Month: October 2025

Montana summers are always amazing, but I also love the fall. There’s something magical about the crisp clear days, and I especially love when the larch turn. Their vibrant yellow hues stand out from the dark evergreen. Just driving down the highway is a treat.

Or driving through the neighborhoods…

Pepper and I were cruising along the Swan River and saw this amazing view– we actually turned around to pull off and snap a few photos:

Even back home, we have all sorts of larch on our property, and they turn our backyard into an autumn wonderland.

I think we’ll head out on a photo trip in the next few days…

As our mission was winding down, we learned that Sister Tennis loves wearing hats from restaurants. She even told us that her future husband– whoever that may be– would have to be someone not only willing to wear a goofy hat, but ideally would be the one suggesting it. We joined her in wearing some In-n-Out hats after our last district council.

Well, today we were shopping in Kalispell and I realized we had a Krispy Kreme gift card. I have no idea who gave it to us, but we were right there, so of course we had to stop in. And as everyone knows, Krispy Kreme has hats. Pepper quipped, “You know who would appreciate these hats?…”

We sent the picture to Sister Tennis and she loved it. I hope one day she finds a lucky guy who loves goofy hats.

I’ve always enjoyed my traditional board-gaming weekends with the Magnificent Seven. I have a group of friends from Longmont who used to get together fairly regularly for games, so I thought, why not make another tradition? I checked in with them back in January and suggested we all meet up in Montana for a long weekend. Everyone agreed, grabbed airline tickets, and counted down the months until the big event.

It happened this weekend: five of my good friends all flew from Colorado, and we cracked open the games. Six people can be tricky, because most games are targeted for three or four people. So at times we split up, like when Mark, Jay, and Mike played Dune Imperium while Brendan, Jason, and I spent an hour with Utu.

At other times we played “bigger” games, like this round of Power Grid.

Group games like Skull King, Coup, and even Cosmic Encounter were fun. We even play-tested a game Jay designed, and gave him some feedback.

It’s been a few years since I’ve seen these guys, and I sure miss them. I’m grateful they were all willing to make the trek to Montana for a few days. Naturally we decided to do it again next year.

We were in Utah for our mission reunion, and figured we might as well visit our kids. But first, we had to stop in to see the vons.

We seem to have a growing number of friends in Utah, so in addition to our kids we have to decide who to drop in on. It’s a good problem to have.

Now that Kyra and Hannah have moved into the Villa with Zack, it’s easy to see all of them. Pepper and the girls had a fun day together…

… while the boys and I tested our new board game, Harbormaster.

It turned out to be pretty good! Of course it’s always better to play with nice printed cards and “real” pieces– it sure beats index cards and spare parts. We all agreed there were some things that needed to be adjusted, and came up with some new rules.

We also played a few hands of Ofrendas, which Ollie seemed to enjoy. Alex crushed us at least twice (notice all the cards he’s played).

Yep, as usual we had a grand time.

We’ve only been home from our mission for a few months, but it’s already time for a reunion! Our mission leaders, the Merritts, finished their three-year service in June, and it’s traditional for mission leaders to host a reunion in October. We were excited to see our friends from San Diego again.

There were at least two hundred ex-missionaries there. It was awesome to see so many of them. Here’s a group photo:

In addition to the young ones, there were plenty of senior missionaries in attendance as well. Although the Merritts had planned a number of activities for the group, it didn’t surprise me at all to see that everyone just wanted to hang out and catch up.

Almost all of the original Valley Gang have finished their missions. We met up with the Calexico District, who we spent a lot of time with last July. They’re still just as awesome, although now they’re all in college!

Yeah, it felt a little odd to have a reunion so soon after ending our mission, but it was a blast. We’re excited for another one in the coming years…