reunion with our “British” girl

We were SO excited and SO on time (ha! that’s sometimes tricky for us) but Lucy really wanted to surprise Elle so we told her we were stuck in traffic so she would be extra surprised to see us waiting there.

And then her flight was delayed.  So we waited.

And waited.

And waited with great anticipation.

Waiting is kind of fun in Salt Lake City though because every now and again you get to see missionaries coming home from all over the world and their eager families waiting for them.  There were a couple families waiting this time and it was fun to talk to one of them who’s daughter was coming home from Rome, who we realized happened to be the last companion of one of our good friends from back in the desert.  Such a small world!

Then, finally, our sweet Elle walked out and was (much to Lucy’s delight) delightedly surprised to see us waiting there instead of stuck in traffic.

It’s been so fun to have her up at the lake with us with my whole family.  

But the very best thing is having our whole family back together again after a lot of comings and goings.

Oh boy it feels good!

I’m hoping Elle will do a guest post here at some point soon (but I’m not holding my breath since I’m still waiting for Grace to post on Hawaii…).  In the meantime check out the new Instagram account she created called “elleinengland” with some of her pictures and little snippets about them.

Also, check out the family’s blog that she stayed with to catch a glimpse at how incredibly lucky she was to get to stay with them and learn so much from them.  It’s weird and difficult to explain how “led” to this family we feel and will never know how to sufficiently thank them enough for all they did for Elle.  Such tremendous examples in so many ways.

Their beautiful blog is here:  http://www.croftsthepond.com/  Their Dad is a pretty awesome photographer, I’m drooling over all the pictures.

It’s so interesting how this little idea of the summer-after-junior-year-internship has turned out so far.  Max and Elle’s summers were so vastly different you can hardly compare them.  Of course, as parents we can never duplicate experiences for each child as it comes their time to go, nor would we want to.  Max and Elle have such different personalities and learn in such different ways.  But we have found that each of them have learned such unique and equally valuable things, and we are so incredibly grateful for the host families who have taken such great care of them on their adventures.

So excited to see what we can figure out for Grace in a few years!