Family Trip #9: Back to Utah

I remember the summer of 1995 being a little stressful. We had three little boys including baby Garrett, living in a two-bedroom apartment with 600 square feet. Scott was trying to finish up his research for his Ph.D. He was driving out to the "Synchotron" to do research every day. He would leave at 5am and get home around 6pm. We didn't know exactly when he would be finished with his degree but he had two job offers: one with Sylvania in Boston and one with NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland. We decided to go with NIST since that seemed like a better situation overall. At the end of the summer, Scott went to a conference in Paris on "International Conference on Atomic Spectra and Oscillator Strengths."

Meanwhile, we had to put in our 60 days notice for our apartment, not really knowing when Scott would be done, and we had to find a new place to live in Maryland. Additionally, Scott's future boss, Tom Lucatorto, was trying to work out the details of how to pay Scott. We thought the moving expenses would be covered by the government but, in the end, it wasn't which was a definite financial burden. But somehow we made it through. Not everything was bleak. David and Jan had lots of buddies to play with in our apartment complex. We had made lots of friends in our neighborhood and ward. We had a good support system. We finally moved away at the end of September after David attended kindergarten for a month in Madison.

This picture makes me laugh. I'm not even totally sure which one is my child but I think David is the second one from the left. The weather was extremely hot.

David learned to ride a two-wheeler that spring.

Our good friends and neighbors the Cohens were moving away and this was a goodbye party for them. Jan was buddies with Isaac.

The weather was unusually hot. We had temperatures above 100 with high humidity. In Chicago, about 2 hours away, over 700 people died because of the heat. People didn't have air conditioners because the weather just didn't get that hot. We had a small room air conditioner which helped.

Cute little Garrett was learning to stand

In the middle of all that, we made a trip to Utah at the end of July. My brother Craig was coming home from his mission to London and we wanted to visit before we moved even farther away.

Heidi's on 2nd with David as baseman, Kent is playing shortstop

We participated in a family softball game. We also went to the zoo with Scott's mother.

We went to the airport to pick up Craig.

We attended Craig's mission homecoming and then we drove back home to Wisconsin with some good memories.

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Visiting Susquehanna: The Priesthood Restoration Site

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I have been a negligent blogger this last month. My reason is that we have been super busy. At the end of July, we went to the Nauvoo Pageant. We were able to participate once again in the Gold Cast like we did in 2007 and 2014. We picked up our daughter at the end of her cross country camp in Price, Utah on our way out of town. Then we drove to our friends' house in Golden, Colorado near Denver to stay the night. It was fun to reconnect if only briefly. The next night we were in Lawrence, Kansas, visiting my brother and sister-in-law and their family. That was also fun but short. We left the next morning, attending nearby church before taking off. We arrived in Nauvoo around 4pm with just enough time to have dinner at our cabin before going to our orientation at the pageant building. The next day we went to the pageant building to get our costumes and to learn how to do our hair in the 1840 styles. ...

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