Monday we were hard at it back at our digitizing. Tuesday we worked as usual -- in the Family History Centre. Wednesday we worked hard most of the day, but that was a day of celebration.
Annie had connived and planned and put together a nice surprise party for Paul's birthday. If you can believe it, she made a cake on Tuesday while Paul was watching TV and doing family history. Wouldn't you have thought that he would have walked in on her while she was doing the cake or certainly a person with any smelling abilities would have smelled the cake as it was baking? Not Paul. To top it off, she got up a little early on Wednesday and baked a second cake. Annie always wakes Paul up when she get's up in the morning, but if it happened that morning, Paul missed the whole thing again.
Anyway, on Wednesday, everything seemed pretty normal right up and including the lunch. Then as we were finishing lunch everything broke loose. The cakes came out, ice cream was brought in, other camera teams from the basement came up, some of the staff members of The National Archives came in, and it was quite the gathering. Needless to say, Paul got his birthday song, his cake, a rootbeer float, a back scracher, and lots of well-wishes. What a surprise!
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| The Party & The Cakes |
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| Party with TNA Staff & Henry |
That evening we went out and tried a new Mexican restraunt. It was only fair, but what do you expect in England?
On Thursday we realized that we had run out of things to image, so we spent most of the day doing other things including getting Annie a new haircut, shutting down our English bank account, and getting ready for a class next week that Paul will teach on Tuesday. On Friday we managed to find some digitizing work to do for one of the missionary couples upstairs so we did go up stairs and work in the Family History Centre and the other couple came downstairs and did some digitizing. We must mention too, that we were invited to go to downtown London on Friday night and have dinner with the Family History Centre people and participate in some training. Friday was one very long day since we didn't get home until after 10 pm. We went down about 11 so that we could get a few hours sleep before our dedicated BYU fan, that's Paul, got up in time to watch the ball game at 2 am.
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| Annie's Hair Before |
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| Annie's Hair After |
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| BYU Cherringtons - Corn Dog's - Wow |
When Saturday arrived, we kind of took it easy for a while. Then Annie went wild on a shopping spree for a few sorely needed new clothes -- shoes, blouse, sweater, stockings -- needless to say, we had a happy camper at the ole flat! Paul spent time doing some research and we both spent time trying to get ready for our presentation at Catford Ward. Some of you may recall that we had been asked to give a presentation on family history for their 5th Sunday, combined Priesthood/Relief Society Meeting.
On Sunday we left the flat at 8:15 am, walked to the tube, got on the underground, changed to a different underground line, changed to a train and 1 1/2 hours later arrived at the Catford Ward. We then attended the block with them and did our presentation. Then the local missionary couple there invited us over for dinner. Finally about 4:30 we started for home again. After another 1 1/2 hour trip, we made it back and are writing this to some of our favorite people.
In case we didn't mention it last week, Paul was supposed to be sustained as a counselor in the Sunday School Presidency today. Don't know if it happened because we weren't there. Oh, additionally we have been assigned three families to home teach. We're kind of excited about this (yes, we know that we must be hard up to be excited to do home teaching, but we have some really neat people here that we have learned to love).
Time to close this. As you can likely tell, we're busy. We love being busy because it helps us to not miss all of you too much.
We are saddened and very prayerful about our dear Mikell who has had kidney problems and continues to do so. We are excited for the progress on Steve and Rachell's new home that they are building. Aaron and Audra and family seem to be settling in down in Las Vegas. Our other Aaron and Becky just got back from an anniversary trip to Mexico and Becky just got a new job with the state of Utah that she is happy about.
Take care and remember we love you all. We are grateful to be serving the Lord on this mission and have strong testimonies of the gospel.
Mom & Dad, grandma and grandpa, Elder and Sister Smart, Paul and Annie
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| Eye at Dusk |
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| Big Ben - Houses of Parliament at Dusk |
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