Dear darling Hansie,

dear Hansie, I’m starting off with this photo since I think it’s my favorite this week, but you’ll have to read to the end for the explanation.

You should know the world has completely changed since my last email– we’ve been invaded by monsters. Cute little Pokemon monsters hiding on every street, every church, flooding parks and malls. And by everyone, I mean 10,000,000 downloads in the first week. Servers are crashing all over Europe and North America. Since I checked the map and you’ve likely never heard of it in Madagascar, here’s the 411.

Everywhere you go, little monsters are hiding behind trees, resting on the sidewalk, hiding in trash cans. Once you download the free app you can catch them by throwing little balls at them. Most are easy to catch, but the more valuable ones are tricky and keep escaping. You can also find eggs, but they won’t hatch until you walk 2, 3, or 10k. And that’s where the brilliance lies– the game encourages players to go outside, walk around, wander the park, meet other people. Every church serves as a “store,” every public park as a “gym.” It’s amazing! Suddenly people are walking around all day long, sitting on the church lawn laughing and trading tips. We went to Sugarhouse Park one evening to see thousands of people milling around capturing monsters and enjoying a gorgeous summer night.

Of course, there are detractors. People have been mugged when playing at 2 a.m. and two guys fell off a cliff in California, but in general, with some good sense, it’s pretty fantastic. Just imagine Gabe and Mary traipsing off  several times a day, logging mile after mile and working together to catch monsters. Since they don’t have smart phones, they use mine and I’m perfectly happy to be less accessible.

Enough about Pokemon. We’ve had a week of great visits. All the Dudley grandchildren came to swim and they are beyond adorable. Ben took this epic photo of the whole group:

The Halls have been in town and maybe we love them too much. We want them here all. the. time. We may have scared them by our complete adoration.

And I had two Ruby Girl writers from the Bay area stop by to visit– Anabella and Sofia. Aren’t they cute?

We also hosted a shower for Haley and Christina. Let me tell you, a double baby shower isn’t twice as fun, it’s THREE times as fun.

Last night, we had a picnic with the Swahili Branch. They asked me to bring my camera, which makes everything more fun. There were so many cute babies and friendly mamas, cool little boys, girls dressed in Sunday best and plenty of people who know lots about Madagascar and even speak a few words of Malagasy.

I even found a new photography assistant.

Mary painted faces for nearly three hours and forgot to eat dinner. Actually, she can’t eat dinner. She just got braces on the bottom and an expander on the top, so eating isn’t one of her talents right now. Gabe got braces too but he’s somehow managing to eat plenty (but not carrots. never carrots).

And today we celebrated Xander Drysdales homecoming from his mission in Peru. He’s been gone so ridiculously long.

Cute little Gracie wasn’t even born when he left and now she can talk and walk and beg Mary to feed her blueberries.

Remember that Sunday two years ago when we took a photo much like this, ate amazing pastries and lounged in their family room just enjoying the beauty of the day. We were all so happy and getting along so well we decided we should have parties like this all the time. Ben and Sammie should get married and we’d have a big party with fabulous pastries and dancing until the sun went down.

And it was completely, totally ridiculous because Ben was in Jerusalem, Sammie was in France, they were both involved with other people and had never been on a single date with each other.

We were outrageous. Dreamers. Fools for romance.

 

And beautifully, gorgeously, completely right.

Ah life. We have so much happiness ahead of us.

 

I love you and I miss you every day.

Hugs and kisses, mom