Sarah loves having a California vacation home to visit and she has declared she is going to come here as often as possible. So, as soon as we wrapped up with zone conferences and welcomed a new sister from the Philippines to our mission, it was her turn to be in our spotlight.
We took her family to Texas Roadhouse. Jonah almost made it into the photo. At least his foot is proof he was with us.
Sunday morning Glen was serving up French toast to the little grandboys.
We tried taking photos in my favorite photo-taking spot in front of the palm trees, but the light was not quite right at that particular time of day.
We decided to attend one of the wards that meets in the Cardiff building. While there, we happened to see Stephanie Gwilliam. She is serving with her husband over the Chile Santiago Mission. She was in town for her father's funeral.
They are the couple we met on our Holy Land vacation who lived here and he was serving as a counselor in the California Carlsbad Mission presidency with President Kendrick, the prior mission president.
He also served a mission in the same mission at the same time as our friend Steven Morgan who was on that same vacation with us. Small world!
Here is our attempt at getting a family photo taken with all of us in it. We were trying to find a place in the shade and it didn't make for a good background. But the plus side of it is we are all in the photo. But only half of us look happy to be photographed.
Never fear! Sarah had worked her magic to get a happy pose out of her four boys when we were in the center courtyard before church began.
That evening we went to a baptism of this young man who had been taught by the assistants.
Monday = FUN DAY!! At least in the morning before Glen got busy answering 162 missionaries' letters the rest of the day.
We went on a hike at Guajome County Park. We were going to see if we could see any bunnies on the bunny trail.
But, alas!! The bunny trail was closed for some reason. So we just made our way straight to the lake.
We found our feathered friends.
Eli had a great time feeding them.
Lincoln and Carson preferred to watch them from a distance.
We stopped at Oceanside on our way back home to take a look at the sea lions.
Carson is quite the little artist drawing a good depiction of Mario.
Family activity of making gingerbread houses with graham crackers commenced that evening with Lincoln as the frosting taster.
Although we had guests, missionary work must go on!! Off we went to the mission office church building where we had a trainer follow-up meeting for this group of missionaries who have been here 4 weeks.
A delicious grilled chicken dinner had magically appeared when we walked in the door thanks to Jeff and Sarah. We were under a tight time crunch as Glen needed to get back to the mission office for a presidency meeting with his counselors.
Abe's family arrived in town from San Francisco. We got a kick out of the little Santas that appeared at bedtime.
Newland and Wynne got into the French toast making action the next morning.
Everyone needed lots of strength to go hiking at Annie's Canyon. Sarah's family had not yet been on that adventure and were anxious to see what it was all about.
It was a good thing I hadn't planned on doing the slot canyon part of the hike because Wynne became very interested in playing in the sand and just stopped in her tracks to play while everyone else had gone on ahead.
We were happy to be bringing up the rear with our little explorer who was taking her own sweet time.
Meanwhile, Eli and Newland were anxious to get to the canyon part of the hike.
Glen decided to join in with the little boys when they were doing a second walk through the canyon.
We got back to the trailhead with everyone intact. But, we were getting hungry.
Next stop--a Mexican restaurant.
Later in the day we went to Chuck E. Cheese's.
The grandboys were anxious to show their grandpa what prizes they picked from earning all their tickets.
Chef Wynne and Chef Carson got busy the next morning helping their grandpa fix French toast breakfast.
Then it was time to bid farewell to the Excell family. They were making their way back home--stopping in Cedar City for a couple of days to be with Jeff's family before getting home in time to host the Ward family Christmas Eve dinner party.
It was so nice to have them here and see them having fun with their California cousins here in California.
