I Hope They Call Me on a Mission

That's right! Our Uncle Marty is going on a mission for our church and he just got his call! Uncle Marty will be laboring in the Missouri St. Louis mission. Yeah! One of his best friends is serving there right now. Plus, he knows to some degree what foods he'll be eating. I'm sure he'll get a few surprises though. He leaves November 18th. That's just a little less than 3 months from now. That's also our Daddy's birthday. We are so excited for him, but can't believe that he'll be gone for two years. Congratulations, Marty. We love you.

Funny story regarding Uncle Marty's mission call. Our families were all set thinking that his call would come last Wednesday (okay more like hoping because Uncle Marty leaves today for an 8 day trip to Costa Rica), but alas it came and went without that big white envelope. Bummer. We were all holding our breath too. Well on Monday, our Mommy goes skipping out to get the mail here at our house. Remember, we're in Salt Lake City, Uncle Marty is in St. George. As Mommy comes back towards the house, she starts flipping through the mail. She notices a big white envelope. Her thoughts run as such: What's this? Funny, the return address says " The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints". Eh, it's probably for Oma and Apa since they are on assignment for the church and happen to be back in the States for the next two weeks. Hey, there's one of those funny yellow stickers on the front that the post office uses for forwarding mail. Wouldn't it be weird if this was Marty's ca----HOLY CRAP! IT SAYS ELDER MARTIN GORDON LARSEN ON IT. At this point, Mommy runs yelling into the house at Daddy. "I HAVE MARTY'S MISSION CALL!" Yes, in a weird quirk of fate, Uncle Marty's call came to our house. For some reason, the forwarding sticker had Mommy's name on it. Her maiden name. Why Elder Martin Larsen looked like Sheri Larsen, we'll never know. Several rounds of phone calls later to Grandma, Uncle Marty, Aunt Angie (you get the picture) and it was decided. Lucky for us, Uncle Marty was impatient and didn't want to have to wait the possible two days it would take by snail mail to hear where he was going. So on Monday at 4:15pm the whole St. George family skyped (video phone call via the internet) us and we opened the envelope and Mommy got to tell Uncle Marty where he would be spending the next two years. It was exciting, but we felt bad that we had all the maps and information on his mission president and that he couldn't read it. So we jumped in the car and took it straight to the post office. Uncle Marty got his mission call (a second time!) today in the mail.

Other than that, we've been busy! Our cousin Mary had a birthday party at the park on Monday night. Yummy tostadas and delicious cake plus lots of swings for Siena! And then today Mommy took us to the zoo to see the new tiger cubs. Yes, that's right. The Hogle Zoo is baby making central. Since we've moved to Salt Lake in April, the zoo has had: Golden Lion Tamarin twins (the cute tiny gold monkeys), a black footed kitten, a snow leopard cub, 6 baby meerkats, a baby giraffe, a baby elephant, and 3 siberian tiger cubs. The tiger cubs were actually born back in June and are finally on display. Holy crow, that's a lot of babies. Mommy likes it though. It's fun to think she was pregnant with all these animals and that we got a baby too.

Here's a fun picture from our outing on Sunday. Since there were no regular church meetings, Mommy and Daddy took us on Trax up to Temple Square. It was so much fun. But I absolutely refused to take a nice picture with Cara. I would not sit and hold her. So here are some other pictures that Mommy got!