Salvage Saturdays

I realize most of you will not understand my utter joy in this kind of thing. I walked in and kind of got tingly. It may have been because it was 0 degrees in there but I enjoyed every minute of it and it just went on and on forever. There were doors and arches and corbels and brackets and ........ all from old buildings that had been torn down. I came away from the day with a small turquoise dresser and a couple of McCoy vases. I had a place for them in our tiny apartment but when the space soon runs out I will have to show more self control:)

Our first visitor!

 The Amtrak train brought our first visitor this weekend! Our oldest daughter Niki came for the weekend to visit and spend some time at a lecture series in a nearby town. It was so great to see her and we hope that now that we are on the same coast that it won't be long before we are together again:)

While she was busy on Saturday, it was our Pday, so we ventured to the only Costco in Vermont, that is an hour and a half away! On the way we did swing by the Ben and Jerrys factory for a quick hot chocolate loaded with a scoop of our favorite ice cream flavors! They were also serving a Vermont favorite called sugar on ice. It is snow with pure maple sugar poured over it. They strangely serve it with a dill pickle to kill the sweetness. It was good in a weird kinda way:)

The Flowers

 Sister Mooney and I have spent days planning and deciding on flowers. The catalogs are full of choices and it was hard to plan when neither of us have ever lived in this climate. We ordered almost five thousand flowers yesterday! I like to go to the nursery and just stare at the spring flowers they have out. It helps me believe that planting time will come soon but in reality we can't plant here until the first of June:(

For now the daffodils and impatients on my kitchen table will have to get me through this next snow storm!

"The Lights"

 The Memorial is decorated with thousands and thousands of lights during the holiday season. Putting them up will be one of our jobs in the Fall. For now our job is to take them down, untangle huge balls of them, replace any burnt out bulbs and neatly fold them back up so they are ready for the Fall.

 For those of you that know Elder Harman......lets just say......torture. I am pretty sure he secretly prays for more snow so he can go outside:)

Making new friends

The couple on my left are the Mooneys from Cedar City. They are the other new outside missionaries. We met them at the MTC and traveled a little together on "The Trek". They are great people and will be a lot of fun to work with. The couple on my right are the Osbornes. They are from Spanish Fork and they are the new Directors for the Memorial. The are also great people and we can't wait to get to know each other better. We actually knew Elder Osborne in our other life way back when. He was one of the men that sold Tweet and us ladies fabric when we had Rupert Fabric. It was a pleasant surprise to find they were here!

We Western people just don't know snow!!

 We were greeted by a huge amount of snow! The outside missionaries had left for home two weeks prior to us getting here and they had several of the worst storms during that time. That is the sidewalk that runs in front of the Directors residence and the Visitors center. We had to mostly shovel it by hand and after the first couple of days we felt every muscle!

 These are two story high icicles that they had to take down off the chapel on the property. They used chainsaws and a lift to get them down. Elder Harman wasn't able to participate and he was super disappointed.

"THE CROSSING"

I'm not going to lie "THE TREK" across the good ole U S A was a bit on the wild side. We seriously never saw dry ground. It was white from Utah to Vermont.

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 Wyoming was quite the ride with the wind and blowing snow!

 Nebraska wasn't a big improvement:)

 I loved the barns of the midwest and the sunset over the Mississippi was breathtaking!

 This would be the view from my rearview of Elder Harman being pulled over for speeding in Chicago. We were on a major highway so the officer came to my window and requested Kent come back to his car. I couldn't get a shot of it but I would have loved to share them patting him down before they would let him get in their car!!

 We made a quick visit to Kirland. We saw the temple and then visited the Whitney store where once again the police were called because we set off the alarm. I should have had them pose with us but they weren't super happy with us:)

 The highlight was Facetiming right after Meag had Crosby. Only knowing we were on the Lords errand helped this old grandma make it through not getting to kiss those cheeks:(

 The rest of the trip was just a repeat of the beginning and we weren't really sure, after being trapped in a four by ten space together for six days, wether we really wanted to serve a mission together or not!

Before we left St. George we had packed our car with everything we felt we might need for the year we going to be gone. There wasn't a wasted space and Elder Harman commented that he wouldn't have wanted to pull my handcart coming across the plains:)

We just fell in love with our District at the MTC. Back row Elder Harman, Sister and Brother Hall from  Victoria BC going to Jamaica and surrounding islands, Sister and Brother Soffe from SLC going to San Deigo, Brother Bateman our awesome teacher, and Brother Oxborrow with his wife in the chair in front of him, from Mesquite NV going to Peru. We can't say enough about how close we felt to them and how they enriched our experience at the MTC!

Getting our Name Tags!

We went into the MTC on Febuary 3, 2014. We aren't going to lie, we were both a little nervous. Even Elder Harman has trouble with the unknown:) We started with a group meeting and then we were divided into Districts. Elder Harman was made a District leader. We attended all our classes with the same four couples the whole week. We really came to love them as we grew together through learning and feeling the Spirit. Our young instructors were absolutely fabulous and had a lot to teach us old guys. The practice teaching experiences were a little nerve racking but it ended up being a great week! The only hard part was saying goodbye to our new friends!