18 & 3/4 years later.....

Believe it or not, I do actually remember that I have a blog!! I won't take the time right now to explain all the things we've had going on between now and the last post I did. One day I'll come back and try to catch up, because there have been some important things we've had going on as a family this month.

But this is such a fun update that I didn't want to put if off for too long. So here it is!

This week David was completely planning on his mission call getting here. Our stake president was able to look online and see that it had been sent out, and since the calls generally seem to come on Thursdays, David knew this would be the one!

We argued discussed with David that when his call came he had to wait for all of us to be home before he opened it. He tried to insist that he would just open it at the mailbox and let us know what it said whenever we got home. I told him if I got the mail first, I'd hide his call to ensure that he couldn't open it before we were there (I teach clogging pretty much all night on Thursdays, and then Mom and I don't get home from our class until late, so we told him we'd come home earlier if the call was here). David was very clear that it was his mail and he'd possibly never talk to me again if I hid it. :)

But it was worked out - eventually - that everyone could be home that day at 2:00ish, and since the mail generally comes in the morning, it would definitely be here.

So during the week, he was asking a ton of family and friends if they wanted to guess one state and one foreign place they thought he'd go (all for fun, since of course no one around here would know that). He had a three page list of people's guesses by Thursday.

 So right around 2:00 on Thursday, Grandma and Joni came over, Malia got home from work, Dad was home from work because of his snapped hamstring (one of the stories I'll have to catch up on someday) and we were all just sitting around the house waiting. The mail still hadn't come and it felt like a cruel joke since it usually gets here before lunch time.
  Well, finally a little before 3:00, the mail came! David went right out to the mailbox and came in with a big, white envelope.....it turned out to be some mail for Malia. No call. So we were all a little diasppointed as we wondered if it would be another whole week before it came.

  So on Friday morning, Dad had David drive him to his doctor appointment for his leg; Malia was at Grandma's; Kelani was at PE; and Mom and I were both getting ready to head to Caldwell for a clogging performance.
  Right after 11:00 the mail came (where was that yesterday?!) so I went out to get it. IT CAME!!!!! I went running back into the house with all the mail and took it over to show Mom.

  At first she told me we should put all of the mail back in the mailbox, except for the call, which we should hide. That way when David got home they would get the mail and just think that the call hadn't come. She thought it would be doing him a favor so he wouldn't have to know it was there all day, but that he'd have to wait to open it. I told her there was no way I was going to hide since it would be nice not to have the silent treatment from him for the rest of my life.
  Eventually we agreed that it would be fun for him to open the mailbox and see it in there, so we put all the mail back and headed off to Caldwell.
   Before the performance even started, David was on the phone with Mom telling her we just needed to come home right then so he could open it. By then everyone was home except for Mom and I. But by the time we'd be home, Malia would be at work until 9:30 at night, and he couldn't wait that long.
  We didn't ditch the performance, and we told him to find out if Malia could come home during her lunch break that evening.
   So finally it got time that we were all home, Grandma was here and the waiting was over. He was like an excited/nervous kid in a candy shop when it got right down to it. As soon as he pulled the paper out of the envelope, Dad handed him the phone so as David read it out loud, Grandma Farns would be able to hear it at the same time that we did. She had her phone on speaker and one of our aunts and a few cousins were at Grandma's house to hear it, too. 

  "Dear Elder Farnsworth....."

He's going to...... JOAO PESSOA, BRAZIL!!!!!

 He couldn't pronounce the city but luckily we have a few different friends who speak Portuguese and they've been helping him learn how to say it.
  He'll report right to the MTC in Brazil on November 21st, the day before Thanksgiving!!

Never heard of Joao Pessoa? We hadn't either. But on a map, here it is: the little red part. :)

  So there it is, after almost 19 years of wondering where he'd go, now we know!! The next adventure now will be getting him all ready to actually pack up and go. It's going to be quite the adventure!