Grandbabies are healthy, happy and multiplying. (It sounds like cell division when it’s worded that way.)
Christopher is doing the brackets for the ping pong tournament.

Kate’s fishy face

Only Chris is missing. He’s on a mission in Zimbabwe!

The tornadoes in Oklahoma on May 20, 21 and 31 killed about 50 people. The stories that come out of that sort of an event are amazing, both inspiring and dreadful.
After the May 31 event, my friend who is in charge of LDS public affairs for Central Oklahoma called me and asked me to fill a request by Elder Ronald A Rasband of the presidency of the Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to write a story for the (LDS) Church News. There were about a dozen elements that Elder Rasband wanted to have included, (namely who he wanted quotes from) and my friend Jan felt like it required a bit more than she could provide. Front page stories for a widely circulated publication (about a quarter million print issues and many more online readers) are gold to a writer. . .This is my second front page article and the fifth or sixth time they’ve used stories I’ve written. Here’s the link to the resulting article if you’re interested. http://www.lds.org/church/news/elder-rasband-brings-comfort-to-tornado-alley-members?lang=eng (There are lots of pictures in this link, so I won’t add them here.)
As I was writing it, the Black Forest, where we lived longer than any other place, (14 years) burned down. Our former home did not, but many people we care about did lose their homes. Interestingly, many more of our friends had recently moved away and their former homes burned to the ground. I’m sorry for those who lost their homes. . .but it’s hard not to be a little glad that so many of our friends were spared that pain. Everyone involved understands that it was long overdue. The forest was diseased with dwarf mistletoe and pine bark beetle. In some areas, it hardly seemed like a forest, with the pines twisted by the mistletoe or entirely dead from the bark beetle. There had simply been too much drought for too long for the trees to remain healthy.
I always wondered what it would be like to live in the last days. Fire, whirlwinds, famine, wars, rumors of wars, corruption, wickedness, hardened hearts. . .Yep. He won’t be long.