Family Fun on the Fourth

On Monday, Michael, Kristin, Annie and I spent the afternoon at Pam and Gary Anderson's with extended family eating healthy food and catching up. Then we drove into Logan to check out mom and Bill's yard work and then went to dinner with Grandpa and Grandma. Grandma looks pretty good and so do Kristin and Michael.

Mikey loves his Grandma. I know you won't believe it, but we all had missing tooth or missing teeth stories to share. I've dominated that particular conversation for so long, I have a hard time sitting back and listening to others tell their sad stories of missing teeth, root canals gone bad and crowns falling out, etc. Glad that conversation was only for a few minutes!

I don't know everything Bobby did this weekend, but I'm sure he missed his grandpa Emmett, was well dressed, well feed, had a smile on his face and found time for several naps.

Friday night John sent me this photo. Lily had a sleep-over in Jack's room and some time during the night, he decided to climb out of his bed and into Lily's port-a-crib. I'm not sure there is room for a new baby sister to join them in that little crib at the end of the month.

Sunday after church Michael, Annie and I drove to Charleston to enjoy Sunday dinner with the extended McEuen family. Great food. Great People. Michael enjoys a cookie and reads a book with Lily and two of her McEuen cousins.

60+ miles on the bike Saturday with John and my friends Dave Lange (Chad's new neighbor in Springville) and Paul Badger. Here John shows that the bakery in Kamas packs their custard cream filled donuts with 10X the amount Krispy Kreme does. My estimate is that the amount of cream in that donut was about the size of a baseball.

Dave (above) and John could not finish the entire cream filled donut. Paul (not pictured) did and as a result suffered the consequences. I was lucky they only had 3 left when I walked in so I had something 'lighter' for my mid-ride snack.

Sarah and Chad in the Netherlands

With a rare few days off from teaching, I decide to take a research trip to the Netherlands to interview some people for my book on the LDS Church in Indonesia. Sarah came along for the fun of it. On Saturday the 26th we spent the first part of the day exploring the countryside of Holland. I visited the Netherlands in 1974 with the LHS orchestra and again in the 1990s after visiting Bill and family in Germany, but both of those trips were just in Amsterdam. It was nice to see windmills (not very many) dikes (many) and canals (even more).
From atop a dike at Volendam. The land to the right is below sea level. It was a Saturday morning and everyone of all ages were out for bike rides. I would have loved to have biked through the countryside.
Playing tourist
The pastoral country side of Noord HollandThe city of Leiden where the pilgrims (including some of our ancestors) found refuge for 12 years before setting sail on the Mayflower.
Bikes of Leiden

That evening we had a mini reunion at the home of Robert van der Vlis in Wassenaar. We served in Semarang together. He offered to take Sarah for a boat ride in the canal behind his home. I decided to join in and then Robert convinced a reluctant Frans Witte (we served together in Jakarta) to climb in. Robert and Frans were in the back and their combined weight sunk the boat too low. Water started to stream in and we started to sink. It was pretty funny. Frans jumped ship so the rest of us wouldn't have to get all wet.
Frans is at this end of the table and Robert at the other end. Liesbeth Gout is next to Robert in the blue and white. Her father was my mission president. She was 11 at the time. I interviewed these three and got some great stories. Robert's story about a burned passport is a classic. We ate and visited and watched slides from 4-11 (all the while the USA was losing in the world cup). It was a delightful evening.
Next morning we drove north in hopes of meeting Sister An Gout. We were told that she may not be willing to meet with us. We got no response on our first attempt knocking at her door and searching through her nice gardens, so we drove 30 minutes to Groningen to church to see if by chance she was there. She was not, but we did catch the last 20 minutes of Sacrament meeting. Afterward we met Holly Seeholzer's son who is serving his mission in the Netherlands. We then drove back to the village of Peize and this time Sister Gout came to the door. She doesn't remember a lot, but she did remember enough to make it all worth while. My hope now is that by meeting with me she will be willing to dig out copies of her husband's missionary journal to share with me. We then drove to Kampen where we met with more of the Gout children--Victor, Karin (the sculptor of Moroni) and Sandra were interviewed. While we visited, Sarah played with two of the Gout granddaughters who were both 11.
Driving back to Amsterdam that evening we passed the large dike protecting the polder (sea claimed land) of FlevoLand. The dike was built, then the water pumped out which then provided much more flat agricultural land for the Netherlands.
This polder land was once below the sea. It is still below sea level.
For our last day we saw the sites in Amsterdam. In school this year Sarah's class read the play about Anne Frank. They performed parts and Sarah had the part of Anne, so our first stop was the home of Anne Frank. Very interesting and very sobering.
The Anne Frank home is three windows wide and directly in front of the sunlit bench.
Bikes and canals-typical Amsterdam. We visited the Van Gogh Museum and Rykes Museums (many Rembrandts).

By 4:00 pm the streets were quiet as everyone gathered in pubs and restaurants to watch the Netherlands win its game against Slovakia.
Then everyone poured out into the streets to celebrate the victory. We stood in line for a McDonald's hamburger for Sarah which we then took into an Indonesian restaurant where I enjoyed my third straight night of delicious Indonesian food.
These fans were probably even more excited to beat Brazil (sorry Brian and Ben). Joel and Will now sport orange soccer jerseys and black shorts.

The Big Five-O!

Happiest Birthday to the best man of our house! We sure do love you!

Love, the girls

(P.S. A shout out to Shelly on her day too!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE!

Happy Birthday to such a GREAT sister!

WE LOVE YOU!

Adrienne, Allison, Melissa, Laura

The Boys of Smithfield

With apologies to Nash and Merrick, the boys of Smithfield are featured, with special Happy Birthday shout-outs to Jaxson and Koebe

The rotary swim had Jack a bit nervous.

"I'm not getting these surf jams wet!"

Max has no such worries.

"Okay, I'll go with an inflatable blue rhinoceros."

"Where's Clark?  I need to shoot him."

I couldn't get one shot with everyone looking at the camera. 

Jaxson looking for that perfect pitch.

Jaxson making a perfect cut . . . without contact.

Koebe connects, watches his popup. . .

. . . and makes it on base.

Koebe throwing some heat.

Jaxson catching some heat.

Chance celebrates the win with a birthday cupcake.

Jerusalem Artists

This is the last week of school for Joel and Sarah at the Anglican International School of Jerusalem. Joel has become quite the artist.
The pyramid is woven strips of paper.
Friday we all went to Joel's third grade exit point in which they demonstrated what they have been learning in their volcano unit. Joel and his good friend Daniel did a report on the Yellowstone super volcano. What they learned freaked both of them out. His teacher even e-mailed us to make sure that we could help Joel not worry. I don't know if Joel will ever dare to visit Yellowstone again for fear that it will all erupt.

All of the students got awards at the exit point. Joel got an award for "Prodigious Poetry".
The secondary (6-12) art students all joined efforts to create this ceramic mural that now hangs in the office of the school administrative secretary. Many of the halls and offices of AISJ are decorated with ceramic murals from past years. It is a nice touch. The mural is about the creation and the tree of knowledge.
The thirteen sixth graders helped primarily with the waters of the sea portion. Sarah's contribution was the squid, the word "wonder" with its nice yellow curvy script and several of the small fish near the white fish.
This photo of Will outside an ice cream store in Tiberias last March was posted on Facebook by one of the students. It is a great photo. I'm not sure if chocolate ice cream face painting counts as artistic talent.

Memorial Day - Brigham City

Here are some pictures from the Brigham City cemetary on Sunday: