Maya Hii, Maya Haa, Maya Hoo, Maya HaHa!

{For 18 months – Jan ’17 to Jul ’18 – I'm posting our letter to Miranda while she's on her mission to Cochabamba, Bolivia.  Our letter titles are taken from a list of family sayings & catchphrases we recorded onto a pillowcase she has with her.  You can read her adventures on her mission blog: www.hermanamadsen.blogspot.com!}

So last Sunday, it was super cute to see the kids all doing chalk drawings, and for quite a while, Morgan was drawing with Kate.  She loved it so much.

We harvested these amazing tomatoes from our garden... they were aMAZing.  I'm so proud.  And it's also it's typical weed patch, too.  Grandpa Levie asked me when I said we got these tomatoes from our garden if I was kidding... do you really have a garden somewhere?  hahahahahaha - yes.  That weed patch out there really has some plants in it, too!!!  And then Martha said the same thing today.  Something about, "do you really have tomatoes out there?" when she saw the wire tomato cages out there in the weeds.  Hahahaha!!!!!

I took SEVENTEEN kids to Lagoon.  The teenagers were perfectly fine going by themselves, but since no other adults could go, I just loaded up the twins & Connor, grabbed Nathan Cooper for Connor, and headed up!

You know how afraid Nathan is of EVERYTHING, right?  He really wanted to ride mostly little rides, and Connor was such a good sport, but by mid-day, we had him on the pirate boat thing that swings,

The Bat,

And the Bombador!!  When I dragged him & Connor on it at first, they both stated emphatically through the whole wait in line that they DID NOT want to go on it.  They were getting out of line right now.  They absolutely could NOT go on it.  NO WAY.  We went through one time, and Connor said, "We're going on that the rest of the day!!!" and Nathan hesitantly agreed.  He was so scared, but so thrilled.  He could not take his hands off the bar, even when Connor's hands were in the air from the second time on.  I'm not kidding, they ran back into the line at LEAST 16 times that day.  But I'm so proud.  By the end of the day, Nathan's hands were in the air.  NATHAN COOPER!!!!  Top of the roller coaster:

The only picture I got of the older kids at Lagoon.  At our pavilion:

I took these in Deseret Book while I was picking up things.  I think both of these remind me of you & your mission:

And then Tommy & Emily got married.  So our letter is going to be about 6 emails long because the rest of these were taken with the good camera.  =)  Waiting outside for them to come out:

And then BAM!!!

We don't have any other group pictures because we had to be in the rest.  For their cake, they wanted a cherry cheesecake stacked, and then little pieces of cheesecake for everyone to take off this 6-tiered cake stand.  =)

And the send-off:

It was a wonderful day.  Then Allen's family and ScoJo came over today for dinner to help us finish the wedding dinner food.  It was so great.  =)

It was Aaron Adams' farewell today.  He's going to Hong Kong, Cantonese speaking, and he studied Mandarin in HS, which is apparently nothing like Cantonese.  =)

I have to go to sleep!  After my 6am workout, we're packing up to go to Lake Powell.  We'll miss you, and we'll save our Powell trip until after you're back with us next summer. 

Oh, the memes of the week.  I actually saved like 40 of them, but I'm sharing the first 8 in this email.  =)

 =)  Love you so much!!!!!  ~Mom


Ok some things that didn't make it in the letter because it was SO LONG this time:

It got so hard to find the right shades of dresses for everyone, that we finally saw the WALL of the shop and said, "fine, we'll just wear the wall!"



And we used my friend Myndie's Instagram post in our FHE, and I sent it to Miranda separately.  It's so sweet, and such a good lesson for all of us: