quick little girls cabin trip

Monday of Labor Day I filled my car with Avery and these cute girlies and went up north to join Sally and Ella at the Johnson cabin.  The cabin belongs to Mike Johnson's parents.  We got to visit as a family twice but this time it was just a bunch of girls. 

Avery has a really good group of friends.  They played card games, jackbox tv/phone games, laughed, went on walks, went on soda trips to the gas station, and stay up way too late.  They packed a lot in to 24 hours.  Sally prepared the meals (I helped) and I brought snacks.

The first year Sally and I coached together Avery and Ella were both on our team as 8th graders.  We had people say they thought Ella was my daughter and Avery was Sally's.

Today we still have people thinking Avery looks like Sally's daughter.  Avery is besties with Ella and jokes that Sally is her mom so she sometimes goes along with it. :)

Avery picked these little blue flowers and we all wore them.  

Thankfully the weather was good enough that the hotline said we could have a fire.

S'mores are the perfect camping treat and activity.  

I hope Avery knows how blessed she is to have this amazing core friend group.  These are the good days for her.  I never had this exactly.  There were no issues are drama at all with these girls.  I would do a girls trip with them again.

I'm just realizing this is Avery's second girl trip this year.  We took Ella to San Diego with Kristy, Lizzy, and Lizzy's friend.  So much fun.
 

Elliot’s mission call

Two weeks ago Elliot got his mission call!  It came so quickly, only 8 days after Pres. Wheeler submitted them after meeting with Elliot.

Elliot also kept his mission papers on the down low so he can surprise people when his call arrived.  That ended up not being the only surprise.  Where he was called surprised us all.  We ordered this map and cool arrow stickers on amazon to use just for this purpose.  Everyone made their guesses and I was the closest!  I guessed Serbia in honor of Darko Butorac my NAU orchestra director.  I felt like England or Guatemala were obvious choices and wanted to guess somewhere no one else would pick.

Elliot ended up getting called to the Ukraine, Kyiv/Moldova mission, Ukrainian speaking.

We were all so shocked!  In fact I didn't sleep too well the next couple days, it just didn't feel real and it felt really big.

Elliot had 10 weeks until at home MTC starts, now we're already down to 8.  Time is just flying by and there is so much to do!

We have been learning a lot about Elliot's mission.  Learning about the current political climate in Ukraine (war) and learning about Moldova and some of the history of both countries.

He will be serving in Moldova the whole time since Ukraine is not safe.  Moldova is land locked between Ukraine and Romania and is a little bit bigger in size than the state of Maryland.  The main language in Moldova is Romanian.

There are currently 13 missionaries in Elliot's mission, 4 sisters who are Russian speaking, 4 elders who are Ukrainian speaking, and 5 elders who are Romanian speaking.  I'm excited for Elliot to serve and see what that looks like.

Elliot's mission president is Pres. Aaron Shepherd who was living in Utah but is from Mesa!  I went to Westwood with his sisters Hope and Charity.  They were in orchestra with me.  It's a small world in the church.

We still need to buy a lot of things for Elliot and he needs to take temple prep among other things.  Looking forward to going to the temple with Elliot.