Angela & Gabriel y Hijas

Two family portrait at the end of the evening before we left for home.

Wednesday night Angela and her husband invited us over for dinner and a visit. When Corey was a missionary in Chile, he worked at the mission office for a time, which is in the same building as the Church's offices, where he met Angela who worked for the church. I met her too when we came down to Chile in 2000 when Joseph was a baby.

So Wednesday as we got ready to go, Hyrum was complaining that we were leaving the apartment - not that he hasn't been staying inside all day... he's still in the Lego zone mentally and anything that interrupts his play is the enemy. So we made Hyrum come, poor kid, but he had a good time.


They have a Wii so the kids got to go water skiing at their Wii Resort as they ate potato chips and cookies and drank Sprite.


Corey, Angela, Gabriel and I visited.


Angela and Gabriel have three daughters, so of course Abi and Lily loved their pink bedroom and all their girly toys! Abi and Lily are both in pink dresses, such girls, love bows, pink, and ruffles.

Pink Pink Pink! Abi, someday I promise we'll get you a pink room, as pink as you can handle.

I really liked their bunkbed!


Then we all went to a park close to their house.


The kids swinged in the swings and climbed on the climbing stuff, big iron things - don't know what these are supposed to be...


Of course everyone loves Lily.

Memory there - someone kicked a soccer ball into the pond, the wind blew it across, we saw another ball there too that someone had Lost. Joe started after the ball we brought, Wesley was after the other ball. He went to go get it, went to stand on what he thought was firm mud, but it was instead slop mud and he sunk right in up to his knees. As he tried to get out, the mud sucked his feet hard and kept his his flip flops. Wesley was quite surprised!

So then we tried to find them with a small wood board we found. We got one flip flop out, but the other was being very elusive...


Joe and Ethan both tried with their hands, feeling around in the slimy slippery mud... No luck. One more try, but if this doesn't work, then we're done and your flipflop with be buried here - may it R.I.P.

Feeling with his hands and his feet - He feels something.... feeling around, feeling, and... Eureka!


Joe was very happy to be the Flip Flop Hero of the evening. Good job, Joe. Then we ran off to rinse ourselves in the sprinklers. Then back to the car, back to Angela's house for pizza, dessert, and a movie - Despicable Me. The kids hadn't seen it before, they really liked the little yellow guys and the little girls too. It's fun to hear them laugh, although from this photo they may look very passive, but they were slightly engaged.


Abi and Wes looked cute I thought.


As the kids and I watched the movie, Angela the Angel and Corey went to her computer and typed up a "Solicitud" for me to take to Court in the morning to solicit the judge to waive my ticket. It worked, thank you so much Angela! I wouldn't have known to do that, so what a blessing to go visit them the day before I had to go and have her tell us what to do and how to do it. I'm very grateful, Angela, thank you again so much!

So we had a great time and hope to see them again soon!

Also, her daughters were so sweet and they gave Abi some of their toys and a little pink purse and a shiny headband with a bow, they are so nice. I've noticed that in other kids I've met, our friend Eduardo from Uruguay - his two boys would always load our kids up with random toys when we'd go visit them. Or in Brazil our kids were always coming home from visits with toys. I need to teach them to do that, too, so they can learn how great it feels to give and share what we have with others.