After meeting up in Utah, we went back to Texas our Texas.
Austin
We got to hang out with Janielle and Jeremy outside of San Antonio and meet their cute dogs (Graham and Isaac's favorite part by far). We went to the local children's museum. One of the coolest things was the legal graffiti that they let us do on the "art car". Notice what Rich wrote on the hood . . . Awww!
Here's Jeremy in his friend's boat. He took us skiing down the local river. I got to drive a boat for the first time and the kids had a blast sitting on the tubes (until Russell and Mom took a big spill).
Back in Austin we got to hang out with friends including our friends the Wells. Our little guys warmed up to their old pals Joseph and Jacob fairly quickly. Here they are at Costco getting into trouble...
Merinda had one of her "girls nights out" with some of her old crowd as well. She stuck bindi on their foreheads and they were less than sympathetic with her stories of how hard it is to have people around cooking, cleaning and driving for you!
Here are our boys down in Austin. We got to meet up with Uncle David, Aunt Robin and Liz and Don. The kids (and me especially) were super-wowed with their new Uncle Don's old radio collection.
Michigan
Then it was on to Michigan for a family reunion with my side of the clan. Uncle James and Aunt Amy got set up for the summer in an amazing little town where he is interning for Whirlpool.
Here's Spencer's 1st birthday. Note his size next to our nearly-two-year old who is clearly gunning for that fancy cake!
The sunsets by Lake Michigan were spectacular...
We had a blast going to pick blueberries. Graham, the only one of our little dears who seems to like fruit, stuffed himself silly.
AND it was Merinda's big 30th birthday! To be honest, the evening was a bit stressful with so many kids around, but once they were out for the count we had an amazing dinner.
Just recording this one for memory's sake: A small fraction of the luggage that we managed to haul around with us across the world. It was a total of 8 bags (about 50lbs each), carry-ons, and 3 car seats. We were a nightmare everywhere we went.
Our luggage was lost twice, a few bags didn't make it to Denmark (once coming back badly mangled), and then when we arrived back in Delhi they were ALL lost. The good news was that they arrived the next day, were delivered straight to our house, and we got a good chunk of money from the airline to make up for the inconvenience. What a great blessing!
Denmark
Visiting Copenhagen was a great stress relief after all the running around, shopping, and work in the USA. Why Denmark?
So we have this book which we'd recommend to anybody who likes to travel or even think about traveling: 1000 Places to See Before you Die.
As we browsed around the book looking for a place to go on the way back, I had it in my head to go to Istanbul, Turkey (probably because we just bought the They Might be Giants album) but upon reading about it, we saw that the big things to do there was to look at old Muslim buildings and explore crowded markets, which we can do just fine from Delhi, thank you.
Denmark caught our eye for two reasons: 1) It is supposed to be bicycle friendly and 2) it has one of the world's oldest amusement parks. So we thought it would be fun for the kids and us.
We were right. Copenhagen is tiny (there are more people who live on our block here than live in all of Denmark) and you can get around easily by bike since there are special bike lanes and even bicycle stop lights to boot.
Here's Isaac and Russell at Tivoli, the old amusement park.
One of the best things about it is that they let the kids ride most of the rides if they have adults around, even Graham who loved the roller coasters. The world's oldest roller coaster is there complete with a girl who controls it with a hand brake!
To get around we put Russell and Graham in a trailer and had a tandem attachment for Isaac:
Just for any fellow bike buffs, I include a picture of what we found that the real locals hauled their kids around in:
Graham at the Queen's place after the changing of the guard. Denmark claims the world's oldest monarchy!
Of course we had to go see the Little Mermaid statue. We bought a Hans Christian Anderson book while we were there. The real stories are good stuff, no Disney happily-ever-after with the Prince for any merfolk who disobey their parents. You end up as foam on the sea if your don't listen to Mom and Dad.
We spent a lot of time just hanging out at the lush green parks they had throughout the city.
If the Mormons were to build a cathedral, I think that this one would be it. The original Christus statue is there (you can see it in the back) with wonderful statues of the 12 apostles lining the side. 
This is the cathedral that Spencer W. Kimball went with Boyd K. Packer. In the few seconds where we weren't telling the kids to stop running and be quiet, we got to stand at this statue and think about the great story that Elder Packer told in this talk.
Long vacation, especially for Merinda. 7 weeks on the road with about 500 pounds of luggage and 90 pounds of children! Here she is, jet lagged and heading home in a non-air conditioned, no-seat-belt, New Delhi ambassador taxi, happy to be back. Mostly.
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