Thanks to some glitches in our overseas preparations, we ended up leaving about 4 hours later than we wanted on the 1st. This didn’t give us as much time to visit with family as we had hoped, but we did have a late dinner with my mom and Grandma and Grandpa Cramer, and afterward, Uncle Neal and Aunt Janet (my mom’s brother and his wife) came over to visit with us for a little while. It was great to see them.
We had to leave Thursday morning to make it to Provo in time for our speaking assignment at BYU. It was a great experience…SO exciting to see so many new LDS Chaplain Candidates and their wives. Only 2 of the couples are going Navy :-(, but we are still happy for the Army and Airforce, honest. They asked lots of great questions, and it was fun to think back 9+ years to the time when we were so full of questions and anticipation. It has been an amazing experience so far, and we still feel so incredibly blessed to serve in this capacity.
Cliff called ahead to set up a tour for Troy and Patrick, so while he and I were speaking, they rode around on a golf cart with a tour guide. They even got the coolest brick-pack t-shirts.
They look so cool like this; I’m tempted to leave them this way. Patrick is still leaning toward the Naval Academy as opposed to BYU (for the sword…and the scary part is…that's seriously the deal-breaker for him).
That evening, we had dinner at Rick and Amy Gabbitas’ home. We met Rick when he came out to do his 2 weeks of active duty for the Naval Reserve with Cliff at El Centro. They live in Provo while Rick finishes his training at BYU to become a Chaplain. They live just 2 blocks from the campus, and it was a fun walk. Amy showed me the house (right by the terraced garden) that she lived in as a girl while her dad was in graduate school there (which was way cool…I LOVE trivia like that) and told me how happy she was that her children would be old enough to remember living at BYU, too. It is a very cool place.
The highlight of the visit for the children was the Gabbitas’ cellar/Zombie defense bunker! It’s in their family room. Here’s their little Tom on the floor…
And then here’s Patrick lifting up the floor!
They (being Mormon) of course keep their food storage down there…which would make it even more suited for zombie defense. Patrick was even helping them figure out plans for digging a well in preparation for the zombie apocalypse.
The Linebacks joined us for dinner, too. They retired last year and we miss them so much, so it was so great to see them. He was actually the Hospital Chaplain at Balboa when Jake was in PICU for 2 weeks back in 99…so he was our chaplain before he was our friend.
We checked into the hotel Thursday night. It was kind of late…and we are SURE the front desk clerk and our neighbors were thrilled by our arrival!
