All Things Finnish

We started our week saying goodbye to these folks.  I love this vegan restaurant, so before we could head south, Britt suggested lunch here to celebrate out 48th wedding anniversary.

It was fun to hang out with Mike, which doesn't happen too often.  Of course Charley is always charming.

As is Alex, who was happy to try the vegan fare, because he's going to try out being a vegetarian this year.  This place is the best.  Dad had a bruschetta grilled cheese, and I had a Seitan (faux beef flavor) with horseradish aioli, so yum.

Of course as a nod to really good Finnish black licorice, Brittany found all of these really good licorices for the Papa. (I got a collection of curds, starting with a lemon-lime curd, also yummy.)

On Tuesday Dad and I unpacked and tidied up, before heading to Provo, to the Bright Building for Grace Armstrong's wedding reception.  Here we are with the newly weds, Jamie Krueger and Grace.      Of course she is one of our Finnish missionaries. 

And we got to meet up with a few others as well. Shown here on the left is Keely Watts, and Maren Ostlund and her fiance, Andrew Doyle, next to Dad is Izzy Zenter.

Then we got a chance to talk to Grace's parents, Andrew and Rebecca. They are in the foreign service, and gave us some ideas about what it would be like for Spencer and Brittney to be with US Aid. Frankly it was a great comfort for us.  He said he has known many, many people with US Aid, and was excited for our kids.  When Grace went home from her mission, it was somewhat tricky to get her to Senegal.  It was during covid restriction time, and had to be booked on unusual airlines.  Fortunately church travel took care of all that.  The Armstrongs have just finished up there and will be moving to Cairo soon. 

And speaking of all things foreign, look what I found while walking at Walmart with Carolyn the next day.  The fun thing is that Carolyn is likely one of very few friends who would also get a kick out of seeing Kewpie Mayo at Walmart.  She had several kids serve missions in Japan, and had one live there for several years as well.  Her husband and sons have also taken Japanese tourists on birding trips all over the world as part of their birding business. 

I worked that day, and Dad worked at Darby's.  I got off an hour early so we could meet up with friends for dinner at Applebees, the Shumways, and two couples from their ward.  The ones by the Shumways are the Christensens and work in Education, and the ones by us, the Andersons are in Real Estate, in fact they work in Becca's office.

At the Hale Center Theater's production of Pride and Prejudice, we found out that Bronson Dameron played Darcy.  He was in the Orem ward as a five year old.  I remember him from being the music leader in Primary there.  You may recall we ran into his folks at a Senior Missionary recruiting fireside a few weeks ago.  Anyway, he did a great job.

Here are Matt and Ann

and us too.

Thursday saw Dad doing his shift at the temple.  I meanwhile headed to work, where I set up my valentines display.

This kid and his friend came in and each bought a bottle of 20 year old coke, so "we can see what it tastes like."  Yep, good times.

That night we headed to a wedding in Bountiful for the couple we ran into at a Finnish Homecoming in Bountiful a few weeks back.  Here we are with Gabi Tanner, as was, and her new husband Easton Cox.

Then we visited with another former Finnish missionary, Madalyn Vincent and her fiance, Sam Larsen who grew up in Bountiful. She is from California.

On Friday we had an appointment with our Financial Planner, and saw this cool mural in the building.

It looked great, another employee came by and told us there was another one in the companion building and there we found another of Brady's heroes.

Here is more of Dad's hard work at Darby's.

How much is Dad shrinking?

After we got home Dad found out that Ulla and Juha Lehtinen are to be the new Mission Leaders in Finland.  Its funny because Dad messaged Ulla earlier this week to ask if she knew who the new President would be. She said she thought it would be announced in the church news this weekend. 

We are just thrilled.  They took over from us doing the housing when we left our first mission.  Then he was in the mission presidency with the President Kervinen, who we welcomed during our second mission.

Dad laughed when Ulla told him later, that they were very surprised that they would be called at their age, they're a couple of years behind us, then she said, but when you'er face to face with a prophet who is so amazing at the age of 98, you don't really think its something you can mention. 

In keeping with our Finnish theme this week, the Mottishaws invited us and 40 other people, mostly Finnish missionaries, for salmon soup and chatting.

Always yummy.

Here are Kenley Johnson, McKenna Bagwell, and Esme Bolander

Here are Parker Fenton, Addey Blaser, Emma Margetts, and Savannah Allred

Here are all the guests who had served in Finland.

Saturday was Trevor's birthday, so we had a car trade out (Getting the van back, after their trip to Mexico, all perfectly scrubbed and vacuumed.)   

First we picked up a piece of furniture from the antique mall, dropped off a load of new merchandise at The Grove in Pleasant Grove ( the antique store I am now selling at.)

Then we took Trevor for Sushi ... and Eva too.

We just love all our sushi pals.

We stopped by a pet store so Eva could get Penny some new fish to replace a couple of her guppies, who may, or may not have been filtered out of her aquarium ...  Penny thought it was funny that she was eating gold fish when Eva gave her the new fish, also gold. 

and last of all we finally got to give Eleanor the repro clock that wouldn't fit in their Christmas basket.  Its labeled Kensington Station. (her middle name)  Note the semi-four traffic light that was part of their Christmas lighting.  So fun.