Visiting Wisconsin

This post will highlight the part of our trip where we visited lots of friends from Madison. Another post is forthcoming about our visit with Kelli and her family.

We were able to eat lunch with my friend Cindy and her family. They are so nice and Cindy sure knows how to cook! She made the best rolls and sent two dozen with us on our trip. It's been a long time since I've had rolls that good. They are a great family and we had a nice visit.
Nicole is good friends with Sarah. They keep in touch on email and on Sarah's blog. I'm so glad they were able to spend a few hours together.
I was able to visit an old college roommate and her family. They were so nice to have us stay overnight at their place. We weren't able to spend much time visiting on the first weekend, but we stopped for a few hours and visited the next weekend. She made a delicious homemade salsa and we played Phase 10 and bowling on the Wii. It was a fun visit. It was fun to see her family and how well they're doing.
It snowed while we were in Wisconsin. We haven't seen much snow for a few years and the kids were so excited to play in it even though we didn't bring all of our snow gear. Sarah was so happy with the snowman that Riley helped her finish. She named him Bob.
We visited with some of our old neighbors and the kids had a lot of fun playing with their friends again. Two of the families who lived behind us shared yards with us. The kids would take turns going from playset to playset. Both families were able to spend a few hours with us and it was so fun to see how all the kids have grown and changed. Here's Nicole with Willie and Leah. Willie looks tough, but he's a big teddy bear and the kids all love him. He works as a security guard for the school district and the schools fight over him.
We ate lunch with the Oliphant family. Paul (center in the back) was our bishop before we moved. They have a big family and Mie (mint green shirt) made it look easy to feed 20 people. She's currently the Relief Society president and he teaches Seminary. The kids had a blast playing hide and seek in the basement. I miss having a basement.
Some other friends who used to live in Madison happened to be visiting the same day we were and the Oliphants invited them to eat over as well. They moved to England in August and it was a great surprise to see them on our visit. Here is a picture of Sarka and I. She's originally from the Czech Republic.
Sarka's oldest daughter, Misha, is good friends with Nicole. It was so good to see them again. They seem to be enjoying England and Bruce really loves his new job. He's a pilot for a large international airline. I can't remember the name right now, but he flies all over the world. It's been his dream for a long time.
For some reason we didn't get any pictures with the Kienitz family. They also had us stay overnight with them on the first weekend. We had so much fun visiting and catching up with them. We used to get together often and play games with them. We were able to visit again on our way home and we played some more games and had a Smarties war. Imagine flicking Smarties across the table at anyone who dared be there. It was crazy and fun.

As you can see, we were able to visit with so many people on this trip. We just showed up on the doorstep of some other neighbors who happened to be home and had a nice visit. We also went to church and saw so many people there and also noticed how much the ward had changed. We felt very welcome even though we've been gone for 4 1/2 years. We were sad that we didn't have time to visit with everyone and could only spend a few hours everywhere we went. We're so grateful to know such great people and that they're a part of our lives.