Wow! It has been a crazy couple of days in Dallas. We arrived on Monday night around 9:30. By the time we got home, it was 11:00. Our son Jason was the only one able to meet us. Everyone else has small children and it was a school night. So, they all showed up the next day for a pizza party. It was a great reunion. It was fun hugging and kissing our grandchildren. Only Lore in Alabama was missed, but we will get a chance to see her in a couple of weeks.

On Tuesday, we renewed our driver's licenses, re-registered our cars, got both cars inspected and an oil change. That was by around 10:30. Then I went on into Plano to buy some clothes and Chris headed for home to begin her magic with the house. With no suits and shoes, if I didn't get lucky, I could look awfully funny at church on Sunday! I did get lucky and will be able to pick up my suits on Saturday night.

The next stop was to the cell phone companies; Verizon and AT&T (located about 200 yards from one another. We ended up with one regular cell and one iphone. Then I went over to Best Buy (all of this shopping was done in the new shopping center next to the house) to purchase a computer. I was looking to buy a beefy laptop but it was quite pricey (an Apple, not a PC). Then I received a little inspiration and ended up buying a pretty robust desktop model (the same as the beefy laptop) and a smaller laptop (two for less than the price of one!). I have been working for the past two days to get my mind wrapped around the Apple world. It will take some time, until I am going to be really comfortable again. But just the time I save booting up will be enough to learn what I need to know. It is a pleasure to work on the Mac. I wish everyone could.

It took some time to get Chris' Land Rover to pass inspection. It seems that there are computer systems on the car, that don't kick in until the car is driven for some time, if it has not been used lately. So the computer kept telling us that two systems were not ready. If only one system failed the test we would get a pass, but not with two. So on the day we were to travel to my mother's in California, I had to drive around the neighborhood and put on another 35 miles on the car before I could try the test again. After putting over 100 miles on the car from the initial test, it finally passed. That was good, because if we hadn't been able to pass, my time would have expired and I would have had to pay for the inspection again!

The weather in Dallas has been very windy and a little cool, but much warmer than Moscow, so we are not complaining. I suspect that by the time we return from California, the cold weather will be a distant memory.

We have had many wonderful dinner invitations, so the reunion parties continue. By next week we will be yesterday's news, but for now we feel quite special. We enjoyed a day of church on Sunday. I have got to study the ward list for the names of all of the new people in our ward and to remember many of those, who I have forgotten! The good news is that I was able to download the names of ward members on to my iphone and I can study them on my way to California.