The past week I was in Montreal visiting my parents who are serving a mission there. The Montreal mission is, of course, French speaking (everything in Quebec is French) however, Mom and Dad are serving in a Chinese branch so they get to learn a little Chinese along with their French. It is an interesting mix.
The first day we were there we went to Mont Royal (what Montreal was named for) and we went to a lovely park and rode around on paddle boats.
Then we went up to the observation area, from there you can see lots of Montreal. Yes, my shorts are wet because a water bottle spilled on me during the paddle boating but the weather there was VERY warm, about 93 with 90% humidity so I was also pretty sweaty, it was soggy times and the humidity plus my hair was an interesting combination as you will see from the following pictures. . .
Montreal has a very nice subway system so for the first three days we rode the subway pretty much everywhere we went. I believe this is the ride to Chinatown.
We shopped in Chinatown then we went to eat, it was yummy.
Amanda got this "Dragon Beard" candy and I foolishly popped the whole thing in my mouth. That was a huge mistake, it somehow expanded and gummed up the works quite a bit. It was difficult to chew and messy, but delicious!
The next day we went to La Ronde 6 Flags and rode on roller coasters and had lots more sweaty fun. I liked the rides where they squirted us with water a lot. La Ronde was really fun, they sure had some intense rides!
The next day Mom, Amanda and I went to the Botanical Gardens (or, as Oliver recently called them, the Mechanical Gardens). On the walk there after we got off the Metro we passed the Olympic Stadium and I only got third, I don't know how those two beat me!
As I said before, it was really hot so I hitched my skirt up over my shirt to let a little air flow to my legs. It was quite the fashion statement but it kept me cooler. There was a lot of sweatiness in those gardens! But they are super pretty.
That's funny if you look at those last two fast, it's like Amanda disappeared! As I said, it was hot and we thought a lot of things were really funny but that might've been the heat getting to our poor brains.
They had a sensory garden where we could touch and smell different plants, it was really cool but Amanda thought Mom and I showed off some of our best assets when we bent down to sniff the low lying plants. I really liked sniffing and feeling those plants.
The next day we went to New York for the Hill Cumorah Pageant and some sight seeing in Palmyra and Fayette. We brought a member of the Chinese branch, Cui Ke and her daughter Annie with us in our car. The border patrol didn't quite know what to do with us, we had five American citizens, one Canadian and one Chinese. And two of the Americans were living in Canada on Visas for a year. They let us stop and visit with them for a while and we had to promise to bring Cui Ke back to Canada with us and not leave her there. We were cool with that.
We went to Fayette, NY to the Whitmer Farm that first day and it was lovely, my pictures of it are currently unavailable but trust me, they rock. Then as we were leaving the farm on our way to Hill Cumorah it started to rain buckets and buckets of hard hard rain. So much rain. We went to the Hill determined to watch the Pageant as it was our only chance and it was very damp and rainy but we had faith that the show would go on. By around 7pm or so the rain let up quite a bit, the show was scheduled to begin at 9:15. It is an outdoor show so weather can be a bit of a damper. But Amanda and I sat in the rain under umbrellas to save seats for a few hours, we had fun. I climbed the hill earlier in the afternoon while it was still raining pretty hard, and I was glad I did, there wasn't anyone else going up so it was nice to have it all to myself. It was humbling to look around and think of all the terrible and great things that happened on that spot of ground. We didn't get another chance to climb the hill so I was grateful I took the opportunity when I did, even though I got soaked.
The pageant was AMAZING. I was soooo excited to see it, the rain slowed to a light drizzle thruout the show and we were able to put away our umbrellas and watch. The show has 700 performers and an enormous stage with water spraying out at times, fire shooting out, fog rolling. . . It was wonderful. I highly recommend it.
The next day we visited Palmyra, saw the Grandin Book Press where the first Book of Mormon was printed. The tour was very interesting, printing was surely labor intensive! In our tour group I saw Buffy Turley and her family (not Turley anymore but that's how I knew her). Her parents and sister are in our ward so it was neat to see a face I knew. Those Church History sites are surely a place to connect with people from all over!
Next we drove out to the Smith Family Farm and to the Palmyra Temple. The Temple was lovely, I loved the quote by President Hinkley about that temple, "I regard this temple as perhaps the most significant. . . in the entire Church." I tried to imagine what the Smith family would've thought if they had known that 100 years after they lived there people would come from all over the world to tour the site where they lived, and that there would be such a beautiful temple built within sight of their home, and within sight of the Sacred Grove. It is a miracle. Just one more of a long line of miracles. It is a very special place.
One more thing before the pictures, while we were touring the Smith Farm Amanda turned to me as we were leaving the first stop along our tour (there are about 30 people in each tour group and we go to a bunch of interesting stops along the way where the missionaries tell us about the place), well she turned to me and said, "Either that's Donny Osmond's brother or it's a dude that looks a lot like Donny Osmond." It took me a little while to discreetly look at the front of the dude's head, he was with his wife and a young teenagery looking kid. But eventually I got to see his face and sure enough. It was Donny Osmond! Going along on the tour with the rest of us sheep. It was pretty nifty.
That's a picture of Amanda in the upstairs of the "log cabin" and that little kid is Joshua, Donny's son. Ha-ha! They were very nice and chatted with us a bit as we went along on the tour.
The Sacred Grove was beautiful.
Such a pretty place.
After the Sacred Grove we got a bit separated from Mom and Dad for a while so the kids played in the grass and Amanda, Cui Ke and I laid in the shade to wait. We eventually found them.
The next day we went to
St. Joseph's Cathedral in Montreal before church. That place is honkin huge. Click on the link to see a pretty picture of the front of it. We climbed up it, actually we kind of cheated and rode the escalators inside the church to get to the top. A church with escalators. . . lots of escalators!
It was pretty there. Then we went to church with the Chinese Branch, and with a lot of help from some very kind translators, were able to figure out what was going on. I love it that no matter where you are or what language is being spoken one can still feel the Spirit in the meeting and the principles taught are the same everywhere. Lovely.
Our trip was wonderful. I'm grateful for my parent's good example and for the wonderful work they do. They are great people and fantastic missionaries. Thanks for letting me come see you, and Thanks for bringing me Nunu!
Amanda and I got to be there to greet our lovely niece Samantha Kylee. We loved her from the start even though she looked like Yoda for a few hours.
Here she is sleeping with her Mommy. She was small and yellow but she was the apple of our eye. Everyone was in love with Samantha. I remember being seriously worried that I wouldn't love my own children as much as I loved my Sammo.
The famous potato picture. Granted, it was a big potato.
She was seriously the funnest baby. She was so smart and so happy and would do all kinds of tricks.
When our Jeffey came along I found out that I could love my babies as much as I loved her. And she quickly became Jeffey's FAVORITE, always. She is a wonderful big cousin to him, I think it is because she was so kind to him that he has always been kind to his littler cousins.
She makes the best faces.
It's crazy that the little dude in the picture is now serving a mission and that the little chick is a teenager! Aack!
She makes me smile.
She is beautiful and taller than her Mom (although that's not hard to do), she is still super smart and kind and a shining example to her younger brothers and sister and innumerable cousins. 
