Mother's Day

Mother's Day 2009 was wonderful. It started with breakfast in bed followed by presents. Below are some flowers that Michelle received from Erin and Justin for Mother's Day.

Michelle also got some flowers from Lauren and a flat of impatiens to plant outside. So our house is smelling good!

Jared gave Michelle a Kohl's gift card, and Glen gave her some running gear. (Michelle's signed up to run the Freihofer's 5K race on May 30th).

One of the most anticipated things that happened on Mother's Day was receiving our phone call from Brett. He called home at 1:00 p.m. We had Erin and Justin on Skype and the rest of us were on a cool speaker phone that Glen had brought home. It worked great. We were all able to hear him and ask questions. It is amazing how fast time goes when we are talking to him. In our conversation he mentioned that he will probably be home for next Mother's Day. He said his mission typically releases missionaries two weeks before their entrance date - and that would put him home around the first part of May. That means we'll only talk to him once more before he's home - at Christmas time. Wow, time is flying by! Brett said that he's eaten tons of ethnic food. He usually has African, Jamaican, or Indian food, with some good old English food thrown in now and then. He said that one of his favorite dishes is a vin daloo from India. He said it has curry in it and is extremely hot (spicy). Brett also said that one of the things he thinks he'll be blown away by when he comes home is how big everything is. Cars, houses, yards, streets - they're all small in England. He said that a Ford Focus would be a "family car" in England. We thought that was funny! Michelle thanked Brett for her Mother's Day present. Glen had Brett record 116 words that the GPS uses. Then he put it into the GPS unit. On Saturday night Glen and Michelle were driving to U. Albany for a concert and the GPS was giving directions. The first was turn left and Michelle asked whose voice it was because it was a male voice when before it had always been female. Then the GPS said something else and she asked Glen what was going on - Glen asked Michelle whose voice she thought it sounded like. She said she thought it sounded like Brett. And Glen told her that it was. Once the GPS said more than just a few words it was easy to hear that it was Brett. So now every time we use the GPS it will be Brett's voice giving us directions. If we put it in the back seat we might even think that he was in the car. It was so fun to hear his voice after not talking to him since Christmas. And then to get to talk to him the next day was amazing. He'd love to get letters from anyone who wanted to write. Hint, hint! Brett expressed that he is learning the value of work, and that it's taken on a whole new meaning since being in the mission field. It's fun to hear how he's maturing and learning lessons that will benefit him for the rest of his life. Erin and Justin were able to tell Brett that they're having a baby boy. We also told him that Suzanne and Evan are having a baby boy as well. It was great to talk to him. It made us realize just how much we miss his sense of humor. He said some pretty funny things and made us all laugh.

We also went over to Evan and Suzanne's house for dinner with Helen. The missionaries serving in Evan and Suzanne's ward were also over for dinner and it was fun to talk to them since they'd both preciously served in our ward. It was a wonderful evening (except when Emma fell and her top teeth went through her bottom lip) and we were glad to be able to celebrate it with Helen and everyone else.