It's January 2015!

The week just seemed to fly by.  We were both busy.  Corry had some accidents that he wanted to wrap up, some cars that he needed to get in for repairs, and some apartments that he wanted to get cleaned out, and a car to sell.  It was a busy time for him.  I just had some end-of-year financial things that I had to get done before year's end.  

Monday we began the week having our senior missionary Holiday Party.  We had 26 in attendance.  The photo below is all of us crowded into the family room at the mission home.  We enjoyed a lovely ham dinner with lots of other good food.  It is always good to visit with these special people that we have come to love.  We got to play some chimes to various Christmas carols, and then we exchanged gifts.  Again this year we ended up with a cozy throw which is exactly what we wanted.  This one is even a Christmas themed one.    

We learned from our mission president and his wife that since the age change for missionaries and the great influx that subsequently occurred there has been a drastic increase in the number of mission presidents hospitalized for cardiac problems.  So his take is that they will make smaller missions but more of them.  So we do wonder if our mission will be split off with some others to create more missions in the northeast.  President and Sister Anderson will be traveling to SLC for some meetings with mission presidents, so perhaps they will find out something there.  

On New Year's Eve The Ballards, Andersons, Wilsons, Jones' and Elder Carr went over to the Camden, NJ side of the Delaware River to watch the fireworks.  The city of Philadelphia shoots them off from a barge in the river at 6 pm and 12 midnight on New Year's Eve, so we picked the early show, bundled up very well (it was about 34 degrees) and enjoyed the 15 minute extravaganza.  The photo above is just a sample of the fireworks over the river with the city of Philadelphia in the background.  Afterwards we got together at the mission home for a light dinner and some games.  It was really fun.

January 1, 2015 saw us heading to Jen and Brant's in Vienna, VA to spend the weekend with them.  We found them without their kitchen, but doing quite well as Jen tries to cook from the basement entertainment area.  Her biggest problem is that the frig is upstairs in the laundry room, so she has to tote things lots.  That and the fact that there is only the bathroom sink where you can get any water on the main floor.  But her cabinets had all arrived, so hopefully the next few weeks will show a huge improvement in the new kitchen area.  We ate out a few times and utilized the crock pot and rice cooker and microwave for everything else.  We played lots of games and grandpa got to watch lots of football.  He tweaked his back somehow and is now paying for too much sitting, but a trip to the chiropractor will probably help that.  It was good to be able to see Cole on this visit.  The weather was mild with temps in the 40's and 50's and rain.  Today on the way home we saw 4 accidents so traveled very cautiously.  While away Corry had one minor car accident reported and I received 1 call that a companionship had lost their phone.  Not too bad...

We are just starting to talk of going home.  It is only 2 months away that we must leave this mission and return to normal retirement life.  We have been reviewing if there is anything else we want to see or do and just how to travel home.  We plan to take a southerly journey to minimize the winter driving conditions and see some country we have never seen.