It is Really the Countdown

One week from today we will be in the MTC. Our house has still not sold. We have had a number of showings just today.

Brent arrived in St. George, along with the Randalls, sans Craig. They were happy to get out of the house. Their remodeling has begun in ernest and the jack hammering was noisy. Craig woked hard in Bountiful while we all played hard. Needless to say, the Sullenger girls were excited to see their cousins. Anne brought Brigham Baggett with them, as he had never had a chance to come down. He was pretty excited and seemed to love everything we did, which was mostly the kids playing. This morning we went and played miniature golf and rode in some bumper boats. They had a ball. I hope that Anne posts the pictures on her site. I hope that the pictures turned out good.

At any rate, on the the preparations. We will arrive home on Thursday and Friday the movers will come and move everything out. Saturday we will have a small open house at the McFaddens. I do home someone comes. It should be a nice visit with all our children and some of the relatives and friends. Sunday we will speak in church and then be Set Apart by our Stake President. Monday morning we will be off to the MTC. We are not sure who will be taking us, but I am sure that one of our children will do it. If Liz and Brian stay over till Monday, perhaps they will drop us off on their way home.

We have been without cars for a week or two and it is interesting. I guess we will have to get used to it as we probably will not have a car in Hungary.

We continue with our Hungarian lessons, but I am not sure how well we are doing. Brent got a lot of packing done after I flew to St. George a week ago. The problem with not being home, it doesn't seem like anything unusual is going on, except that Liz and Brian are off having a wonderful time.

Brent brought my little piano down, and are the girls ever excited. Over the weekend it has hardly been off. Already I can see an improvement in Emily's playing. She has hauled out her old books and been doing really well. Even Ashley, who says she will not be playing the piano, has taken her music out.

Tonight we are going to dinner with Brent's family that are in St. George. That will be nice. Some of them may fly up for the farewell on Sunday, but no one knows for sure about it. It will depend on how Grandma feels. Brent was very anxious to spend some time with his mother while down here. I hope that he will spend a little more time with her during this week.

We have our itinerary for our flight. We willl leave SLC and go to JFK in New York and then on to Vienna where we will board a small plane and go to Budapest. We did find out that we will be finished at the MTC on Friday, rather than Sunday. That came as a surprise to us. I hope that we are ready for that. We still have to finish up our talks for Sunday. We also have to be sure that we have our weight distributed correctly among the suitcases. We have one suitcase that is not looking as sturdy as I would like it to be. I am trying to decide what to do about that. Can't do anything until Thursday.

I hope that we have more interesting things to say after next week. I am beginning to think that we aren't much fun at the moment.

Now the REAL WORK begins...

Our Christmas break from many things was wonderful!! We spent some fun times with family and thoroughly enjoyed them. Christmas Eve found us all together for dinner and a presentation of the Nativity by mostly grandchildren, and a round of gifts. Being together is what Christmas is really about. Grandpa was able to say the blessing on the food in Hungarian, which did bring a few snickers from the children and grandchildren. At least we are trying.

Our Christmas couldn't have been better...we had all our family together. Brent and I received many wonderful gifts, and one that was not so wonderful, but just keeps on giving. Several of the children had colds, and they shared it with us. I have been really miserable for a couple of days.

On Wednesday night all the girls had "Grandma's Night". We watched Hairspray, and had pizza and did hair. It was not as eventful as they have been before, as we banned makeup and nail polish for that night. It is fun to have them all together. Next year they are on their own, but the following year, we will be ready for that night again.


That same night, Dave had all the boys over for "Boys Night Out" They too had pizza and watched movies and played games. Lucky Paulina got to work the night shift that night so she missed out on the fun. I am not sure how Gala did, but she probably rolled with it. Speaking of Gala, she is really doing well with the English language. She has been practicing and studying the language. I am impressed with her abilities.

Liz and Brian emptied out the storage closet and disposed of a lot of junk for us...Brian took one load to the dump. We have a lot of old records, so Liz set up the computer and we found what each of them are going for. Unfortunately, if we sold them we would not be instant millionaires. Too bad.
It was good to get that closet pared down. Today, Becky came down for a couple of hours and helped go through things in the storage room. We have another DI run ready to go. As soon as our language lesson is over they will be on their way to DI.

We have now begun in earnest to pack things up. This week we will have the movers come and pick the first load up and take it to storage. We hope that whoever our buyer is, will come by soon and buy the house. We have set ourselves a goal to be out of the house the end of the first week of February, so we will be packing diligently, and sorting things and tossing stuff. We will be going through boxes that have been in our storage room in search of Grandpa's Shoe. I surely hope it is in one of them. Grandpa's shoe is the shoe of Great Great Grandpa Clayson. We have used it for years as a prop for talks and presentations. I hope that it will turn up. We didn't find Grandpa's show today.


We are still showing the house, and looking for that one buyer. We delivered one big box to Anne's storage area, so she can keep an eye on that. We should be able to get the packed boxes out of our garage in the next couple of days, so that we can put more out there. I think that in the end, we will be more than happy to have the professional packers move everything out.

We are really getting around to looking at what we really are going to take with us. I even have piles of stuff that is to be packed. Once the house sells, and I don't have to clean every day, just in case someone comes, I will leave the suitcases out and begin to fill mine.

We are continuing with our language training, however it has been slow over the holidays. Our trainer went home for Christmas and so we only had one session, and then Brent couldn't get home of that one, so I got to practice conjugating verbs by myself.

We were so glad to have the Sullengers with us over the holiday week. I know that they missed their friends in St. George, but they were able to see many of their old friends in Bountiful. It was nice for them to spend time with other family members.

We were recipients of many wonderful gifts to use on our mission and are most appreciative of them all; journals, suitcases, books on Hungary, $$, special pillowcases to take with us, etc. We will put them all to use.

I wasn't a very diligent picture taker and thus all you have is words. I will do better later.