Costume Party, Gage's Farewell, Eric, SDA Date

It was a busy but great week. Marissa and Zack went to a costume party. Zack grabbed this goofy wig out of our Halloween box and went as a punk rocker dude. Too bad we didn't have a fake tongue ring to complete the look. Marissa went as a porcelain doll, which I thought was very original. She was really hoping to win the cash prize but did not. Oh, well. I thought the effort was great.


Here's a close-up of Marissa. Notice the crack in her face. Pay no heed to the crazy dude behind her.

Gage's mission "farewell" was Sunday, October 25. He did a nice job on his talk, and we had great family support. We had over 50 family members for dinner at our house and lots of ward members and neighbors that evening. It was a great day. Below are a few pictures from the day. My apologies for not getting everyone in the pictures. It was sort of hit and miss.

My Mom and Dad have made a cute sign like this every time one of their grandkids have left on a mission. They told us to take it down carefully and store it away for the next seven years until Quinn/Sasha leave on their missions. They said they might not be around to make another sign. I don't want to think about that, but I did as they instructed and have rolled it up under my bed. Will someone please remind me in seven years where the sign is?

Eric e-mailed us some beautiful pictures of Guam. I'm ready to pack up my bags right now and head out to this beautiful island. This is the best picture, and my program will not transfer the whole picture for some reason, so here is the sky and the top of Eric's head!

Eric bought this car in Guam.

Another picture of the island and coastline. They had a tsunami warning and hurricane warning a few weeks ago. Eric says it was quite exciting around there. It sounds terrifying to me. His house has big metal shutters on it to pull down over the windows in case of a hurricane. Ultimately they were never hit by either a tsunami or hurricane, but I guess the air force base and the whole island comes alive with preparation activity. All the aircraft had to be flown to Japan for safekeeping. People hoarded gasoline. Eric said there was not a gas pump to be found with fuel in it.

We plan on visiting this island in about December of 2011 after Gage gets home. We'll see what the next two years bring. Maybe Eric will be somewhere else by then.

But for now, we'll have to be happy with visiting Ukraine. We received word yesterday that our dossier had once again been approved, and we were invited to be at the State Department of Adoptions in Kiev at noon on November 17! It looks like Michael and I will be spending Thanksgiving in Ukraine. (Let's hope not Christmas also!) We are so excited to go get Sasha and add him to our family! We hope three trips to Ukraine in one year is quite enough.