the moon, my missionary, Eric, Andrew, and a mini-vacation

There are a few things I forgot to put in last week's post:

Strawberry moon

The first day of summer had a full moon which was known as the strawberry moon. Alex and I interrupted the game we were playing to go down Perazzo Ln. and watch the sun set and the moon rise. Beautiful.

The sunset just before the strawberry moon came up 20 June 2016

the strawberry moon

Rolling with it

While with some friends, I had to lie down and pop my back. My friend brought out this nifty foam cylinder that I rolled my back over. I went home an ordered one for me. Divine.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00X87C898/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Found one of my missionaries!

I have tried a few times on facebook to contact Bruce Neilson, a man who, I was pretty sure, was the one who taught and baptized my sister and then me.  He finally saw my message and contacted me! It's kind of a neat story. This is part of what he said in his first message to me:

You may not believe this but I actually thought about you by name earlier today and wondered what your life had been like. For some reason I had to check my Facebook account (which I hadn't done since January) today and saw I had a message-yours. 

And then in an email he said:

On the day of your first message in February, I was in the hospital recovering from quad bypass open-heart surgery resulting from a heart attack a couple of days earlier. I was recovering nicely for the next couple of months, however, at the end of May, around the time of your second message, I had a second heart attack and was hospitalized, due to one of the bypass grafts failing. I did not see either of those messages at the time you sent them, but I was recouping from the second second heart issue and checking on classmates on June 12 so I saw your messages. It is interesting they were sent when they were. I am doing much better now, back working [he's an attorney] and working with the scouts (no hiking yet!). ...hearing from you really changed my disposition and I appreciated it.

I haven't been successful in finding his companion, Brad Barlow, however.

I don't have a photo of Bruce that I feel I can share, but I have one of his photos he took of the Fresno Temple (did you know you can upload your photos of temples to the church's website?):

Fresno Temple by Bruce A. Neilson (Fresno has the same design as the Reno temple)

And that photo led me to others on the church website that I liked:

Reno Temple by Aaron Nuffer

St. George Temple by Rick Satterfield

OK, the news of this past week.

A facebook post from November

So a video clip that had been posted last November showed up in our feed again. It was a clip from a Celtics basketball game where a guy in the audience (who looks and moves just like Eric) was dancing.

I love Eric's comment on this clip this week:  
I've never seen a Celtics game in my life and I'm STILL not entirely certain that this isn't me.

And since we're talking about Eric, here is a picture of a piece of art work he did for one of his classes. I rather like it and I do find it pleasing. I give him an A.

I asked him about the assignment. This was his reply:

Acrylic paint on vellum bristol board- paint the background separate from the foreground elements, cut the foreground elements out and arrange them until the composition is pleasing.* Then glue them to the background.

*Part of the assignment was to get atmospheric perspective in, so I knew I needed two trees in the background, but I didn't know how to arrange the second one until I did it.


Andrew's job

Andrew, Heather, and Henry were originally planning on joining us this week, but then Andrew had a job interview, so they couldn't come. The good news is that he now has full-time summer employment. I don't know yet exactly what he'll be doing, but he was hired on by the City of Provo. Congratulations Andrew!

Family Get-Together

We had a mini-vacation with Glen's family this week and it was so much fun.

Alex in our hotel room--almost done with his Brandon Sanderson book

Wednesday afternoon we went to the temple and did family sealings and baptisms and then went out to eat. Hannah had a final the next day so was studying, but she was able to join us for dinner. We (well, minus Hannah) were all spending the night at the Nugget Hotel. On Thursday we got up, played some games, checked out, and then had breakfast at an IHOP. We spent the rest of the day at Wild Island, our local water park, with Hannah joining us after she aced her final.

It was a gorgeous day and it was a perfect day to go as it was supposed to be 100º. I liked the slides and wave pool, but I really think just gently floating down the Bahama Mama river is my favorite thing to do. And can I just say how grateful I am that someone invented sunscreen? We were in the water under the sun from about 11:30 am to almost 7 pm and I didn't burn. Joy.

They have a special deal at Wild Waters that on Thursdays with 2 admissions you get 2 free tickets to the XD Theater Adventure. So after we were done with the water park, we went next door to use our free tickets.

The adventure itself lasts just a few minutes, but it was such a blast! You choose from 3 adventures--fighting bandits, monsters, or zombies. Alex chose the zombie adventure for us. You buckle into your seats, put on 3-D glasses, grab your gun, and watch the story play out on the screen. Of course you are trying to rack up points by shooting the zombies and not the people. It had us driving through a dark forest while being attacked. Afterwards you can see what your score was (Alex was 1st and I came in last), the top 5 scores of the day (Alex was in 5th place!), and the all-time top 5 scores. We'll have to do it again.

Alex is the one on the lower right--in 5th place with 44,000 points

Butterflies

I saw some monarch and swallowtail butterflies in the milkweed and day lilies today. Of course when I got my camera, I couldn't find the monarch anymore, but took a few pictures of the swallowtail. And the flowers.

the rough edges of her wings make it seem like she's been through a lot

So, another good week. Another week that went by very quickly. Now we're looking forward to the festivities on the 4th!