You bet, it's summer in Duluth!

This is Hazel.  She is one of our favorite little people.

This is what summer looks like in Duluth--peonies, and 4th of July picnics-two of them.

                                                             And fireworks!                                                


And a ride on the tour boat under the aerial life bridge.

                        And these two (crazy) brothers went on a 37 miles bike ride!! And then they went 47 miles another day!!                                Paul and Ron

 And we went berry picking!  They were so yummy!!!  Then we had strawberry everything.

 And we went on an adventure on the Brule River in northern Wisconsin.

Paul paddled a kayak.

Wade and Patti Newton

 This is really a beautiful river. It is not very swift or very deep for most of the route but there were a few  rapids...
There was this big rock just under the water that we couldn't see until our canoe stopped right on top of it. It tipped the canoe enough that things started floating away--my paddle, Ron's life vest.  I didn't actually float away because I found a rock to stand on.  Ron eventually freed our canoe with Wade's help. Meanwhile Paul was rescuing the things that had floated down the river.

These forget-me-nots were blooming all over.  All they needed to grow was a water source and a log to anchor them.

We went last week to Nauvoo with our stake youth conference.  We enjoyed being with the youth and talking about Nauvoo and Church History.  I helped in the kitchen and Ron became an instant success with his selfie stick.  Then he posted some of his photos and now he is Facebook friends with lots and lots and lots of youth in our stake.  And he thinks it's pretty fun.  I will not post his hundreds of photos but just a few.

making brownies

I have been reading a book called "How To Speak Minnesotan" and I have learned some things.  One is that you only need three phrases in Minnesota and the most useful one is "you bet" or "you betcha".  This phrase can be used for just about any thing. It can be used to say yes, no, I agree, or you're welcome.

For instance:

"Here is your suitcase.  It got stuck in the conveyor belt."  

" Oh. Well, thanks." 

"You bet."

"Warm enough for ya?"

" You bet."

"My mother is coming to stay with us for a few months."

" You bet."

"We also lost your dog"

"I am really gonna miss him."

"You bet."

( more useful phrases next time!)

13 months into it and I think we are getting it.

So we passed our year mark on June 9.  We are no longer surprised by things because we saw them last year.  For instance, it does not surprise us to see the fog billowing across the parking lot in June.  It doesn't surprise us to see a bear in a neighborhood.  It doesn't surprise us to have our high temperature 73 in July and hear people complain about the heat.  And we learned never to go anywhere without our bin of games, especially the cards and dice.  Also, we know the importance of "you betcha" in a conversation.  And we know all about feed caps.


 Zone Preparation Day.  We went to Enger Tower and took pictures of this wonderful view!   Then we went to Park Point and had a BBQ and volleyball.

 I helped these Elders, Elder Foggin and Elder Winder, order I pad covers that had keyboards included.  This is the day they arrived.

Transfer day!

Grandma's Marathon! The Elders and Ron handed out water and ice to the participants at mile 22.
And a photo of the finish line.

Ron and Bryan Pugh (from Naperville) went on a LONG bike ride.  I kind of suspected that it might be long and hilly and muddy.  Sure enough.                            

This was a better choice!

Things we have done but don't have a photo of:

Zone conference

Dentist

Graduate open house

Seminary and Institute reports

Church--I did 2 hours of Primary by myself! The highlight was finding a caterpillar on Othan's shirt! He sorta freaked out!

Young Single Adult activities

Institute class
Inspected 2 missionary apartments

Pancakes at our apartment for missionaries on Saturday mornings

Potluck Sunday
Foodbank service

We almost went to the Rhubarb Festival.  Who knew it would be over at 4:00 in the afternoon??

This pic is taken at Mineview in the Sky. You can look out over a huge iron ore, open pit mine.  And this truck holds over 400 tons of ore.  

Then we went to inspect the elders apartment and took them to lunch.  And the portions were so big we took a picture! Both these missionaries cleaned their plates.

Their moms would have been so proud.

A lesson about ticks

Well, you just can't beat the scenery here when the sun comes out!  We took Scott and Jessica to see Split Rock Lighthouse and this photo is sooo good because of Ron's new selfie stick.  (A gift from Annie.) We also took them to Gooseberry Falls and Betty's Pie Shop. (the water in the creeks is brownish because of the iron in it.)

                                                                                              

This is a new thing for Vance.  He recognizes Scott's voice and looks for him.

On Memorial Day we were invited to the Faerbers for crepes. All of us!  Look at all these toppings.  They thought of everything!!

                                
We went down to Minneapolis for a conference of our entire mission.  Minneapolis Minnesota Mission  MMM  We completely filled the chapel.  This picture is just the sisters.

We were invited up to Lake Vermilion to a cabin right on the lake.  It is really is a beautiful lake and huge.  We took a boat ride and saw only half the lake in 1 1/2 hours.  We needed to make sure we had time for Hand and Foot.  (We didn't stay over so don't be thinking that all we do is vacation.)

