We Love Missionaries

Living in Utah you don't realize how little you see the missionaries assigned to your ward.  The only reason we ever saw them while we were there was because at some point Randy was the ward mission leader and when we had the chance to feed them (which was very few and far between) we would, but we never really got to bond with any of them.  Not the way we have since leaving Utah.  We had instant bonds with many of the missionaries.  We would have each set over at least once a month, usually more depending on how empty their calendars were, and at one point we had 3 sets of missionaries. So they were over a lot.  It was always hard saying bye to these valiant young men and woman, but we are grateful for the friendships we formed.  Let's see if I can remember all of their names.  This is Elder Diaz.  We like to call him Dinkus Diaz.  He was pretty forgetful.

 Sister Ben and Sister Sandberg.  They helped us clean and paint before leaving.

 Elder Hackney, we called him Acme or Acne.

 Elder Redmond, or Elder Irish.  He is the only Irish missionary out serving right now.

 Elder Lord's and Irish (again)  Kenz became really good friends with Lord's younger brother through Facebook. They still talk all of the time.  

 Irish, Wilkison, Clayson and Lords.  Wilkison was aka Wilki or Wilki Way.  Do you notice a theme with nicknames?

 Kitchen and Peel, haha, don't ya love that.  Those are not nicknames.

 Palmer!

 Vidmar and Peel. We called her Viddy or Auntie Kylie cuz we really wanted her to marry uncle James.  That didn't happen, but she is marrying Acme in August 2016.

 Sperry, a quiet soul.  Great missionary though.

 Sperry, Palmer, Viddy and Peel.

 Acme, Mortenson (Morty) and Palmer.  Morty just proposed to Peel. We are so excited for the two of them!!!

 Diaz, Morty, Lorsche (aka Vector from Despicable Me) and Palmer.

 I can't remember this missionary very well.  He didn't stay long, but you can see that Vector really like to be picked up, and Dinkus, who is actually married to another sister missionary who I never got to meet.

 Wilki, Tanner, Irish and Bair.  Masie sure loved Irish.  He was her favorite

 Bari and Irish.

 One more for the road.

Calvart or Canada.  She's from Canada so that was obvious.

Moving to MN we've even made some good connection.  Elder Taugavau or Tutu.  We found out that we are related.  His uncle Kilangi is married to Lenora my cousin.  So he would call me auntie a lot.  He is awesome!!!

 We have even become friends with some of the moms.  Elder Lord's mom sent me a message asking if we would take a picture wishing him a happy birthday.  Can you tell we love missionaries.

I know I will have more.  We just can't get enough of these crazy kids.  I guess growing up having missionaries over all of the time and having 8 siblings and parents serve mission has helped with this passion.

Randmoness

As I'm making these posts I'm finding more and more random pics from my phone that don't really have a  home but I thought they were either cute or funny so I decided to make a post all of its own of random shots.  Kaders was nervous about swings for a while.  Every time he'd swing, he'd grunt on the forward motion till he got use to it.  It was pretty cute.

 He sure loved playing in the sandbox.

Everyone did for that matter.

 We got a wiggle car for a killer price in the winter and since it's too cold outside till about April and we had a massive main level with lots of wood and tile flooring, this toy got a lot of use.

 Kenz stole my phone and had to get some selfies at the temple open house.

 This is how Masie usually sleeps.  Right up against the edge of her bed.  If it wasn't for her rail she would always be on the floor.

 Kaders discovered Nutella.  Or should I say his hair discovered it.

 Just being cute.

 More of the Children's museum.  This is in the ancient exploration area.  This kids are digging up things.

 Gotta make sure you wear protective gear, even it's on upside down.

 We like to try and wear these two out.

 More sandbox cuteness

 I did  take two shots of Randy's surgery. Well before his surgery.  He looks so forlorn.

 My cute boys

 And sometimes just weird

 OK, really weird!

 I guess it kept her busy during General Conference so that's all that mattered.

 Upon arriving to MN we found out that band starts in 5th grade so we jumped at the chance to have Micah begin lessons.  He chose percussion.  Hope my nerves hold up.

Welcome to Minnesota

We left on Labor day from Martin's Cove in hopes of seeing Mt. Rushmore and Matney one last time.  But our start was too late and we had 13 hours to go so we drove all day and got into our hotel in Maple Grove about 1 AM.  Because of Randy's surgery and other events we were unable to secure a home before leaving Indy, so we stayed in an extended stay type of a hotel in hopes of finding a place soon. Randy had to be up early and at his new job that next morning and so we sent him off with his very own first day picture, lol.

 Over the next 3 weeks, we searched everywhere for a rental.  We thought we wanted to stay somewhat near Randy's office so he wouldn't have to commute that far, but we also knew with this new position there would be a lot of travel, so being near the airport was also an option.  When we couldn't find a place up on the Northside, so we expanded our search to all over the Minneapolis area and found a home in Lakeville in a little bit of disarray from previous tenants that the landlord said he'd work on while we were living here.  It was big enough and for a great price, considering the area, and since we had been struggling to find a place we jumped at the chance and moved in as soon as possible.  We had been living in a 2 bedroom hotel for too long and we were "all done" living that way.  Plus the kids had been out of school long enough and they were getting a little stir crazy.  We tried to get out of the hotel as much as possible, but with Randy working and being new to the area it  was hard to explore with 6 kids. We did go to the Mall of America which had been a dream of mine since I was teenager.  Now we live 20 minutes away!!!  This place everything imaginable, even roller coasters and other rides.  The kids really like the Peeps store and of course the Lego store.

 Being out of our ordinary routine was hard for Kaders.  Living in a hotel, not having his normal bedtime routine made it hard for naps as well as bedtime.  But he would eventually crash somewhere.

 We also heard about the Como Zoo which is a free zoo in Minneapolis.  It was small but had some really cool animals.

So far we really like it here.  There is a lot to explore and so many lakes.  I feel like I'm living Up North all of the time.  Now if we could just afford to buy a lake house, I would be in heaven!!!