Elder Simms got home on July 30. We are so proud of him for his service and for his testimony. As with almost all missionaries, he left as a young man and returned as a man. I am sure that he learned some hard things. So glad to have him home and preparing to go to school at BYU.
We had 5 bushes in the front yard, that I didn't like, and they were difficult for me to keep them trimmed. I was hesitant to ask Ron about taking them out, because there was nothing wrong with them, I just didn't want them anymore. I was surprised when he said, "yes, we can take them out". There was even one morning when he was lying in bed trying to figure out a flower garden out there. The one bush that was out by the garage door was too big for the space it was in and crowding the sidewalk. We hired a high school kid to come and dig those out. We had him do that front one first and then the ones near the house later. The only problem that we discovered later was that he cut the sprinkler line three times, getting the ones near the house out. I want to just put bricks along the sidewalk near the garage. The other space in front of the house is Ron's flower garden. Still some more work to be done. We going to pay the high school kid to move the black rocks to the backyard and we are paying John to fix the sprinkler line. The first picture is with the first bush gone. One picture is my new yellow wreath for the front door... perfect. 😉👍
Our last little trip back to the airport was stressful... mostly because the maps on my phone didn't work properly. I was trying to follow Andersons, but that didn't work out. We really needed to stop at a bathroom and to fill up the rental car with gas. Then we were on our own to get checked in. You might know that our gate was as far away from the rental car return as we could get. But... we made it. We were on the same flight as Andersons, to Chicago and we had dinner there with them. Then we were on a flight to San Antonio, and they were on a flight to Austin. This picture of Ron and I wasn't on the last day. It was from another day, when we had breakfast with the Andersons. Luckily, Audrey thought about taking our picture near the restaurant. (Now I have a good pic for Christmas cards- lol. It is tough getting pictures of Ron and me.) And the picture of Brantley was probably taken on the way to Canada, not going home. When we think about this trip, all we can say is that it was totally amazing that everyone made it there.
An old suitcase that originally belonged to Ron's mom... then went to Evamay... then to Angela... came to Canada with the Thompson luggage. It was great fun to look at the old photos and items that were in it. One of the items was an "ET shirt" from a previous family reunion. I came home with lots of childhood pictures of Ron that we didn't know existed. Luke looks very similar to some of the childhood photos of Ron. Some of the other family members took some pictures home too. The suitcase was going to go back to Angela's house but got left with Mike and Enola. Here are some pics of pics 😉
Andersons got a "real" vacation out of the Canada trip- lol 😎😎They planned fun family activities for most of the days there and mixed those in with the other family reunion activities. I don't have a very good explanation of these pictures, (and they aren't in any particular order) but they all came from the Andersons adventures.
