Happy Football Season

The McVeys of Lehi, Utah are very very excited that football is back. At least one of them is. She almost forgot how much she loved football. That is all Pi'ikea watches Saturday and Sunday. Poor John has to suffer so much during the weekend. It has been really tough on him.

August was a fairly uneventful month for us; except for the quick trip to the Bay for Derek Pando's wedding. The second weekend in August, the weekend mom and dad left for New Zealand, we drove to Oakland, California. We left Salt Lake City at around 8pm on Friday night, drove through the night, with a two hour break to sleep, and reached Oakland around 9am Saturday morning. It was great to be able to see the entire Pando family at the temple for Derek's wedding. He married a beautiful girl from San Jose. Check out his Facebook page for some pictures. Saturday night was a reception where we were able to see more friends like Adrienne Rumsey. She took the train up from LA. The next morning we were back on the road to come back to Utah. It was a fun but long weekend.

Other than our trip it was a standard month for us. Work, play, work, work, work, and play some more. Oh, I almost forgot. This just barely happened but I know I will forget to mention it next month. This past week our church boundaries were split and we were moved into a new ward. We will not be teaching the 8 year old anymore (unless that is our new calling). We love those little kids and will miss them dearly.

We love you all and hope your September goes well.

Happy Fall!

Hello Fam!
This was a fun month for Paul and I. Our garden exploded with tomatoes and peppers. We finally spent our Christmas and Birthday money and got a sewing machine. Paul started a home project of lowering our mantel for our fireplace. We have been making tons of Salsa. We had our 16 week appointment with our doctor which went well. Last, we saw Les Miserables which was great. It was my 3 or 4 time and Paul's first. They changed it a bit. It is not on a rotating stage. it has huge scenes now. I personally prefer the more simple sets but it was great. The guy who played Jean Val Jean was Michael McVey. He was amazing :)

The biggest news for us this month was our quick trip to the doctor. I had a little complication at 18 weeks and had to go make sure everything was OK. The doctor did an ultrasound and everything was fine...nothing a little medicine couldn't handle. But the good news was we got to find out the sex of the baby. And we are having a baby GIRL!!!!! so any names suggestions would be great. Jill already said she would recommend the name Jill so thank you Jill, we will put it on our list.

That was the fun news for the Craig's


Love Mollie and Paul

A few of our tomatoes and we have tons more!

Here are our Anaheim and Jalapeno Peppers. We have Green and Red and Orange peppers.

My new sewing machine.

Paul having the time of his life chipping away at the bricks to our fireplace

Here is my great 16 week photo and I still don't really look pregnant. Everyone keeps on telling me it will come.



OUR BABY GIRL!!!!This one has future wedding video potential. It is her legs sticking straight up. The radiologist basically said that since there is nothing between the legs it is a girl.

Hi from New Zealand

Well we made it and have been here for a little over three weeks. Wellington is beautiful and chilly, but we are getting use to the cold and we have to remember it is just the beginning of Spring here. So to start at the beginning, we arrived at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) on August 1st. We were 1 of about 25 couples that arrived that day for training going all over the world. In our group couples were going to Argentina, Spain, Mongolia, two couples to the Philippines, South Africa, Uganda, and of course around the US, places like Calif, Iowa, Kansas, and Nevada. The next week, people came in and where going to the Canary Islands, France, New Caledonia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Tanzania, Congo, and Cambodia. We ran into a couple that we knew in Houston, but moved, and have lived in Idaho for the last 10 years, and they went to Burma-Thailand and will be the only members of the church there. They are helping with Humanitarian Aid. Can you tell by the list of countries that we were somewhat the envy of alot of missionaries. We feel very blessed to be where we are and what we are doing. So on to some pictures. The first picture was taken in the MTC Cafeteria during one of the meals. How the elders know which is theirs is a mystery.

This is the Cafetria (only one half of it) , the next one is about 20 minutes later. There are more young elders and sisters at the MTC during the summer, so every day, three times a day, around 3000 people are fed. It is amazing to watch and see how it all runs so smoothly

The first week at the MTC we worked on "Preach My Gospel" so we can teach about the church if we get a chance. The second week we were taught how to take digital picture on documents. This Barry Urry our instructor.

On Friday the 12 we went to Salt Lake for more trainging. I took this picture of the Salt Lake Temple, because if you look closely, there are 3 brides. It is really hard to see, but there is one up by the door of the temple.

We were walking to our flight, and Dad ran into Brian Stine and Doug Legg from Sports Authority who were in Utah for a store opening. Dad was thrilled to run into some old friends and catch up on news from the office.

