What a Great Day!

8:30ish Ryan's breakfast request, scones with buttermilk syrup. Thank you Grandma Judy!
Footprint and heart shaped scone for our soon to be hardworking missionary.




Claudia delivered these cookies to Ryan just before we left San Jose Tuesday morning. We were good - we saved some Hello Mate ones for Eric.

11:40ish Elder Eric Hardester lands in Salt Lake.





Elder Loertscher was Eric's MTC companion, and they served in Adelaide together, and they came home together.





12:30ish Headed to lunch and exchanging gifts.
A kangaroo skin scripture bag. (we all got one!)
The perfect gift for an outgoing missionary from his returning from an Australia mission brother - a tie with kangaroos!
Ryan's gift to Eric - a picture of his missionary self. The frame, purchased at Walmart of course. Grandma Judy printed the picture for him. Thank you Judy!

12:45ishLunch at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building














2:00ish Last Goodbyes





3:00 MTC























4:15ish A visit with Tom Carlisle and Grandma Elaine




5:30ish to 7:00ish Outback Steak House - to spend more time with family.





It's great to have friends on the "inside". Gregg came into dinner and without saying a word placed a paper down in front of Greg and me. It was a copy of Ryan's district! There was Ryan smiling big as can be - among 11 other missionaries, their names and homes listed under their pictures - and we saw who Ryan's companion is! Thank you, thank you Gregg!

A free Sundae for Eric. Isn't that nice? The waitstaff did that on their own accord - to welcome home the Australian missionary.
Off to the airport - Greg's still driving.


9:30ish Salt Lake Airport
Unfortunately, we arrived to the airport to find out our flight had been delayed an hour.
We think Eric had been up nearly 40 hours by now.



10:30ish Oakland Airport
Greeters from San Jose - what a great surprise!

It was a great day.

Ryan's first P-Day

Ryan was set apart as a missionary on Monday evening around 7:30. For Tuesday, the day we left to Utah, Pres. Green told him he could dress casual, "...like it is a P-day..."

Ryan was up and ready to go sooner than everyone else. He put his luggage out the door around 7:00am and we left about 7:45.


Ryan's last chance at the piano at home.



Evan's ready to go, just "a little" tired.


One last game of ball. This is a new hobby of Greg's - to pull out a football from the trunk of one of our cars, and toss it around while he has time - he says to me, "so you can't say I never played ball with my kids"




Ryan's breakfast wish was McDonald's.

Choppin' on a McMuffin.


Greg driving, driving everywhere. On our way to a 10:20 flight out of Oakland.


No troubles anywhere, we reached Utah no problem. But ended up with a tear in one of the rental car tires. We stopped at Walmart to get it fixed, but after quite a wait ended up having to take it to a Big O Tires where they thought they had the right size tire, but they didn't. We did have fun browsing Walmart and had lunch there - McDonalds. We drove around on a spare while we had the rental.

Waiting for the spare.


We finally made it to Tremonton. Was great to see family again.

Brynley Belle, one of Ryan's most favorite people.





Uncle Kelly made Ryan his first missionary tag.








It was a day for pink.



Evan bought himself a RC helicopter while we were wandering around Walmart. Was a hit.

A Quiet Sunday Dinner

Nancy invited us to dinner. Those around to come provided the meal. I think there may have been more of us at Girl's Camp than in San Jose. Scott, Greg, Claire, Kelly, Noelle and Camille were all at camp.

Here are the happy diners.



OK, Evan doesn't look so happy but that's just about the picture not about dining.


See - Evan really is a happy diner.

Ryan's Farewell

Ryan had his missionary "farewell" talk July 19. He did very well. He and friend Chantal also provided a muscial number for the meeting. They made their own arrangement of "Be Still My Soul". It was beautiful and tender.

We had a lot of visitors; family and friends, some from out of town. We thank everyone for coming to support Ryan. He enters the Provo MTC on Wednesday July 29th. He's headed to Guadalajara Mexico.

Some Friends
from left to right - Ariston (met in 8th grade, member of the band); Cory (elementary school); Chantal (seminary); Ryan; Jessica (seminary); Oliver (9th grade, member of the band); Robert (9th grade, member of the band); Tim (8th grade, member of the band); Kaitlyn (ward church); Camille (ward church); Nathan (stake church and high school, roommate at BYU)

Some Family

As always - we had hamburgers and hot dogs with yummy salads provided by Jensens and Laugenours. Thank you!!














Again - thank you everyone! We had a great day. Was wonderful to see you all. And thank you for all of your help with making it the success that it was. Love to you all!