  We went to a wedding held on the top of a hill overlooking the bay.  Beautiful setting for a wedding!  And it didn't even rain. (there was much discussion of this)  Amanda Bush and Nolan Hauta.

 The young women in the branch held a fundraiser to earn money for camp.  Ron purchased the chance to throw a pie in Haylie's face.  This is the event.

  The elders got I pads!  They are pretty excited.  We will all see how technology will further missionary work.  We get to learn together. So far they have downloaded the scriptures and a calendar and they were working on getting an app that keeps track of their contacts and teaching progress.  They were excited that they have access now to church videos and talks from conference.

We joined with the branch in cleaning up litter along a highway.  Here we are ready to pick up Marlboro wrappers, Budweiser cans and a few pop cans.  It is tick season here and I counted 16 on me!! I had on my wool socks pulled up over the bottom of my pants and I now think that made it easy to cling on.  Ron used duct tape around the bottom of his pants and he didn't find any....so far.  So that's my lesson about ticks for today.
So I found partly buried in the dirt, a glove.  And then another glove and a man's slipper.  I started thinking about Bones where someone finds a partially decomposed corpse at the beginning of every episode. . .
I did eventually find the other slipper but no skeleton.  Lucky for me!!

Sunday was our seminary graduation.  We expected about 80 people and we got about 140.   We are proud to have 23 graduates who finished 4 years of seminary.  I took charge of the program where we had three speakers and some singers and then handed out the diplomas.  Ron took charge of the Scripture Fair.  We asked them to bring something they created that was based on one of the 25 scripture mastery passages.  I have a few photos here.  They were so creative!  The Kahoot! is a game to review some of the things they learned and it works on the phones of the students.  Someone recreated the golden plates.  Ron took photos of his Marathon T-shirts and restated the health advice.There were many more creative activities. Carol was in charge of food and for this many people, she had sandwich fixings and ice cream sundaes that they decorated themselves. I am always so impressed when church members drive 2 or 3 hours to come to meetings. We had 85 students that finished seminary this year.

This past Monday the elders and sisters rode bikes in Lester Park.  It was quite an adventure and involed a lot of mud on clothes and bikes.  They had a wonderful time.  Ron was the only one with blood but he did not have the most mud on him.

Here is a good story about the Book of Mormon: A carpet layer came home from work, ordered a pizza and asked his neighbors if they had anything he could read while he ate his pizza. His neighbors happened to be a couple of missionaries from the church.  They were HAPPY to give him a book to read while eating pizza.  After the pizza he came back to the missionaries to return the book, which he said wasn't all that interesting. 

They asked him, "Did you read it?" 

"Yes" 

 "Did you pray about it before you read?"

"No."  

"Do that"  

He began to read the Book of Mormon on Friday night and was finished by Sunday afternoon with only short breaks for food or sleep.  When he reached the end of the book,  he went back over to talk some more to the missionaries.  A much longer talk.

.

Imagine his surprise!

I got a parking ticket.  You have to use quarters here when you "plug" the meter. That's the short version. The cool part to this story is, when I came out of City Hall there was a bear in the tree right there in downtown Duluth.  So it evened out, didn't it?.  Bad=parking ticket  Good=seeing a bear in downtown Duluth.  And he stayed in the tree.

This is right after they sang "Happy Birthday" to me.
As you can see, no cake.

We are taking one last picture with Elder Damron before he goes home to Arizona.  We will miss him. He was an awesome missionary! We commemorated his leaving by having lunch at Grandma's Restaurant.

We drove up to Thunder Bay, Canada where we visited an Institute class, and a seminary class, a new seminary teacher and the Elder's apartment.  And then we took them to breakfast at the Java Hut.  But we didn't take pictures because it was too rainy.

Then we packed up and went to see Pelican Lake and spend a few days there at a place called Breezy Point.  It really lived up to its name!  Very breezy and rainy.  This is called the "lake area" which is kind of funny in a state of 10,000 lakes.  (There are actually 11,842 lakes bigger than 10 acres in size.)    We took this photo near the headwaters of the Mississippi River.  It is even smaller if you drive another hour North. 

 Wade and Patti Newton came and played some Hand and Foot with us.  As you can see, Patti and I had no luck.  It was pretty sad.  Wade, however, is having a pretty good time.

.Ron has been stopping to look at aluminum trailers for months and months.  So he found one for sale and bought it.  Now, I don't know what he will stop to look at now!  But I am comforted knowing I can take all my stuff back to Idaho in 6 months

We went to a Minnesota fish fry at the Conservation Club.  These are the guys frying the fish.  It was excellent!

Pelican Lake, calm and peaceful.  This was just the one afternoon.  The rest of the time there were whitecaps!

I am going to add some pictures that have not happened in Minnesota but have an impact on our lives anyway.  

3rd place in the Pinewood Derby.  Miss you Sean!

THESE PEOPLE ARE COMING HERE TOMORROW!!!

 Mother's day in Utah with Nanalee, Ashlee, Megan, Angela, Afton and Gloria