16 July 2017

 Dear everybody, 

  Short email tonight. The Humphries campout was small, but quite and nice. There were only 5 of us: Beth, Hannah, Noah, Dad and me...oh, and Moose. We had hot weather and no rain, although we would have welcomed it. It was nice not to wake up cold in the night though. 

   We left Thursday evening,  about 5 and got home Saturday about 4.

   We're enjoying having Noah with us and we're really looking forward to Joseph getting here. 

   Busy week coming up and Steve's 17th birthday too! Good grief...I think his Mama just had her 17th not that long ago. Time is sure passing quickly and life is good! I hope you can find enjoyment each day. I hope we can hear from some of you this week. It's wonderful to know what's happening in your lives.  Love you all!

Mom/Johanna/Nana

July 18, 2017

Hi Everyone,

Mom, thanks so much for your emails! We love getting them.  

Joseph is all packed and ready to go to Idaho tomorrow. He's very excited. 

I'm planning on getting another email out this week with more details from our big road trip, but I need to get some sleep before driving tomorrow so I'm going to include part of what I wrote in my work newsletter article this month.  

 I have a group of friends that I ride bikes with very regularly.  None of us are or have been professionals, but we get good exercise doing it.  In the last month three of us have been strongly reminded that we are not 18 anymore.  My buddy Nick was the first to get injured.  He went over the bars and separated his shoulder while we were riding with our Boy Scout troop at Buffalo Creek.  Our wives insisted on the picture with our matching slings. 

I was next just a few days after Nick.  I was on a trail I’m very familiar with, was feeling confident and pushed my luck going too fast on a downhill section.  I broke my collar bone, and hit my head hard enough to break my helmet and have a mild concussion. I’m extremely thankful it wasn’t worse and that I had a good helmet that did its job.  Looking at my grin in the picture with the X-ray I’m pretty sure the concussion was still affecting me.   

Then just last week another riding buddy went off the trail and greeted a tree with his face.  His injury is probably the worst.  He fractured his eye socket in 2 places and had to have a corrective surgery to get everything back in place.  I saw him just yesterday and he’s still in pain, and seeing double out of that eye, but the swelling is going down.  The doctors said it will take a few more weeks for him to get back to normal.   

It has been said by many that things happen in threes.  I’m hopeful that we’re done with crashing for quite a while.  I’ll be back riding as soon as my doc gives me a green light, but I’ll make this public promise that I’ll slow down a bit.  Thanks for letting me share my story!!

After these accidents and hearing about what happened to Casey Hunter I'm truly grateful my experience was not any worse.  

Love you all, 

Ben

July 20, 2017

Hey everyone-

 

Mom- thanks for the emails! It’s crazy to think such a small group was up at Kilgore this year – I’m sure it was still nice tho. We hope to make it out for the campout next summer. We have decided to spend two full weeks out west next summer, which will be broken up between time in Oregon, Utah and Idaho – hopefully we can catch up with everyone on this email at some point during our trip.

 

Speaking up trips – we have so much to share about our trip back east we took with Ben’s family, and are looking forward to our trip we start a week from tomorrow going west. The trip back east was super-fast paced, but we were able to see and do so many fun things. We met up in the Chicago area on June 30^th at a hotel in Naperville, IL. First thing in the morning we went to the museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which was tons of fun! We were there until about 4pm and headed east from there. We all made a pit stop in Elkhart, IN so Brad, Joseph, Ben and myself could play some disc golf. Afterword we all went to Panda for some chicken and rice – YUM! From there we headed east to Toledo where we had hotel reservations. The next morning we attended Sacrament meeting in the Perrysburg Ward, which was very good. Then it was onto Steak & Shake for a late lunch just outside of Cleveland. Then we went onto Kirtland, OH where we first visited the temple, that is owned and (similar to some buildings in Nauvoo) operated by the Community of Christ Church. From there we went to the LDS visitor center and took their 90 min tour, which was great! Even though it was hot, the kids did well. Then we went up to the Isaac Morley Farm, which is significant because Joseph and Emma Smith had a home on the 80-acre farm. Additionally, the 4^th conference of the Church was held at this Farm in 1831, which is where the first High Priests of this dispensation were ordained. We went up on the hill to the spot the ordinations happened – pretty cool stuff! From there it was onto New York, where we stayed in down town Buffalo. The next morning it was onto Niagra Falls, which was neat, but we wanted to get going to Palmyra, so we didn’t spend a lot of time looking at the falls. We ended up going to the Hill Cumorah visitors center first, then a quick drive by the Palmyra Temple, then onto the Smith Family Farm, and finally the Sacred Grove – all were very neat places to visit. We finished our time in downtown Palmyra at a Subway sandwich shop – Palmyra is a pretty neat/historic town in general. You should go if you haven’t gone already. We plan to go again in another 3 years and spend a lot more time at each location – you are all invited to come along – seriously! We will figure it out.  

