Croakers Chronicles

To all our little and big Croakers

It is awfully quiet on the Frog Pond. I guess we haven't heard from the little Croakers because they are so busy in their summer programs. Everyone please write us and tell us what you are doing. We only know the following:

• Austin and Ciera Johnson went with their McDermott cousins, Keaton, Gavin, Reagan, Collin, and Breanna to a summer camp at the Alpine Family Camp and had so much fun. Thanks to Uncle Lane for giving us a DVD with all the pictures on it. We are talking about having one of our Frog Camps there when we get home.
• The Erickson's have a batting cage in their back yard so that is keeping them all very busy.
• Jaiden is in summer reading and swimming. Swimming is a good thing to do because I hear that it is a lot hotter there than it is here.
• Grey, Kate, and Love are all moved into their new house and have tiny baby chickens. Won't they have fun raising them.
• Happy Birthday to Hunter, he just turned 13 on June 3rd and is going fishing with his grandpa Booth this summer.
• Happy Birthday to Jordon, he will turn 8 on June 26th and this is a big birthday for him because he will be baptized probably, the next weekend. Everyone go to his baptism and give him a big hug from Grandpa and Grandma Robbins. We are sad to miss such special times.

The Gho family (remember the Eskimo cousins of Grandpa Robbins) told us a funny story the other day about sand bars in the water. The story is about a family that the Johnson Aunts and Uncles knew when they lived in Bethel, Alaska. Br. Gho explained that a sandbar will grow very fast if something gets in the water to make the water drop sand it is carrying all around it.
Sometimes this will happen when you are going down a river you have traveled a lot. One day the Jacks (a family from Bethel that we knew when we lived there) were traveling down river in their boat when a son asked, "Dad why are those seagulls walking on the water?" At that very moment the dad drove the boat right up on a sandbar and got stuck. Do you get it? The seagulls were walking on the sandbar and just a couple of days ago they had traveled up river in very deep water in that very spot.

Another Alaska story is about a man from our ward who for some very strange reason decided that he was going to walk to Nome (Uncle Lane and Aunt Dani used to live in Nome when they were very little). Now if you look on the map you will see Nome way over on the left side of the map by the Bering Sea and Fairbanks is in the middle of the state hundreds of miles from Nome. You will also notice that there are no roads to Nome from Fairbanks and there are a lot of bears from here to there. Well, Br. Achenbach put everything he owned in a big red wagon and started walking. He was very upset when he didn't even get out of town because he was tired of pulling his wagon up a hill. Well, we don't think Br. Achenbach is crazy but maybe he is because there are a lot of hills before getting to Nome and he possibly could become dinner for a bear before he got there.

We visited a family to make them a family history packet and we were amazed at their names. One little girl was Destiny Dasia Sky TeeMarie and her sister was Paradise Aysha Lily Rain. How would you like 4 names like that to remember. You wouldn't get them mixed up with Mary Jones in genealogy now would you?

A family in the 3rd ward had a wonderful idea for a family camp out. The Nicholls have 5 children, one being a brand new baby but they wanted to go on a camp out so they loaded everything in the truck and drove around looking for the best camp site. Guess what the very best place was right in their back yard. They got out of the truck, unloaded everything, set up the tents and cooked their dinner over a fire. Their pets were the wild animals. They couldn't go inside unless they used one of three tickets they were given so they saved them to go inside to use the bathroom. They had a wonderful time and didn't even mind when it rained on them at 4:00 a.m.

Sometimes you don't have to go very far from home to have the most fun of all.
We drove around looking for an address one day because it was called Frog Pond Circle. Sure enough we found it to be a big circular drive with a little pond right in the middle. There were three beautiful homes with nice big yards around it. I thought, "If I buy a house in Alaska I want to live here so we can have Frog Camp right here on Frog Pond Circle."

We are loving our mission and feeling very close to Jesus as we pray and ask him to help us find names for people so they can go to the temple. He does help us and we have some wonderful stories to tell. We also have fun with the Elders. We had to inspect their apartments this week so we gave them some awards tonight. We have one elder leaving to go home to Kansas so we told the story about Dorothy and Toto. We put some colored glasses on him, made him shut his eyes, hold out his hands, and say three times, "There's no place like home, There's no place like home, there's no place like home."

We then put a stuffed Alaska puppy, who we named Toto in his hands and Sister Robbins said she was going to be the first girl to kiss him when he was released.

Picture #1 is one that Grandpa took of Elder Moberly trying to get away from Grandma.

Picture #2 is of Grandpa and all the elders outside the church this afternoon.

Picture #3 was taken a couple of weeks ago at the Large Animal Farm at the university They had a birthday party for the 3 baby Musk ox and invited the whole town to come. We had birthday cake and everything. It was a lot of fun! We took a couple of young boys who were just baptized with their parents about 6 months ago.

We love and miss you all so much and you will always be our favorite little Froggers, Grandpa and Grandma, the Old Froggers

P.S. We sure wish we could hear from our other missionaries, "What are you doing Elder Woodbury and Elder Allen?"