October's Busy Activities

The week after we got home from Italy, we had our New York New York North Mission reunion.  It was fun to see some of our missionaries.  Many of them were married. 

Three of our favorites

Two really great sister missionaries

Elder Willis -- What a fun missionary he was.

This year was the first time we had Grandpa Dalebout pancakes for Conference Sunday since we've been home from our mission.  Abish and Myra helped with the turning of the pancakes.

Don't they look yummy.  They were!

Larry Wood, Ryan Wood, Val Jones, Dick, Myra Lai, Abish Lai, Jenny Wood

Jenny, Michelle Marchant, Geri Wood, Larry Wood, and Ryan.  We had a great time together.

Dick's 2nd cousin, Ton Hanse from Holland, came to visit for three weeks.  He stayed with us a week and a half.  What a pleasant man he is.  He wanted to visit as many Dalebouts as possible.  Dick took him all over to see many Dalebout members of the family.  The above picture is in Park City.  Ton thought the bear was fun.  Ton has written a book about all twelve of the Dalebout clan two generations back, including his grandmother and Dick's grandfather.  While he was here, he had a couple, who had served a mission in Holland, help him translate it.  It was a big project.

In Park City, we took him to the Family History Center, where this gracious sister missionary showed him around.  Then, we went to Logan to see Dick's father.

Dick, Ton, and Dad discussed a book that Jenny had put together on the Dalebout line.

Sorry this is blurry.  This is Jenny's family with Ton and Matthew, who came to visit while Ton was here.  Matt was on a recruiting trip for BYU, so we had a nice visit with him also.

Ton, Evie and Dick

After Ton left, we flew to Detroit to see Matt and Stacie and family.  The day we arrived, we drove down to a town that was close to South Bend, Indiana, and stayed the night in a motel.  The next day, we got up and drove to South Bend, toured around the campus and then saw the BYU-Notre Dame game.  It was really fun.

I was so impressed with these little boys and how they just trudged all over campus and didn't complain.  Jacob wasn't feeling the best, but he was a trooper.  Notice his handsome glasses.

Owen let Grandpa Dick give him a ride.

Stacie, Jacob and Owen

Matt carried sweet Anna all over the place.

The Notre Dame Band was amazing.  We were able to watch and hear it before the game started.

This is quite the sight.  The mosaic of Christ with his arms raised up on a building on campus, but it looks out over the Notre Dame Stadium.  Everyone calls this "Touchdown Jesus."  There were about 80,000 people at the game.

We all stuck through the whole game.  We didn't win, but at least BYU showed up to play.  The score was 17 to 14 for Notre Dame.

By the end of the game, Anna was asleep and so was Owen.  That's Owen's head with his hoodie up over it.  After the game, we met up with Billy and Amy, who drove from Virginia to also see the game.  They weren't sitting by us, so we met up with them afterwards and drove up to Matt's and Stacie's house and spent Sunday and part of Monday together.  That was fun.

Dick and Evie with the kids.

Billy and Amy with the kids.

Anna looked so cute in her little lavender dress.  Stacie looks cute too.

Amy's sister, Melissa, and her family, came over to eat Sunday dinner with us.  Here is a shot of all five kids.  A little blurry.

Owen wanted to show us his Halloween costume.  Doesn't he look grown up.

We also went to a cider mill and had fun with the kids and the animals.  Anna's a lot cuter than the pumpkins.  The cider and donuts were pretty good too.  However, Michigan lost 95 per cent of its apple crop this year because the blossoms came out and then there was a hard freeze.

The kids liked the big John Deere tractor.  Maybe Anna wasn't thrilled about it.

Here we are as the animals we are.

The day we left, we met Matt at Potbelly's in Dearborn and had a great sandwich and shake.  It was a short trip but lots of fun.  Thanks to Matt and Stacie for their hospitality.  And, thanks to Scott ( our oldest son) who bought our tickets for us.  That was very nice.

When our plane arrived in Salt Lake, we drove to American Fork and stayed the night with Jenny's kids.  Jenny and Ryan had gone to a conference for Ryan in Austin, Texas.  Different people had been taking care of the kids for three days before we got there, so when we came home, we went over to American Fork and stayed with the kids for three days.  While we were there, the ward had a Halloween party.  Zack got a perm so that he could be someone from the Hobbit, Milly was a Bugle girl, and Lyla was a pumpkin, of course.

She's the cutest pumpkin I've ever seen.

Zack got his face painted.

Milly got her face painted.

I have to say that these grandkids were very good and did the things that their parents had told them to.  We enjoyed our stay.  But, we were pretty tired from all the going that we did in October.  Whew!