Happy 18th Birthday Baby Girl!

The Courtney's are coming, the Courtney's are coming!

They sat in the emergency exit seats, look at all the leg room, but . . .

Is this who you want manning the exit doors in an emergency?

Not me, silly, silly girls.

They were supposed to arrive at 11:40 pm, but they were 

late getting in.  They didn't land 'til 11:50 and we didn't see

them until almost 12:20 am, by the time they made it through

customs.  And it just happens to be the morning of Courtney's 

birthday, yeah!

We didn't get to bed until almost 2:00 am, but it was great to

have them here.  The next morning we let them sleep in and then

I fixed them a yummy crepe breakfast.

Shortly afterwards, the "boys" showed up.  Nathan came first and

brought Courtney a bottle of bubbly and Travis showed up with

a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

Good, good friends.

The boys met Courtney and Courtney met the boys.

They had fun, catching up,

being silly,

and playing with bubbles.

It was so fun to watch them play and listen to them laugh.

Then they took some silly pictures

and Nathan enjoyed playing with the "bunny" game.

 He stacked the bunnies 5 high, then they fell.

He tried again and was able to stack six, all in rainbow
order, he didn't even realize it until I pointed it out.
red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple

After they left we took Courtney downtown to look around.

This is the old Strathcona sign welcoming us into the city.

They keep adding on to this high rise apartment building, 

it just gets bigger and bigger.

This is a new building going up downtown, on

First and Jasper.

Then we drove through Chinatown and stopped at the Italian bakery

to pick out a few pastries.  We enjoyed a giant cream puff, an apple 

strudel, blueberry strudel and several other tasty treats.

We passed by this magnificent church, it looks like a building from

downtown Ogden.

This is the Epcor building, Edmonton Power Corporation.

We had so much fun with the two Courtney's today.

We stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home and picked up

an ice cream pizza for her birthday.  I had planned to buy an 

ice cream cake but they were literally all ice cream, no cake.

  I fixed Courtney her favorite dinner for her birthday, Cafe Rio 

sweet pork burritos, they were very yummy.

After dinner they went on a double date with Travis and 

Nathan.  Travis picked them up and they all went over 

to Nathan's for a bonfire and s'mores. 

I made this candy birthday cake for Courtney while

she was out and had it waiting for her when she got home.

It was kind of fun and turned out really cute.

New Towns!

We visited two new towns today. 

 We needed to make a delivery to an elder, so we got in

 the car and headed out of town on a new adventure.

The elders we went to see are serving in Wainwright, the city of Bison,

apparently.  We have had a ball taking pictures of all the "welcome to"

signs.  I take them for my blog and Chris takes them for his "incoming,

outgoing" video.  It works out for both of us.

This is what we found when we got into town.  Looks like a wild

under water growth of some kind, like brown algae.  

It's slush that has splashed up on the side of the car and frozen

at an angle.  The weird thing is, it is frozen going at an angle 

toward the front of the car, instead of frozen at an angle going 

toward the back of the car, very strange, wouldn't you say?

It looked pretty creepy.  Like little life forms.

We passed through Tofield on the way home.  We didn't know

Tofield was out this way.  It's the sister city to Vegreville, with

the giant Ukrainian egg.  We always head out there a completely

different way.  We learn something new everyday.

I'm not sure what their "viewpoint" is though.  Not much to see.

When Life Hands You Lemons. . .

Look at this awesome decoration I came up with.

I took the gorgeous vase that the Smith's gave me

last year for my birthday and filled it with bright

beautiful yellow lemons, cute huh?

Goodbye Elders!

Time to say goodbye to another group of elders, 6 to be exact

Elders leaving and St. Patrick's Day all wrapped into one.

We ate a nice lunch at the mission home and then

we were able to attend a temple session.  On our way home

we stopped at Five Guys, for burgers and fries.  That's a first

for me, I didn't fix dinner.  It was really quite nice and relaxing.

We went back to the house for our closing fireside, tie cutting and dessert.

This is what happens when they get a hold of my blocks.

They just can't resist, especially when they can spell out their own name.

Transfer Day

The very best part of transfer day is the picture taking.  The missionaries

love to take pictures, they find the group they came out with, their first

district, the others that are from their home town, etc.

I'll never tire of seeing the parking lot filled with missionary cars.

The "coveted" mission trucks, every elder in the mission wants to

drive one of these.  They do wonders on the winter roads.

Trucks are the best, they hold more "stuff".

