More family, Yay!

We loved having Tyson and Jamie come visit us in Pittsburgh.  They are the first family to visit since we moved to Pittsburgh from Wheeling.  We miss our family so much and love when they can visit.

             

              

We saw Pittsburgh from all three overlooks.  Fortunately it was good weather and only rained occasionally.

                                      

We took what they call the “Just Ducky Tour” and learned a lot about the city of Pittsburgh itself.  They have taken WWII amphibious machines and turned them into tour busses. We drove around down town Pittsburgh with a tour guide, learning about it’s history and buildings.  Then we drove right into the river and toured the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers for a bit.  The funnest bit of information I learned was why Pittsburgh is so crazy to get around in.  We were told that two different engineers planned the city. One started from one end and the other started from the opposite end and worked towards the middle, never thinking they would meet because there was a hill between them, but over the years they have dug out the hill  and it is now Grant Street.   There really is no rhyme or reason as to why the streets run like they do. 

              

We took another day and drove to Kirtland, OH and toured the Church history sites.  There is such an amazing spirit at the Church sites and we loved visiting with the site missionaries who serve there.  One of the couples was in the MTC with us, the Symes, and it was fun to catch up with them.  Jami had never been to Kirtland and it was fun sharing it with her.  Kirtland is about 2 1/2 hours from Pittsburgh.

             

We drove to Wheeling and showed them some of our favorite places and they got to meet some of the people we grew to love so.  That evening we went to a Pirates game. It was free T-shirt night so we all got our souvenir Pirates shirts.

We really enjoyed playing hooky from the office for a couple of days and loved having Tyson and Jami come experience some of our mission with us. 

Flat Stanley comes again

We had Flat Stanley come visit us again.  This time Easton sent him to us.  We got to spend time at the office, he went to primary in the Pittsburgh 2nd ward, he helped with a service day at the church and he got to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Denver Rockies. 

              

This time President and Sister Topham went to the ballgame with us.  We got rained out on the Monday night game so we got to go to a Wednesday day game instead.  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day.  President and Sister Topham have taken Flat Stanley touring around the mission also so they were quite familiar with him.

              

We had a ward service day and Flat Stanley got to help Elder Green vacuum the building.   He also went on team-ups with Elders Mackintosh and Huber.

               

He visited with Elder and Sister Bowcutt in the office and got to be the fleet coordinator for a day. 

                                      

He also got to say good bye to Elder and SIster Marshall as they were leaving the Mission to go home to Cortez.  We are really going to miss them.

                             

We  enjoyed another trip to the Washington, DC temple with Brian and Amanda O’Connor from the Ward.  Brian’s mother, Theresa Schieffer, was there to receive her endowments and it was fun to be there with her.  She’s become a good friend.  We are enjoying our service in the Mission Office, doing what ever we can to help the mission work go forward.