Author: cosmo

When we were first married, Pepper’s family would have reunions every year. Her parents, siblings, and all their kids would get together in mid-July… often somewhere in Idaho or Utah, which was close to most of them. I remember it being sort of overwhelming at first, when there were sixty or more people who I didn’t really know. Learning names was a challenge, as was figuring out who belonged to who. Of course as the years passed I figured out the names and relationships.

The family has grown a lot, and now our nieces and nephews have their own adult kids, so it’s hard to get everyone together for a reunion. It’s shifted to every other year, and we meet up with whoever can make it. It’s still great fun to see the crowd and catch up a bit.

Two years ago, we all agreed to have the reunion in Arizona instead of Idaho, and in February instead of July. It would make for an interesting change. And through sheer coincidence (or was it providence?) we ended up serving a mission in California, a short four-hour drive away. So we were able to attend.

Most of the siblings were there, as well as a few of their kids. Since February in Arizona has great weather, we were able to do all sorts of things outdoors. We had a desert hike…

Pepper had a really cute hiking companion: our grand-niece Eve.

A few of “the guys” snuck out one night for some burgers.

I also managed to pop over to Potbelly, one of my top three favorite sandwich shops.

With around fifty people, there was always something going on. At times that meant fitting a nap in between activities.

I really enjoyed spending time with a gaggle of my grand-nieces:

We were so grateful that the reunion happened when we could attend, and it was awesome to see everyone for a weekend.

We drove through Yuma today on our way to Phoenix, and our good friends Gary and Susie happened to be in town from Bigfork. Naturally we had to meet them for lunch!

We haven’t seen them since we left for our mission, so we had a lot of catching up to do. We were at our table for almost three hours. It was awesome.

Afterward we stepped outside for a group photo and found a big fork (get it?) right on Main Street. It seemed fitting.

Although it’s a two-hour drive to San Diego (and back), we always enjoy spending time at our monthly mission zone conferences. In addition to lessons and inspiring messages, it’s an opportunity to see old friends who are no longer serving in the Valley with us.

Since we’re in “the big city”, it’s also an opportunity to get lunch at some of our favorite restaurants. We joined the newest senior missionary couple at our favorite sandwich shop, Cheba Hut!

We really love taking the missionaries out to lunch. Every transfer, as some leave and others arrive, we want to get to know the new ones and make them feel welcome in the Valley. (Plus it’s an excuse to go out to a restaurant, which I always enjoy.)

Here are our latest lunch buddies…

Whew! That’s a lot of eating out in ties and skirts…

As usual, this latest group of missionaries wanted to head out to the Imperial Sand Dunes. Although we don’t always go (having been there many times already), today seemed like a good opportunity. Off we went, piling into the mission vans and driving an hour north.

They always love time in the nice warm sand.

We posed for a group shot… quite a few of us!

Afterward, we decided to clean the vans and get rid of all the sand. We stopped at a local car wash and went to work. Not surprisingly, sand was everywhere. Some of it had to be vacuumed out of hair…

And even pockets!

Good times, as always.

Back in June, when we were new to the area, we bought some cacti at a local show. We set two of them outside in the hot sun, and after a day one of them was practically burned to death. We’d been told (by a cactus expert at the show!) that a lot of sun and heat would be good, but apparently they’d grown up pampered or something. We promptly brought them indoors and attempted to nurture them back to life in a cooler environment, with more water.

Anyway, fast forward to today, when the succulent finally expired and the burned one gave up another lobe (of five original lobes, only one remained). We decided it was time to buy some new cacti.

In the back left is the solo-lobe one that didn’t like the heat. At front right is the other “original” prickly, which seems to be thriving. The other two are new, and we’ll see how they do. We hope to take all of them back to Montana as reminders of our mission in the desert.

Our friend Michelle is a geologist, and she has an amazing rock collection. I’ve always enjoyed rocks and gems, and fancied myself a bit of a collector when I was a kid (although my collection was generally just pretty stones I found on the ground). Today she showed me a sample of iron pyrite, popularly known as “fool’s gold”.

This isn’t an ordinary sample, though. It includes two massive cubic crystals, which is really unusual… and probably won’t really fool anyone into thinking it’s gold. Typical deposits of iron pyrite have thousands of crystals like this, but much much smaller and crowded together, making them at least a little more believable as gold.

So cool!

Our friend Tamra gave us some eggs her hens laid. I think they look pretty awesome!

Today was a beautiful sunny day, with the temperature sitting right around… 80 degrees?

We were out in San Diego today, and since we have an annual museum pass, we decided to check out the Automotive Museum. They have an impressive collection of old (and odd) cars. I especially enjoyed the DeLorean.

Of course this car, which would’ve been little more than a footnote of history, is iconic from the Back to the Future series of movies. It was cool to sit in one!