Quick trip, because here we are in the Lab in the New Zealand Archive. Our trip over was great! The plane wasn't full, so we had 4 seats to ourselves and we both slept pretty good. We arrived in Auckland to freezing cold weather and the news that several airports were closed, but not Wellington, so we made it here by 10:00am Monday morning. We were met by President Kezerian, our Mission President and the Ditchburns, who are Family Search Missionaries, and who we work with. President Kezerian drove us to the misson office, which is also the Mission Office. We met the Brazzeals, from St George, and they showed us our apartment, which is right above the office, and then we walked around part of Wellington. We had lunch then unpacked.

Tuesday we went right to the New Zealand Archive and started working.

At the camera is Roy Ditchburn, next to him is Lupe Pulu, and in the back is Lorrine Ditchburn. They have been working on this project for 18 months and they will train us for about a month, then we take over. Roy and Lorrine live here in Wellington and Lupe is Tongan, but lives in Salt Lake, actually quite near TJ.

Me learning how to prep the document.

Elder Brazzeal was kind enough to take Tom for a driving lesson the Wed. we got here, so on Saturday we had a big day planned for shopping and errands. We got all ready went down to the car and the battery was dead. So we called Roy, the only person we know here, and he called his friend Sterling who has a shop. We got the car started and we were off, driving on the left side.

Does this look familiar?

Our Zone Conference. On the couch is Elder and Sister Watson, President and Sister Kazerian, Sister Ditchburn and Sister Pulu. Right above Sister Pulu is Sister Brazzeal and Elder Brazzeal, we are kind of peeking out behind them. There are two elders from Utah, the rest are from Tonga, Samoa, Austrilia, New Zealand, and England.

Here we all are, the Family Search Team.

Here are my wonderful shoes. I have worn them for 16 of 25 days we have been here. I want to see what they look like at the end.

Don't forget to look at the Family Reunion Blog at: http://www.mcveyfamilyreunionjune2011.blogspot.com

And now the mission blog at: http://www.mcveykiwinews.blogspot.com

The Johnson Family

Hello Family-
I hope everyone is doing well. We are in full crazy mode over here. The girls are in school, except for Taylor. Taylor starts on Wednesday and I am having some anxiety over my decision to send her 3 days a week from 9-1pm. I know it will be good for her and me at some point, but I will miss my little buddy.

Kaylee - Kaylee is loving 4th grade. She is in a class with a lot of friends and loves seeing Nicole at recess. She is also busy writing a piano song called "Dance of the Unicorns." She is entering it into a Nationwide competition this Friday. Her teacher is pretty impressed with the song and Kaylee has learned A TON from writing her own song. She knew the song when playing it on the piano, but making it fit into measures, writing the correct note, time signature, key signature, dynamics, etc has been a challenge for her and for her mom. She had some tricky rhythms in her song, but we are finally on the final draft. I will definitely keep you informed.

Nicole - Nicole loves her 1st grade teacher. She loves recess, PE, library, and learning more math skills. Reading is slowly coming along and she is getting more comfortable with it. Nicole also just joined the swim team - Falfins Dynamites. It is for kids making the adjustment from swim lessons to swim team. It is only once a week, but she is excited to get her own jacket, cap, and shirt. Nicole is constantly riding her bike. Right when she gets home from school and even while she is waiting for me to be ready to take her to school...she is riding her bike. This girl loves to be outside.

Taylor - Taylor is my little friend at home and I am trying to enjoy every minute before she starts preschool. We spend our days going to the gym, doctors, shopping, organizing, coloring, swimming, going on bike rides, etc. The other day, Taylor rode her bike for 45 minutes while I walked around the neighborhood. I kept thinking she would start complaining, but it never happened. When we got home, she was walking kind of funny and told me her legs really hurt. She proceeded to stretch her legs in a downward facing dog yoga pose, just like Mom. Made me proud!!

Kim and Warren - We are doing well. Little baby boy is doing great, just extremely wiggly. He moves all the time. I was sitting next to my friend and she stopped mid conversation, and said "Wow! I just saw that one." He is measuring fairly big (60% for size), so it will be interesting to see how big he really is when he arrives mid-to-late November. My girls were all in the 10-20% for size, so here comes our BIG boy. Warren is enjoying the new wet sacks he got for the boat. There are 2 of them. You fill them up with water and they weigh down the back of the boat making it easier to surf behind our tiny waterski boat. Fun times!!

Here I am at about 24 weeks.

While we were in McCall for the Johnson family reunion, Warren's competitive spirit came out. He had heard some of his cousins were swimming across the lake like he did when he was 11, so he put it on himself to prove something. He swam across the lake and than back to our cabin. And he didn't only do it once during the week, he did it 2 times. Pretty impressive!!

Kaylee loves to be in the water. She is so close to getting up on 1 ski!!

The girls had their first day of school and Taylor missed them. She drew them some pictures while they were gone.

Here are my Big 1st grader and 4th grader!! They love seeing each other at school.

Love-
The Johnson Family