Final Farewell

June 9, 2013

Waddoups' side of the family

We spoke in Sacrament Meeting in the Westland 9th Ward.  I talked about "Being the best you can bee" since that will be the theme of our mission.  Michael talked about being prepared to be a missionary.

We were overwhelmed with the support from friends, family, business and legislative associates.  All Michael's siblings were there.  All but one of my brothers were there.  We had lots of nieces and nephews and their children there as well.  Michael commented on how nice it was that we had legislators and lobbyists and inactives all in the same church and the walls didn't fall down.  The chapel and both overflow areas were packed.  I doubt we could have gotten anyone else in the room.  We had parents of missionaries who are currently serving in Rome and parents of future missionaries who will be serving in Rome soon.  It was great.

We decided to serve pizza at our house after church.  After all, we are going to ITALY.  We ordered pizza from Little Ceasars and put it in the fridge to be warmed up the next day.

I put the pizza in the oven and set the timer so it would be hot right when we got home from church.  I told the girls to hurry right home and take it out of the oven.  I should have known better.  Everyone wanted to talk to friends and family we hadn't seen in a long time.

I should have known better.  By the time Heather got home, one of the boxes of pizza was on fire in the oven and the house was full of smoke.  That was a near fiasco.  I don't recommend trying this unless you are going to be standing right there in the kitchen to keep an eye on things.  It really smelled like smoke.  Yuck!  My tutor said I should just tell everyone it was because of my burning testimony.

We have ordered cookies from the "Cookie Lady" for birthdays, mission farewells and baptisms and loved them.  It seemed only fitting that we should have them for our own farewell.  We've never had any problems before.  This time however, we were a little panicky because we were supposed to pick them up on Saturday night.  They called and said they wouldn't be ready until the next day.  Oops.  That was scary.  They told us they would personally deliver them to our house by 11:00 am since we had to leave by 11:30 to meet with the Stake High Council.  At 11:02 am he finally showed up.  I'm the one who is always super prepared so it was a bit nerve wracking.  In the end it all turned out fine.  (I loved the bee cookies.  Obviously, everybody else loved them, too, because they were the first to disappear.

We were walking through a store one day and Michael noticed some beautiful girl's dresses and decided we needed to buy them for all the granddaughters.