Tonga!

December 26th,

Today is Christmas in America. I’m a little homesick. It makes it easier that it is HOT and sunny today, but I still miss the kids. We started calling them about 9:00 this morning. We called Tiff and her family first because we knew that they would be going to the Penrose’s for dinner. It was fun to see all of them on Skype and to hear what they got for Christmas. It was a good day at the Penrose house.
 
We called Dave next and had a hard time making a connection with him. We talked to Dave, saw Parx and Alisha for a minute and saw Greg long enough to hear that he had been really sick on Christmas Eve. They have all had the flu and they said that it is everywhere! That is about all we got before the internet shut completely down. (It didn’t come back up until late in the afternoon) We used our phone to finish our talk with them.

We waited a little while for the internet but it didn’t come back so we went home and called Bryan’s family. We had waited just a little too long. Bryan had taken the boys ice fishing so we didn’t get to talk to them. We had a good visit with Lisa and the girls but we really missed being able to see them and their presents
.
When we called Kimi and Mike they were at Mike’s sister’s house for Christmas dinner. We had a great visit with Mike and then just as he handed the phone to Kimi we lost our connection. We called back and talked to her until we got cut off again. It took 3 calls to find out all we wanted to know from Kimi. Not only was the internet over loaded but the phone lines were jammed too. We have to remember where we are and then be grateful that we got to talk to them at all. It sounded like they all had a great Christmas, even Greg. He was well taken care of by his family. We are so grateful for everyone of them, our children, their spouses and our grandchildren. We have been richly blessed!

In Tonga, December 26th is Boxing Day. It is a national holiday although we couldn’t find anyone that really knew what ‘Boxing Day” meant. All the stores are closed but the Temple was open so we ended the day with a temple session.