Green Acres is the place for me!

Why are these people out surveying property in Flagler County?

Is this the new dream home for Thompson adventure camps for the grandchildren?

Nope, that's a gag picture to tease you. What they are doing is surveying these 30 acres of pasture land in Flagler County stretching to the trees you can see in the south a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

Here is the look eastward towards the road. Notice how the trees hide the road and the neighbors. You feel like you are isolated in the middle of paradise.

In this look to the west can you see the Florida mountains?

Right now there are no buildings, just acres of wild blackberries. They ripen between Mother's Day and Father's Day so Grandma picked two gallons from our new land to serve in two weeks at Grandma's Camp baked for the grandkids in Blackberry Buckle. Yum, yum.

The sunsets are spectacular. Can I see a ghost horse foreshadowing the future?

How do you like this panorama view from south to west to north? We just have to add the horses for country girl grandma, a pool for city boy grandpa and of course a house filled with beds for visitors. I don't know if we'll have Arnold the Pig visiting to make our Green Acres adventure complete.

Dragon Infestation

Some people have caterpillars, slugs, bees, birds, or salamanders in their flowers. We have dragons, at least dragon Bryce!

Daddy Daughter Dance

Who is this pretty girl smelling the flowers?

It's Ella with her dad Rob getting ready to leave for the Daisy Scout Daddy Daughter Dinner and Dance.

Grandchild 24

Randy and Chrissy's new boy just arrived today. No name yet. Doesn't Momma look great?

P.S. His name is Owen Ronald Kannas (ORK for short)!

Florida grandkid update

Here are Rob and Jen and family with their sunhats on ready to go exploring.

You can't see two month old Sarah very well in the sun, so here is a closer look inside the house.

It looks like Victoria has her mouth guard on and is ready to play softball.

Mary's mitt looks bigger than she is!!

How's this for a slide into home plate?

Practicing making totem poles is a great way to cool off afterwards.

Even grandma is joining in the fun with Stephen!

Grandchild 25 coming

Sopron elevator update

Tibor, one of our faithful English students in Sopron, just sent us an updated picture of the last big project I had for the Sopron Branch in Hungary: a lift or elevator to make the church on the 3rd and 4th floors (2nd and 3rd if counting Hungarian style) more accessible for older members and those with various aches and pains. I'm sure you remember that a bakery and a bank are on the first two floors.

Home again

After three weeks of visiting relatives out west while dodging blizzards and tornadoes, we made it back to the beautiful wildflowers of Florida, just in time for me to talk in church.

Detour

As we drove through Kansas on the way home, the radio announced that we were heading into a major tornado outbreak from Kansas through Missouri starting on a line from Salina to Oklahoma City and moving eastward along the route we usually take to Florida. We decided that since we hadn't seen Wendy's engagement ring yet, we'd detour southward through Salina and Okalahoma City to Houston. The tornadoes touched down everywhere just after we went through.

Here's Wendy's ring...

and here are Daniel and Wendy posing with three of the new grandchildren we'll be getting this summer--Lucy, Reuben and Joseph. (The teddy bear is sitting in for a daughter who was at a school function.)

Last Stop

We're now at the last stop in our three week tour to visit the relatives. Here is daughter Carrie and her lovely family in Loveland, Colorado

While the parents worked, we had grandparent duty for two days. Here grandpa is being egged by Allie and Cassie. Luckily the Easter eggs were filled with confetti.

Of course, Thompson descendents go to the Big Thompson School. (Does it look like I am a big enough Thompson?)

Cassie, Allie, and Maddie are showing off their gymnastics skills before their lesson.

Cassie is trying on her costume for her tap dance recital.

Maddie is hip hopping away in her dance lesson.

Cassie decided that since the day was nice (in the 60s) that she would have a strawberry picnic.

The elk are still grazing in the neighborhood waiting for the snows to melt in the mountains.

Of course, we had to ride horses. Here are Allie and Carrie.

Does grandma look like she is having fun with Cassie?

Hungarian treat

Boldog (pronounced bulldog) means "happy" in Hungarian--but this is the visual image that English speakers have when they hear the word. He doesn't look too happy to me.

Near Logan, Utah we passed this building that looks like a Hungarian castle. We don't know what it is.

This castle is the Logan Temple.

And here is the new Brigham City Temple.

Sisters, sisters

The snows melted from the highways and the tour continued, first Easter with Caroly's sister Diana and Merlin in Burley, Idaho...

then family home evening with sister Kathy and family in Dayton...

with some horse time, of course.

In between there was the traditional stop in Soda Springs to revisit Roger's childhood, just in time to see the geyser...

visit the graves of his parents...

and drink some Hooper Water. (It tastes just like the Deutschkreutz water we drank every day in Sopron, Hungary)

Of course, we are ever on the look out for wild horses.