Celebrating Richard's Birthday

The three of us (Richard, Linda and Erin) awoke early to get to the Tamarack Zip Line, which was a birthday gift to Richard.  We were the first ones there. After receiving a little training and dawning company equipment we headed to the ziplines. There are eight. The first two are for training purposes, and then we took a van to the top of the mountain – 1700 or so feet – and got serious. What a rush! These photos should tell the story, mostly of Richard since it was his day. The excursion over all the lines took us about 4 ½ hours, and then we went out for Richard’s birthday lunch at Subway Sandwich. When we got home we fixed strawberry shortcake. Jana and the kids called so we sang “Happy Birthday” with them on speakerphone, then Rich blew out the candles.

Rich running down the ramp to pick up speed

You can see the red dot in the middle -- that's Richard, zipping along about 45 mph.

Richard coming in for a landing at the treehouse

Erin was fearless

Rich coming in for another landing after zipping about a thousand feet

Linda on one of the walking bridges.  Always confident and got up a lot of speed, but crash landed 7 out of 8 times. Unhurt and wants to go again. 

Happy Birthday, Papa. 

The "Should we/Shouldn't we" phase

Our summer has been back-to-back activities and wall-to-wall grandkids since June 1, when we moved to a mountain cabin in Donnelly for the season.  We picked up Erin (16) in Cedar City en route, who had declared it her turn to spend the summer with us.  We've had so much fun we'll hate to see her go back home.  She landed a job at Paul's grocery in McCall her first week and has saved enough money for something a little better than a clunker, which was her goal. 

We're at the "should we? shouldn't we" phase of deciding to go on a mission.  There are six huge reasons not to go:  our grands.  They're everything to us.  Nic is playing Rugby for SUU -- his first year at college.  Our Hunter lost some front teeth.

  

There's basically only one reason to go: We feel a tugging that's bigger than we are.  We're overly blessed and, as Richard puts it, "God didn't give us good health for no reason."  The Prophet has promised us that the Lord will bless our families while we serve.  We trust that.

Yesterday we asked our Bishop to give us access to the online mission applications.  We completed questionnaires, uploaded pictures and documents, and made copies of the medical forms for doctors and dentists.  We think it will take awhile to move out of our house and get a proper tenant.  We considered just locking it up but we need the tax deduction of a rental. 

The next few blogs will be to journalize our decision-making process and keep track of our  "to-do" lists. 

This is the downloaded photo attached to our application.  Jara was in it and we Photo-shopped her out.