Yu Have Come to the Right Place.

Full Circle

Before I was distracted by my unhappy friend buzzing around in my shirt, we did have a good weekend. Friday, we got together with our other leftover BYU buddies and had some Japanese BBQ, yakiniku. The wives happen to all be nihon-jins, so needless to say they had a blast. We had mugicha (wheat tea, but not really tea) for the women and ginger ale (powerful stuff) for the guys. Yeah, I know. We really partied hard for this one.

Saturday was CRAZY. We got up early and took the Young Men and Young Women to hike the Corner Canyon trail in Draper. Hiro had a blast running around on the trail. Here I am giving Hiro some water to drink. I figure it's also good to help Taisei bond with Mother Nature early on. The YM/YW were good for the most part until the boys all decided to climb a waterfall and then not come back down. I actually had to get my whistle out and start blowing it to find them. Then, they ran off and I ended up being the one to get lost. :| After the hike, we had to rush back to get ready for the Stout's family sealing at 5 pm. That was a sweet experience, especially since the daughter is one of Wami's Young Women. After that, we rushed over to Ali and Sara's who had a first year birthday party for Ava, also at 5 pm. Ali always makes gourmet BBQ and Sara always makes amazing cakes. It was worth dropping by only for an hour! Then we rushed all the way BACK to Draper for a reunion with the Almaden 1st ward guys at 6 pm. Respectively with their wives, we saw Dave Crockett, Chris Hoge, Russ Simons, Mike Neyman and KC (last one without a wife). It was a tiring but fulfilling day.

Sunday, we got a surprise invite from Sunny and Jonathan to visit the open house of a newly completed, Japanese-style home. It was in a nice area called "olympus cove." The home was gorgeous, complete with a running stream in the front, waterfall, pool, and jacuzzi in the back, a 3 story tall (actually deep - two floors into the ground) indoor basketball court, and 10,000 square feet for indoors relaxation. I was amazed by the basketball court. They dug a DEEP hole and actually reached the bedrock. From the basement, you actually look down into the basketball court.

A cool part of the visit was meeting a lot of Jonathan's nice family. His mother grew up 4 houses down from where we live now. It was interesting to hear how the area has changed. The owners of the home, Jonathan's uncle and aunt served in Japan. We found out that the aunt was missionary companions with someone we knew - Wami's acupuncturist, Yukari. We had a nice dinner and tour of the mansion. As we were leaving, we turned back one more time to take one last picture of the home. Then it dawned on us. Several years ago, Wami came up to Salt Lake to be treated (poked with needles) by Yukari. She was living with a couple who had served in Japan. They were out of town at the time. The couple was Jonathan's uncle and aunt and it was at this very same spot! Except it was in the old home before it was torn up and this new mansion was built in it's place. Because we had taken a different route to the home, we couldn't tell. But just to check, we drove back out the way we came the first time and sure enough Wami saw the same scenery and the same bus stop that she arrived at. Who would have imagined that several years later, we would be back touring the new home with their nephew who happens to be engaged to our good friend? You never know when life will take you in a full circle.

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