This week should really be labeled, the "Week of Visa Limbo", as it seemed that all we did this week was wait for a phone call from the Travel Office in SLC saying our visas had arrived and to give us a departure day and time.
In the meantime we occupied ourselves around Ivan's home and around Orem.
Practically every morning I took long walks for about two hours. One day I'd go north, another day, a different direction. Each time I tried to take a picture of the sunrise and then a selfie of me which I'd text to Bev just as she was arriving at the bus stop with the grandwonders. Here is my best sunrise of the week.. Nevermind about the selfie.
Dad did all sorts of things like: edging the lawn in the front yard, cultivating the garden area with a shovel and a twisty cultivator fork, and helping Ivan install new drawer slides in the kitchen.
On Monday Bjorn, Dad, and I walked/hiked a ways up Provo Canyon alongside the Provo River. We parked right where the canyon opens up into Utah Valley and then walked two miles east, turned around and came back. It was nippy cold and breezy but nice to get out. We ended up eating the
Five Buck Lunch at Dairy Queen - Bjorn's favorite place.
Tuesday was our day to go to SLC to visit the Church History Museum and the Family History Museum. We'd never been to these new remodeled museums so we were excited to go.
This really is a great place with nicely designed exhibits and displays. The gift shop had a great selection of soft fluffy rabbit puppets. I wanted so much to buy one to add to our collection that the grandchildren so love to play with. I just took a picture of the label on one. It's kinda lame....I know.
Nice Angel Moroni Statue and President Hinckley's Six B's
Here is the classic photo in front of one of two original pioneer homes still left in Utah.
I took a quick trip across the street to walk around the tabernacle on Temple Square. I was looking for Jessica Ripa who is serving a Temple Square Mission but couldn't see/find her.
The Family HIstory Center has an incredible interactive display. Everyone could get a special iPad into which you entered your LDS ID and password. Then you could go to various screens around the room, attach your iPad to a port; you could get all sorts of information. My favorite was one which, based on whatever information had been entered in your Family Search program, would show up on a map of the world. You could see where your ancestors had come from. In my case I could see how they had all been in England and Ireland and the Scandinavian countries--then they migrated to the east coast, then to the midwest, and then hopped to Oregon. My description does not do justice to the display. Here we are at the end of our interactive afternoon.
On our hike up Provo Canyon I'd become intrigued with what lay beyond, so on Wednesday we drove east to Midway and Heber City. Midway was originally settled by emigrating Saints from Switzerland, so much of the architecture has a "Swiss look". Even the newer church buildings have exteriors with faux half timbered walls.
For lunch we went to the Heber Valley Milk and Cheese Factory - pretty high adventure tourism.
There were some real pioneer farmers to welcome us and a lunchroom/factory workroom where we ordered yummy cheese sandwiches.
Archer is enrolled in a Chinese language immersion program in his school. One evening he completed an assignment where he had to prepare Chinese food and provide a narration in Chinese. He made gyoza (which are what I call pot stickers. They were delicious!
Thursday and Friday we just kinda hung around the house and Orem. My glasses got crushed in a soccer ball mishap so we spent quite a bit of time at Costco trying to get the frame straightened--- or to buy a new frame That didn't work, so we had hot dogs there and then went to an adjacent shopping mall to a jewelry repair place where some fancy laser soldering finally fixed the breakage.
On Friday, Dad and Ivan took Bjorn and Archer to the Provo Temple to do some baptisms.
I stayed at the house twiddling min thumbs.....and.... my phone rang!!!! It was the Travel Office saying our visas had arrived!!! "Would we be able to leave on Saturday at 2:30 pm or did we need to wait until Monday to leave?" I quickly said that we'd be ready tomorrow. So, Saturday April 8th will be the day we actually depart for the Big K.
To celebrate we went out to lunch and then to the Columbia Outlet store for a frenzied, last minute buying spree of outdoor clothing for Ivan and family....it is so nice to have the Friends and Family Discount!
Back at the house we decided we needed just one more celebratory event, so we went to a dessert place for their version of frozen hot chocolate. It is like the one offered by Dairy Queen but on steroids.
And that's it from stateside!
We hope your Visas come soon so you can start blessing the people in your mission field. It was fun getting to know you during the short time we were able to be with you at the MTC
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