Back Home in Malaysia.

We had a great time on the cruise. Venice and Ancona, Italy; Santorini, Mykonos, and Corfu in the Greek Isles; Athens and the Acropolis; and Dubrovnik, Croatia. I will attach pictures.

The best part of our vacation was, of course, our visit home. We got to spend a lot of time with our kids and our grandkids. Nolan, Treo and little Jaylee Joy came up from St. George for the weekend. Jaylee is a little doll. She has the cutest smile, she scrunches up her face and puts everything into it. Nolan joined Brock, Justin and I for a round of golf at Eaglewood on Saturday morning. We won't discuss scores, but what a beautiful day and what a great time we had.

We thank Dane and Annie for letting us use our home and making room for us. We love staying in the downstairs bedroom. Sometimes we stay there during the summer when it's hot upstairs anyway. Leah managed to find us and jumped in bed with us one morning and when we would go to bed before the girls, Bella was always sure to tell us some fantastic bedtime stories. "This is not a princess story, this is a lizard story." (pronounced lithard.)

Giada, of course, having just turned one, didn't remember us and it took a few days, but she finally warmed up to us and we loved holding her and helping her walk around holding onto our fingers.

Jennie was so thoughtful and sweet to bring her boys by to see us and play with us for several hours each day. We loved playing with Jace and Nixon. Jennie also gave us the great news that number 7 (for us, not her) is on the way and should make HER appearance (maybe my emphasis will make it happen) in April. Actually she doesn't find out the gender for a few more weeks.

We're still sorry that we failed in our plans to visit the temple. We had it all planned and were out the door with Dane and Annie. We were going to meet Jennie at the Bountiful Temple and all of a sudden Tobi looked at her recommend and discovered that the one she thought was her current one, was actually an old one. Jennie went to the temple without us. I still feel bad about that.

Julia is busy with work, her singing, and dealing with all the attention she's getting from the guys these days. There are so many guys in her life now that she has to spend her time categorizing them: Good Potential; Possibilities; May Surprise Me; Have a Nice Life; etc. It puts in mind an egg farm where all the eggs roll down the tube and roll into the proper gate. She's just hoping to find the right kind of egg. Probably a lame analogy, but there you have it.

Justin and Maria are in the middle of relocating. Trying to sell their house and moving into a rental. They have sold a number of items in an effort to reduce and simplify their household. Justin arranged his schedule so as to spend more time with us, which was great.

We are back in Kuala Lumpur now. I just got back from the hospital. (This is the government run hospital where the patients are in wards of about 50 people, all in the same room, with no cooling system, just windows open to the outside. Kind of like our hospitals will be if the government runs them.) I was asked to give a blessing to the sister of one of our members. This family is from India and it seemed like everyone in the hospital ward was Indian as well. So I gave her a little lesson about blessings and faith and how Jesus blessed people, etc. and then gave her the blessing and told her that she was going to be healed and when she was, she was to learn more about Jesus and his church from the missionaries. When we finished with her and were saying goodbye, an old, old woman in the next bed, black as an Indian can get, asked us if we would bless her as well. We did so and she thanked us so humbly, with her hands together, that we were really touched. (I was there with brother Peter Ee of the branch). She will be healed too.

As I write this I am listening to one of KL's fabulous thunder storms outside. Incredible cracks and rolls of thunder that seem to be right outside our windows. Reminds me a lot of my KC days.

I hope I can get my pictures uploaded to this blog. I'm going to try.

Love you, Scott and Tobi

We're Heading Home!

In about 4 hours we'll be heading to the airport on our trip home. I can't believe it's been six months. In some ways it seems to have gone by so fast. But whenever we think about all the things we've missed with the kids and grandkids, then it seems we've been here a long time.

We arrive at about 4pm on Thursday afternoon after about a 30 hour trip, counting layovers in Seoul and Chicago. The flight from Seoul to Chicago is one of those interesting ones where we arrive before we leave. (We leave Seoul at noon on Thursday and arrive in Chicago at 10:15 am the same day.) Thanks to the International Dateline, for Tobi and me, Thursday will last for 38 hours. (For several years I've been wanting time to slow down. Maybe I'll get some extra things done on Thursday. I doubt it.

We had a great visit with Glenn Hinton (Tobi's sister, Vicki's husband) this past weekend. He had to come to Malaysia on business and spent several days in Penang before flying here on Friday evening. We had a late dinner at one of our favorite Thai restaurants, the Rain Noodle House. The next morning Glenn and I went upstairs to our friends house, Scott and Karen McKinley, who have been here a couple of months now and live in our same condo tower. Scott and I are both big BYU fans and we have discovered a perfect synergistic partnership. We both have Slingbox, mainly to watch BYU Sports, but I have been extremely disappointed in my internet connection speed here. It makes it nearly impossible to watch a game or anything else. Scott M. has a great connection, but, being from the east coast, he doesn't have The Mountain network, which shows most of the BYU games. Guess who does. So, I take my laptop up to his condo and we use his connection to watch the BYU games. One of these days I will actually see if I can get a connection like he has.

Anyway, so on Saturday morning at 9am, Glenn and I went upstairs to watch BYU beat Utah State. (The game was at 7pm Friday back home.) Tobi thought this was kind of lame of me to take our guest to watch a ball game, but Glenn didn't seem to mind.

After the game we took a walk over to KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Center) Park and were going to go up to the observation deck in the Petronas Towers (the bridge between the two towers), but alas, they has already sold their allotment of tickets for the day. We did the next best thing and took a taxi to the KL Tower (this is a spire much like the Seattle Space Needle) and went up to the top of it. It's actually a higher view than at Petronas because it's on top of a hill. The view was quite impressive. We found our condo and the Embassy. Off to the west about 10 miles or so we saw this large mountain that seemed to have sheer cliffs several hundred feet high on all sides. Someone said, "That's where the Batu Caves are. This was something that Tobi and I hadn't done yet, so we had our cabbie take us to Batu. The Batu Cave is a Hindu Shrine. There is a large gold-leaf Statue over 100 feet high in front and then you have to negotiate 272 steps (they are numbered) to climb to the opening of the cave itself. The best part of this adventure was the ice cream vendor at the top of the stairs. Then, if you go down some more stairs into the enormous cave and up some more stairs, you come to a large cavern that is open to the sky at the top. It's quite a sight with ferns and vines of all kinds draping the sides of the opening which is a couple hundred feet above you. There are birds flying around and there are monkeys living inside this cavern. Unfortunately, they live off of the scraps of food that the tourists give them.

On the way back we took Glenn to another favorite restaurant, the Lemon Garden, which is a buffet of all kinds of Asian foods. Nobody left there hungry.

Tobi and I had to abandon Glenn for a couple of hours to go help with a District Music Training session. I'm sure they didn't realize that neither of us has much music training ourselves, but Tobi especially did a nice job of instruction.

On Sunday morning, after a home-cooked breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast, we summoned a taxi for Glenn and he was on his way back home. We had a great time and he promises to bring Vicki with him the next time.

I hope to see many of you while we are home, and those we don't see will just have to come and see us. You're all invited any time.