It's been a while . . .

First off, this is Larry and not Kaylene typing up this entry, but I figure that since this is a blog for our family, it's free game.

It has been a while since we posted anything on our blog and there is a lot to say, just it has been hard to find time to say it recently. We'll get around to it. We promise.

It has been a while since my family (parents and siblings) have been all together, almost five years in fact. I know that there are other families with a longer record than that, but still, five years feels like a really long time for a family where we are used to having each other around, especially us boys. And really, us boys were the ones that weren't around. We weren't around because each of us received a call from God through His living prophet to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I served in the Albania Tirana Mission from October 2003 - October 2005, Alan served in the Brazil Campinas Mission from August 2005 - August 2007, and Ian just completed his service in the Canada Calgary Mission which started in August of 2006. Let me tell you, it's good to all be together again. There are so many stories that the three of us already share in from our days of high school and serving on summer camp staff, let alone just growing up together, but now all three of us have the opportunity to sit and reminisce on the people that we learned to love as we shared the message of Jesus Christ.

The funniest part of our reunion is that Ian didn't know that it was going to happen. Mom and Dad decided to drive up to pick him up and then the rest of us (except Emma) flew up to Idaho. Kaylene, Mira and I flew up to meet the happy travelers in Hayden Lake, Idaho at my grandparents' house where Ian was already planning on eating Mexican food made by our Aunt Chris (that tasted great!), and then the other two, Alan and Nicole, traveled to Pocatello, Idaho and were at Emma and Robert Wood's house when the rest of us showed up. It was great to be all together again and what made it even better was that it didn't seem really like there had been that gap of five years. We just picked up where we left off when the whole thing started (although with more numbers).

Family is just great.