My Farewell Luncheon at work

My staff at work gave me a farewell luncheon. They served tacos and herbal tea therefore the theme was "Tacos to Tea". It was delicious!!! They gave me a book with every one's individual picture and their farewell thoughts. They are simply the best staff anyone would ever want. I will miss them terribly because they are my friends.

On the way to the MTC

Kristie picked us up at the airport in preparation for us entering the MTC and we stopped at the mall for Rex to get a haircut. Kristie and I enjoyed the kids while he was in the shop. I really am practicing my blogging!!!!

Family time before leaving for England

Rex and I loved our farewell. We had such great support from are amazing family and so many friends came. Here is a great picture of my dear sister. How I love her. Here we all are at the zoo. What a fun day we had together. That afternoon we went to Rich's and swam and played games.

We had Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday so everyone could be with us except for Kristie's family who were sick. We played games, decorated the Christmas tree and put up the outside lights. We also gave each family our Christmas gifts as we will be in England for Christmas.

Shopping

We are in Utah enjoying our grandchildren here especially Jacob's baptism. We have bought our winter coats for our mission in England. Rex bought two new suits and I bought a couple of sweaters. We are so excited to be leaving in a month for our mission. Our farewell is on the 29th of Nov. at 11 am. Hope to see you all there. We will have a light lunch afterwards. We are thrilled to have all of our children home with us for Thanksgiving and our grandchildren!!!!! I will be blogging our mission so you can all enjoy some of it with us. Patrice is going to teach me how to be an expert blogger!!!! I bought a new camera and have a new laptop so I am sooooo ready to become an expert blogger. That will become the first miracle of our mission. We will be located in Carmarthen, Wales. It is a little coastal village that has a small branch that we will have the privilege to work with. We will also be working with the elders in the Wales area. We are trying to locate our "flat" in Carmarthen right now. What an experience. We will have a rental car we rent from the church. We go into the mission home on the 7th of Dec. and leave for Paris, France on the 14th of Dec. and then fly on to Birmingham, England on the 15th. There we will learn to drive on the wrong side of the road and have dinner at the mission home with the other senior missionaries. That night we will be staying in King Henry the eighth's castle made into a hotel and then that next day drive to Carmarthen where we will set up our little home and then go to work for the Lord. What a great boss!!! We will continue to add posts and share this adventure with you all.

Opening the Call . . .

It was so exciting to have the whole family with us when we opened our call. Rex and I had worked at the temple that day. I personally had prayed so hard that I would know that this was the right thing to do and that we were going where the Lord wanted us. It was certainly confirmed to me in a powerful way in the temple that this was right.

All of our children were either with us physically, on the phone, or on Skype for the big announcement. It was thrilling to see that we were called to the England Burmingham Mission!

It's On It's Way . . .

Rex and I are going on a mission!!  If all goes as planned, we will get our call this week.  Put in your best guess, and you could win a $25 gift certificate.  If two people guess the same place, the first one in wins.  The deadline is Thursday . . .

Good luck!

Grandchild #21!!!

Today at 7:30 a.m. little Isabella Kaye Crandall was born! She was 7 lbs. 10 oz. and 21 and 3/4 inches. She is so very, very beautiful with lots of dark hair. She looks a lot like Abbygail did. Isn't it amazing that every new child is just simply a miracle. Ally is doing very well and had a great delivery. Justin is certainly the proud father. It was thrilling for me to hear his excited voice this morning announcing the birth of his third child. Rex was afraid he would miss the birth while he was babysitting Kaylene and Ruel's children in Boise -- and he did!

Ethan was so excited about Isabella that he tried to rearrange the entire hospital room!

Abbygail is already acting like a little mother. She cheered when her dad called this morning with the good news.