Elder Justin Michael Goodale: Called To Serve

Today we received a very important piece of mail: Justin's mission call. We waited until this evening when everybody in the family was home for him to open it. Also here were Bailey Burns, Andrew Clark, and Norah Ashby.

Justin has been called to serve in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and he reports to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on Wednesday, November 12th.

Below is a map of the Tulsa Mission, and it includes portions of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas.

Justin is very excited, and so are we! We are sure that Elder Goodale will have an incredible experience serving the Lord Jesus Christ and the people of the Tulsa Mission!!! For those not familiar with the missionary program of the church, you can also find some information here.

Back To School

Today was the first day back at school after a great summer vacation. What a great summer we had!!! So many things done and memories made! But now we're looking forward to a new school year.

Christopher and Brianna before leaving for Zero Hour.

Mark, Justin and Andrew before heading off to school (Mark and Andrew to
school; Justin off to Institute class).

Steven.

Steven and friends.

Pool Party / BBQ

Michelle has several cousins that live in the Boise area, and this afternoon we got together at our place for a pool party and BBQ. Ah... summers... pools... barbecued hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken!!! Little kids, chocolate-smeared faces. Crazy diving board antics, chicken fights. Good times!!! Enjoy the photos below, plus all 30 from the party on our Flickr site; just click here.

Thanks for coming over Dillons!!!

Ajay does some pretty crazy dives from the diving board!!!

Chips, soda, cookies. Yum!!

Brianna and Sami chicken fighting on Christopher and Ed.

12 hamburgers, 8 tube steaks, 9 chicken breasts. Mmm mmm good!!! I think we had two dozen people here, and this was just the first round. :-)

The BBQ Man!!! Flag swim trunks and a USA shirt - in the spirit of the Olympics!

Buns??? We don't need no stinkin' buns!!! Just gimme a hot dog!

Vacation Pics from California

Now that I've gone through all of our Hawai'i vacation photos, it's easy to forget that we also spent part of our vacation in California. However, we also had an AWESOME time visiting family and friends in California!!!

• Thursday night, July 17th. We got in to town just in time to go to one of our favorite SoCal restaurants that we love so much, Ruby's Diner. Yummy!!!

• Friday, July 18th. While I spent most of the day in Calabasas visiting Emergent, the family played! Justin sprained his ankle playing basketball with a friend (we spent a couple hours that night in the E.R.). The family went to In 'n Out, another one of our favorite SoCal restaurants that we miss, for lunch. Then we spent the afternoon at Michelle's dad's house (I joined late). Then that evening while the boys and I saw the Angels WHIP the Boston Red Sox (neener neener neener!!!), Michelle and Brianna had a girl's night out.

• Saturday, July 19th. What a fun day!!! The morning and afternoon we spent at the beach with Nancy, and Brian and Melinda and their kids. In the evening, while all of our kids were hanging out with their SoCal friends, Michelle and I went to a pool/BBQ party that a bunch of our friends threw while we were in town.

• Sunday, July 20th. In the morning we attended our old church in Irvine, the Irvine First Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was A LOT of fun seeing so many friends there. After church we went to the airport and flew off to Honolulu.

Enjoy the three pics below, and check out all 30 from CA that I've posted on our Flickr account; please click here. I have also posted all these pics on Facebook; please click here.

Most of us at Michelle's Dad's house.

Steven, Mark, Andrew, and Justin at the Angels game. We've owned the Red Sox this year, and that has been very satisfying - it was fun to see one of the Angels' routes over the Red Sox! :-)

Justin, Nancy, Melinda and Michelle at the beach, while Brian is putting his best side forward for the photo. :-) Not the best photo in the world, but how SILLY it was of us not to have taken a big family photo at the beach!!! :-(

Another Batch of Pics from Hawai'i

Greetings from Daegu, South Korea, where I am traveling on business. To see what I'm up to here in Asia, you can hit my "EGT in Asia" blog, just click here.

I'm still editing all the photos I took while we were on vacation in Hawai'i, and I finally finished MY batch of photos. To the right here is a picture from when we were in Hana, on Oahu. Below is a picture of Andrew and Steven playing at Kahekili Beach, where the snorkeling was INCREDIBLE!!!

I have uploaded all 299 of my photos on our Flickr site. To check them out, please click here. So now that I'm done sorting through, editing, deleting, and refining the 1,200+ photos I shot on the trip, all I need to do now is similarly go through all of the photos that Justin, Andrew, Mark and Steven took with their digital cameras, plus the underwater shots we took with our waterproof camera (had the film developed at Costco, but haven't gone through them yet). Eventually we'll get all those online, as well.

By the way, I have also posted many (and will eventually do all) of these photos in to albums on my Facebook account. It's kind of fun to post them there, because it's very easy for people (Facebook members) to comment on them. Some of the comments posted thus far are pretty funny. If you're not on Facebook yet, I would recommend it. You can look for me on Facebook as John Goodale (john.goodale@emergent.net).

A Thing of Beauty (and NOT) - More Photos

More pics from Hawai'i here. One is of a very beautiful, picturesque scene typical of Hawai'i, and the other is... well... NOT!!! But I thought I'd post the "NOT!!!" photo here first, before my kids did it. A bit of a pre-emptive strike here. Besides, if you can't make fun of yourself in your own blog, then what good is it!

I've posted 70 additional photos on the Flickr site. To view those photos, please click here.

Maui sunset. July 24, 2008.

On Wednesday, July 23rd, as we were sitting in the ferry terminal being bored waiting for our ship to sail, we passed time by making silly faces. Is this a thing of beauty, or what?!?! There are more photos like this on the Flicker site, unfortunately...

Family Pictures from Hawai'i

Now... this may be somewhat unusual to say, but I really had a great time on this trip, with my mother-in-law traveling with us. All mother-in-law jokes aside, my mother-in-law is great! A side benefit to having her along, too, was that she could take pictures for us, of our entire family. You've seen many of those family shots in my blog postings; she's behind the camera in those. However, in three of the places we went to, they took group photos which they then had available for sale for absurdly ridiculous prices... and of course we bought all three. I have scanned those now, and you can see them, below.

Our travel clan at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Oahu, July 22, 2008.

Our travel clan at the Luau we went to in Maui, July 24, 2008.

Our travel clan the morning we took the "Boss Frog 2" boat out to Molokini and Turtle Town USA for snorkeling.

Home from Hawaii - More Pics

We are home safe and sound(???) from Hawai'i, and MAN OH MAN did we ever have a great trip!!! I took well over 1,200 photos while we were in Hawai'i, and I will post them ALL here. Just kidding!!! I've already started going through them, deleting duplicates, throwing away the bad ones, etc., and I already have the list down to about 500. I'm still going, though, but you can see the first 104 that I've settled on, by clicking here. They'll all be accessible from that same link, as I upload them. The 104 that I've posted now are just of our first two days in Oahu.

Here some more photos from the trip, though.

We got to visit my Uncle Dick and Aunt Marion Detton. They were in town visiting their sons (my cousins), Paul and Steve, living on Oahu's North Shore and near Honolulu, respectively. They we actually on their way home to CA from serving a mission in Sapporo, Japan for the last 18 months. It was great to see them!

Mark, Brianna (hiding her face), Grandma Cotter, Andrew and Justin, on the boat after our snorkeling morning. Apparently, Justin thinks we're going the wrong way, or something. :-)

Grandma Cotter with her new boyfriend, from the island of Fiji (at the Polynesian Cultural Center). :-)