Skip to main content

Everett's Home!

On August 18th, our missionary son came home from his mission in Armenia.  He was originally supposed to come home on September 15 but the mission president recognized how hard it is to come home and not be able to start school for several months because you have just barely missed the beginning of the semester.  So he sent home about 7 missionaries a few weeks early so they could all start school.

Here they are at the airport in Armenia together:



Everett's travel day was unbelievably long.  Armenia is 10 hours ahead.  He got up at 7am on Friday, August 17th (9pm on Thursday for us).  Then he didn't sleep at all on Friday night because they had to go to the airport at 2am on Saturday morning and he was busy talking to all his missionary buddies.  They flew to Vienna at 4am, then had a long layover.  Their next flight was to Chicago arriving 1pm or so.  They had a long 6-hour layover there which became even longer when the flight was delayed by 90 minutes or so.  He called me in Chicago to tell me and I encouraged him to sleep on the airport floor if possible.

We all went to the airport and he arrived in the airport about 12:30am.  We got home about 2:30am--he went about 53 hours without lying in a bed, getting a little sleep along the way.  The next morning we had 9am church.  I think he was functioning on adrenaline at that point.  Regardless, we were super happy to see him!


With his good friend Gehrig who wrote him faithfully every week






The next day after church, he was interviewed by the stake president and officially released as a missionary.  We were able to spend a lot of time that day hearing about his mission.

Taking his name off the missionary board in the stake offices.
We were able to go to the temple a few days later with Lincoln and MiCayla
A week after he came home, we celebrated his July birthday with Too Much Chocolate Cake and hamburgers.  One great thing about Everett is how much he appreciates (most) of the food I cook.  His cousin and good friend Anna was there that weekend for his official homecoming talk at church and joined us for dinner.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visiting Susquehanna: The Priesthood Restoration Site

On our way home from Palmyra, we decided to go a couple of hours out of our way to visit the recently opened Priesthood Restoration Site along the Susquehanna River.  This is where we believe that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist which gave them the authority to baptize.  This site also has the restored Isaac and Elizabeth Hale home where Joseph and Emma lived for a year as well as the home where Joseph and Emma lived on their own. We spent a couple of hours there and I wouldn't have minded a few more minutes but we had a long way to go that night.  It's a beautiful setting, very much in rural Pennsylvania.  However, on the day we were there, cars at a racetrack nearby were detracting from the peace and quiet.  I'm guessing that's not as big of a problem on weekdays. The Hale Family was quite well-off for their day so their home was probably nicely decorated with wallpaper and carpet. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

This is a juvenile fiction book about a young girl named Melody with severe cerebral palsy.  Her body doesn't allow her to feed herself, speak, or do much at all.  She's very intelligent with a photographic memory but she can't really communicate.  Finally, in 5th grade, she gets a "Medi-Talker" which is a computer that speaks what she types in.  Finally she has a voice. This book explores what it is like to be severely physically disabled but not mentally disabled. It seems like one of the most frustrating of all scenarios.  She is completely aware of all the cruelty (subtle and otherwise) that her classmates inflict on her because they don't really want to include her in their activities.  One of the saddest moments in the book comes when she realizes that every one of her special ed classmates is kind, where the "normal" ones are not.  Who really has the worse disability? The book was a quick read and fairly enjoyable.  Wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do Dots Family System

The original post was written in January of 2015. I wrote an update at the bottom of this post in March 2021. A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about something she was doing in her family to help her family function better.  Her teenage autistic son had been struggling a lot so they had been working with behavior therapists to help him and this "Do Dots Family System" had been recommended.  As she described it, I was greatly intrigued since it sounded like something I wanted to implement at my own house. I looked into it and decided to purchase it right after Thanksgiving.  Here is my review of how it has worked for us over the last six weeks or so. The basic idea of the chart is that children need to take care of their responsibilities before they get any privileges.  It strongly reinforces the concept of "Work Before Play" .  The chart helps children see in a very visual way that, until they have completed their responsibilities, they are on Le...
Post a Comment
Read more