We just had another lesson on proper backing, let's see how these two 

elders do.  I still had to help them a little.  Is the window down?  Can

he see you clearly? Are you listening to what he's telling you?

Halt!  Don't run over me!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

I had to put up a few decorations for St. Patrick's.

Wouldn't be March without them.  Elder O'Connor

got a kick out of them.

Love my blocks!

Cute wall hanging I found last year.

President's office has this awesome window that's just perfect

for all my "window" clings.  There's a map on the other side,

so he really doesn't mind.  I think!

March 2012 Zone Conferences

It's time for zone conference once again.  Time goes by quickly 

when you have to plan for interviews and training for ZC.

This time around I will be training on nutrition for the interviews

and baptisms for the conferences.

This was my little set up for interviews, President called it 

my pre-school.  I don't think that's quite fair.

I just need a little visual aid to keep the missionaries attention.

I started by asking each one to pick a day in the near past and tell

me what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I'm was planning to

 see a few things from this.  First, what are the missionaries eating, second,

are they getting the proper nutrition and third, what kind of meals are they

being fed by the members.  Just curious.

It was very enlightening to find out what they are eating.

For instance, for breakfast I saw everything from fruit smoothies to 

cold cereal.  One sad elder had a pepsi and skittles. (don't ask)

For lunch I saw everything from dinner leftovers

to rice and chicken to beans, rice and tortillas.

The common factor in most lunches. . . hot sauce!

The hotter the better.  I guess it kills the taste buds.

Then we went over their day and made sure they were getting a balanced

diet with a little something from all the food groups.  For the most 

part, they are all doing pretty well.  Then I gave them a paper with

information on what foods to get specific nutrients from.  Vitamin D,

Vitamin C, potassium, iron and fiber.  Did you know that cocoa powder

has iron?  That's right, chocolate is a necessity.  Yeah!

On the back of the paper, I shared with them a few fun, easy and 

inexpensive recipe ideas for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Just in case

 their are tired of the same old thing.  I felt it was a very good training

and now I know for myself that our missionaries are eating alright.

After their interviews, they were invited to taste a few samples of the

recipes I gave them and some St. Patrick's treats, green milk included.

We tried something new this time around, we combined four of our zones

into two.  We are trying to see if we like it.  We interviewed one zone

on Tuesday, had combined zone conference on Wednesday, and 

interviewed the other zone on Thursday.  

 The Bonnie Doon and Ed North zones, play fishbowl.

Preach My Gospel books on the head, ready for the first question.

Now they look for a hymn, with only a few lines read.

You'd think the piano players would have an advantage, but not so much.

Now this is their real strength, scriptures.  They amaze me at their 

knowledge of the scriptures and where to find good teaching passages.

The Relief Society sisters are so kind, they set the tables, provide

 fun napkins and served "Cafe Rio" for lunch.  The elders love it when 

they serve sweet pork and they even buy the round aluminum foil pans.  

Now that's going the extra mile, for sure.

District ties!

This was our first combined zone conference.  The thing I liked

about the combined conference the best,  the singing.  They sounded

awesome when they sang "Called To Serve" for the sisters that served

us lunch.  Not too shabby, as far as singing goes.

 Red Deer Zone Conference, lots of sisters in this zone,

yeah!!!  We did interviews and conference on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The area got hit by a huge snow storm Tuesday morning, mission cars 

were spinning out all over the place, they never did plow the parking lot.

On Thursday we drove to Grande Prairie for interviews and then

did their zone conference on Friday, in the high counsel room, no less.

They like to play fishbowl just like the "big" zones.

Put your heads together elders and see how many missionaries you

can name, now serving in the Canada Edmonton Mission.

  Don't forget the sisters and the office missionaries.

Their names used for fishbowl, obviously the brainy BC's

are truly the brainy ones.

Lunch served us by the sweet Grande Prairie sisters.

Final combined zone conference, Riverbend and Millwoods, playing

fishbowl.  They were really competitive.

We had to have the combined conference in the chapel because we

are so big, but we had to move the fishbowl into the Relief Society 

room because they get so excited and so noisy.  

Can I just say, that I think the activities that the assistants are coming 

up with are getting a little out of hand.  A little too complicated.

They need to take it back to the basics, Preach My Gospel and

scriptures.  Get away from the physical challenges.  They did do

one cute one for the sisters, they had them tie a tie.  Now that was

clever.  Do you think I'm partial?