26 August

The end of last week was great. Dad and the kids were planning on going camping at the annual Brown family reunion but ended up only going on Saturday for a few hours. There was always a conflict between the reunion and education week. We had decided earlier that Shaun and the kids that were home would attend the reunion while Kelli and Isaac finished up education week. Well as Friday drew near, Kelli really wanted Shaun to come down and go to a play with her. Kelli called Shaun and invited him down to attend a play with her Friday evening. We decided to not go camping and Shaun went down for the play. It was a musical rendition of the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice. It was very well done and very enjoyable. The script and music were all original and this was the first time the production had been performed. Kelli knew several of the actors in the play which added more excitement. We sat by a couple from southern Texas and during the evening found that they were from the same stake that Mom and Dad Olsen are serving in on their mission. We asked the couple to say hello when they arrived home (Mom called Sunday evening and said that a couple came up to them after stake conference and said they had met us at the play – that was neat).

Saturday morning, after getting the house cleaned up and ready, Shaun and the youngest four children drove up to Springville canyon and went to the Brown reunion for the day. The reunion was very nice. Everyone asked after Kelli and Shaun excused her presence. Our extend family members were disappointed to miss her. At the reunion we played games (slingshot which shot handfuls of candy and water balloons, treasure hunt) we ate lunch and had a great visit.

Sunday was a fairly normal day accept that early in the morning, we received a call from Kelli’s mom Carol indicating that Kelli’s grandmother (Bernice Hutchinson) passed away that morning. She was 89 or so years old and has been sick for some time. Kelli was able to go down earlier in the year to see her for a few days. We are grateful at this time that Kelli as able to make that trip. Kelli will be headed down for the funeral this upcoming Friday.

These past couples of days have been very hectic. We have been ramping up to attend school online. We were supposed to receive all of our school books and materials last week. As of today (the first day of school) we only have about half of the materials. Thus Kelli is running around like a crazed woman, helping the kids and putting out fires. She is truly amazing and is doing a great job. Isaac attended his first day of seminary yesterday. He said that it was really good (with the caveat that the teacher is weird).

Over the past 2-3 weeks, Shaun has been meeting with his manager to take over as team lead for the library group. An unofficial announcement was made late last week to the members of the library team and yesterday, a formal announcement went out to the rest of the team. Shaun is really excited about this opportunity and is looking forward to working with the team and doing good things. There several ideas that Shaun has been working on and will finally be able to put some of this ideas into place.