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Another week has gone by and we're one week closer to that inevitable going home day.  Arlene managed to see our final paperwork and our official release date is September 3rd.  No turning back now.  As weary as I am, that is sounding very good to me about now.  The full time, paid, Assistant Engineer that I work with at nights keeps thinking he is going to get a great burst of energy and a sudden massive desire to finish up any outstanding projects I've been involved in.  Funny, I've already done that weeks ago.  Well, maybe not the burst of energy thing...  I'm just trying to keep my head down and do what I need to so I can exit gracefully without causing much of a ripple on the surface.  Sort of a different approach to the end of my mission.  Any guesses on who's going to win?

Tonight we had the old Sacramento Temple 1st Counselor (well, at least when we were working there) and his lovely wife, over for dinner (world famous "Uncle Jim's Industrial Lasagna").  We also had our favorite site missionaries over for one last dinner party, of sorts, before we head out of here.

Sister's Joines/Webb, Arlene, Bro/Sister Baggs.  We had eaten the lasagna and were scarfing ice cream provided by the Baggs.  Bro Baggs gave Kevin his discussion when he went through the temple for the first time and is one of my all time favorite member of any temple presidency.  They are just the nicest people and it's been really special to have them here serving with us.  They are on a 6 month mission in the temple with us.  We found out today that they knew Arlene's Aunt, Mary Chipman, in Sacramento, very well, and we shared some stories.  

Our favorite site missionary sisters all squished on the couch in our apartment.  Sister Joines and Sister Webb.  We all leave on almost the same day in early September.  We're going to try to see them sometime later this year.  As you can see, I am dressed in my best Sunday missionary attire.  Hope the president doesn't see this!

Next, we hustled off to the Young Performing Missionaries (YPM) last sociable for the year as they performed one last time for the site and temple missionaries.  We got to see them first at 5:30 PM then the site missionaries got to see them at 7 PM.  The Visitor's Center has a small auditorium that holds about 200 people but it won't hold all of us so the YPMs hafta perform twice to get to all of us. 

This was the beginning of "Amazing Grace" and I thought this instrument was interesting as, if I remember correctly, this is a practice bagpipe.  'Course, only Bishop Mark Johnson would be able to identify this for me so I am just guessing here.  It's not quite as loud as traditional bagpipes but this is a really small auditorium so it's a good thing.

The singing part of the YPM's.

Another part of the performance. They were so good!

Just outside the Visitor's Center in a flower box there was a couple of interesting flowers.  Thought I would throw this in as a closing thought.  Some things are just too pretty to ignore... 

Getting closer...or 18 days and a wake up...