We got to our hotel in Nashua, NH about 9pm Monday night – it was a decent little 2 bed 2 bath apartment like place that we all fit in pretty well for four nights. We met up with Nat’s brother, Bryan and his family and went to the beach in York, Maine the morning of the 4^th. The Atlantic was pretty chilly, but that didn’t stop the kids from having a ton of fun! I got sunburned feet – lame! We went back to our hotel and got cleaned up before we went out for ice (King-Kone) cream and fireworks – both were exceptional! On Wednesday we loaded up and went to Boston to see what we could see in a single day. We started at the public library, which was very neat/historic and then primarily focused on the Freedom Trail, which was a long walk, but we pulled it off without too much drama - kinda. Once we were done with the Freedom Trail it was time to find a subway station, because we weren’t even gonna try to walk all the way back to our vans – no chance! It was about a ½ mile walk to the subway, where all nine of us were able to board for only $11 – pretty sure all the kids rode for free. Once we were back in our vans, that were parked in a $45 lot, we drove by some places like Fenway Park, Boston Garden, The Boston Temple, and some other neat places. We were headed to Barre, MA, which is where Nat’s brother, Bryan lives. Bryan, Lynn, and there 2 yr old girl, Cora, live on a beautiful 5-acre lot in rural MA – the woods are very thick out there! They raise chickens, ducks, bees, and some other things. We had a great time having dinner and visiting that evening. The next morning Ben and Lynsey ditched us for the Big (NY) Apple, so we had a less busy day at the hotel. We still managed to swim in the pool, get caught up on laundry, go for a hike, play some disc golf at a sweet course in Manchester, NH called “The Hallows”, then swim in the pool some more. Oh yeah, I got sunburned, AGAIN – dang-it! Macy was still pealing my dead skin off earlier this week - haha. The next morning we headed south-west for CT, which is where we were planning to meet up with Ben and Lynsey to hand off Joseph. We ended up meeting in Danbury, CT at a Chipotle for lunch. From there we headed for Cincinnati and Ben, Lynsey, and Joseph went to Maryland – I believe. Ben will have to fill you in from here on their trip. We went to Cincinnati to see our old friends, The McKinley’s who were in the Prior Lake Ward with us for a few years. We didn’t get into their place until about 1am, so we spent the next morning visiting over breakfast. We left their place by about 11am and our first stop was for lunch in Indianapolis. From there it was go-time! We had dinner at Culver’s in Wisconsin, and then we were finally back at home by about 9pm. It was soooooooo good to be home!

 

There are way too many pics from the trip to put in the email – if you are interested, there is an album on google that can be shared – just let me know.

 

Congratulations – you have made it to the end of another one of my very long emails – you did it! Haha!       

 

Looking forward to seeking most (those that can make it) of you in a couple of weeks. Travel safe!

 

Happy Birthday to Stephen – I believe it’s tomorrow, right? I only remember the birthdate of my first nephew, sorry to the rest of my nieces and nephews – haha!

 

Hope everyone is happy and healthy!

 

Sam