being with their families during the holidays in order to serve the
Lord and the good people of Guatemala.
This makes the 8th out of
the last 9 Christmases that we have
been out of the country, but
next year we will be home for the holidays. We Facetimed and
Skyped with our kids and saw
what Santa brought to all our grand-
children.
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| Christmas morning we took cookies to all the missionaries at the MTC. |
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| Mom's Waldorf salad. |
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| We had lots of desert left over. |
Tuesday we got up early and went to the airport. The first leg of
our trip took us to Mexico
City and then we flew to Tijuana,
Mexico.
Why Tijuana, you ask? Money! It was a lot cheaper to
fly to Tijuana than
to fly to San Diego or LA. We had no
problems
using the CBX, Cross Boarder Express.
We walked from inside
the Tijuana airport to the U.S. side of the border. It took maybe 10
minutes once we got our
tickets printed.
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| Waiting for our flight to Mexico City. |
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| Just outside Mexico City we saw this volcano spouting off. |
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| Mexico City is so big. |
We got Enterprise
Rental to pick us up and we were off. We
stayed at a Courtyard by Marriott and had a steak at Outback
Steakhouse and mom
went shopping. It was great. Wednesday we
went grocery shopping in preparation for the 4 days at the beach
house. Then we met up with Sam and
Ginny, John and Jill and
their families at a Costco. This did not quite finish our grocery list,
so we also made a trip to Ralphs. We got
to our beach house and
Bryce and Kate, Alex and Charlotte and their families
soon
arrived. The kids headed to the beach and we started fixing
dinner.
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| They stayed at the beach until there was no more sunshine. |
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| White elephant gift exchange. |
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| Ginny's talking moose was a real hit. |
Thursday we went to Cabrillo National Monument to see
the tide pools, visitors’
center and light house. We ate our
picnic
lunch and enjoyed the beautiful vistas.
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| Poppa made Swedish pancakes for breakfast. |
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| The road to the tide pools. |
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| All 23 of us at the light house. |
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| This national monument was on a naval base and had a military cemetery. It was sobering to see row after row of head stones. |
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| Pano of San Diego across the bay. |
We spent the rest of the day at the beach. Friday we went and
toured the USS Midway. Aircraft carriers are huge and very
interesting. With a 4500 member crew it
really is a floating city.
The rest of
the day was again spent at the beach.
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| The hanger deck on the USS Midway. |
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| They got to climb in a lot of cockpits. |
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| Xela and Mom with Midway in the background. |
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| Part of our group as we boarded the Midway. |
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| Cousin fun. |
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| They loved playing in the sand. |
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| The sunsets were amazing. |
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| Playing on the beach till the sun goes down. |
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| Nana with Abbie, Willa and Tilda. |
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| We celebrated Kate's birthday on the 27th and Xela's on the 28th. |
In
the evening we left the grandkids at the beach house and took
our 4 children
and their spouses to dinner. When we got
back we
could not find Jake, age 8. We
looked all through the house and
some of us got kind of panic stricken. We said a prayer and Ginny
went back upstairs
and found him asleep under the covers on his
parent’s bed. He gave us a scare, but all ended well.
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| Dinner with just the adults. |
Saturday we went to the San Diego temple with
our grandsons,
Badger, James and Evan, and their dads to do baptisms for the
dead. Chris came along to do initiatory. Afterward, we went to
Denny’s for breakfast. Then we went to the beach for
the rest of
the morning.
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| Breakfast at Denny's |
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| The beach in the morning was almost deserted. |
In the
afternoon we went to the bay side of the strand
and rented paddle boards. They all had fun on the paddle boards.
We then took Xela and Jake to buy scriptures
for their birthdays. It
took longer than
we thought it would, so everyone went to the
Mormon Battalion Visitor’s Center. They called us and told us to
meet them there. While we were there we
saw Aaron and Venus
Chang from our branch in Tianjin, China. They were just 14 and
16 years old when I was their home teacher and branch president.
It was so fun to give them a hug and see them again. Aaron has
served a mission in Baltimore and Venus
served a mission in
Hawaii. I don’t
believe in coincidences. We were meant
to see
each other again.
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| The boys took turns burying each other. |
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| Ellie and Miles |
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| John, Jake, Luke and Kimball |
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| Ginny and Willa |
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Mom's rendition of the afternoon activities.
|
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| Xela and Jake at the temple getting their new scriptures. |
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| Aaron and Venus Chang at the Mormon Battalion Visitor's Center. |
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| Panning for Gold |
Sunday I left
at 6:30 am with John B.’s family to make it to Sam
and Ginny’s sacrament
meeting back in Pasadena at 9:00 am.
Chris went with the other two families to church in San Diego and
in this “small
world of coincidences” ran into Scott and Cathy
Rallinson from the Ensign 6th
ward who were also vacationing in
San Diego. We then reunited at the chapel in Pasadena for Jake and
Xela’s baptisms. Jake’s Grandma Lever flew from Salt Lake to
attend the baptism and to speak about the importance of baptism.
Chris testified of the power of the Holy
Ghost. John baptized Jake
and I baptized
Xela. It was a great meeting. Sam and Ginny had
invited 4 non-member
families who had children who were Xela’s
friends. Many of the ward members also came to support
Xela and
Jake, so the room was packed.
Afterward we went to a Mexican
restaurant for a taco buffet. All the
people who were invited to the
baptism were also invited to eat dinner with
us. Xela’s friends
were so cute with
her. It was a very nice day. It is wonderful to be
with our children and to
get reacquainted with our grandchildren.
We are so blessed and are very grateful for our many blessings.
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| Jake and Xela ready to be baptized. |
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| The cousins sang a "I am a child of God" at the baptism. |
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| Jake after his baptism. |
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| Xela after her baptism. |
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| Table #1 |
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| Table #2 |
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| Table #3 |
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| Xela and her friends. |
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