Farewell to Mat

July 01, 2011

Farewell to Mat

Apparently, the doughnuts in Russia taste like cardboard. Or so Mat's been told by a recently returned missionary from the country.

Since we have a specialty doughnut shop near our house that offers a variety of unique, very non cardboardy doughnuts we picked one up for Mat last week.

We got to my parents house about nine and found the soon to be missionary still snoozing away. Kiwi and Little Man took care of that pretty quickly.

Remember your first high school boyfriend or girlfriend? For Marcus, her name is Kenzie, she's adorable and she and her family just moved to Texas last week. He was feeling a little down. We thought your first girlfriend moving hundreds of miles away deserved a doughnut also.

Playing a game of Sorry with the uncles.

Although both legit reasons to receive a special doughnut, they were really just thinly veiled excuses to spend a couple of hours with my brothers last Thursday morning.

Sunday was Mat's farewell. He gave a wonderful talk in church and then we had an open house for him at my parents' that evening. We stayed much later than we usually would have, pushing Kiwi past the melting down point, but I could not bring myself to say goodbye to my little brother. I was waiting to be the last guests to leave so we could do so without an audience.
Finally after the late June sun had long set and I realized his that his high school friends showed no signs of leaving, we decided to go. It's no surprise that I cried. What got me, however, was Little Man. When he saw my tears, he said, "Don't cry, you'll make me cry" and then let out a laugh which turned into a kind of choking cry noise and then he was crying. Oh, my tender hearted little boy. He's definitely my son that one is.

My parents dropped Mathew off Wednesday. He will spend twelve weeks at the Missionary Training Center learning the language and preparing to go to Russia.

I am so proud of my brother. I believe in what he is doing. More importantly, he believes in what he is doing.

But, oh how we will miss him.

Kiwi always asks Mat to throw her high in the sky. Each time she will ask him to throw her higher then he's ever thrown her before.

Of course, Little Man then wants to do the same thing. He's a tad heavier then his sister though and can't quite get the air. I say way to go Mat for even being able to hoist him over his head at all.