Family Letter... at last!

Dear Family,

So, I've never written on a blog before. I know... I'm a little behind the times, but I'm really just a little behind ALL of the time (although I don't really have a little behind... hahaha). I actually have a Facebook account, but can't remember the last time I visited it. And the only reason I have one at all is so I can occasionally check in on what's going on in the lives of my kids! Things always seem to be crazy around our house.

As I glanced over the recently posted letters I noticed the beautiful pictures of gardens and produce... our garden has once again produced very little. I guess it's the Colorado weather? or the soil? or maybe just inattentive caretakers? I just picked our first three slightly mushy tomatoes from our extremely large but ugly tomato plants. We also managed a little basil, and we have two pretty gnarly pumpkins, one of which is actually turning orange. I think it's supposed to freeze this week, so I think it's almost time to pull everything up and decide once again if we should put up a shed on our garden plot. For some reason I always hold out hope in the spring that THIS will be our killer garden year.

We just returned from visiting Britta in Provo this past weekend. It was fun to meet her roommates and some of her friends. She had a lot going while we were there (work, school, 2 tests...) so we only added to the schedule, but it was fun to attend the game and spend some time on the BYU campus. Britta and Sam are in the same ward and live right across the street from each other, so it's nice to know that she has a cousin close by.

We love hearing from Taylor each week as he serves in Mexico... he has had some challenges, but seems to be able to keep a positive attitude and is learning so much. If you want to see pictures or read some of his letters, you can go to missionsite.net and search "Syddall."

Lexee is cheerleading at her school again this year, which keeps her super busy. It's actually her birthday today, and her schedule is so loaded, we are still trying to figure out how we can celebrate with her today. She will be getting her drivers license within the month, so we are all looking forward to that momentous day. It will be wonderful for her to have the ability to get herself to all her practices and games... not to mention to have an extra driver for those times when I need some assistance. She is also excited to get her braces off...the ortho says November.

Shilo just started participating on a year-round swim team. She hasn't had a meet yet, but is practicing three times a week. She is in eighth grade and is enjoying school. Mauri just started piano lessons and is currently our only child in elementary school and on a year-round schedule. She is off-track right now, which comes with it's blessings and curses. She is in 3rd grade, so she still has a while before getting on a schedule with the other girls. Our school district is currently deciding whether or not to put the 6th graders in the middle school with the 7th and 8th graders. I think it's pretty much a done deal, so that will put her on a traditional schedule a year earlier.

Bill started a new job in April and is enjoying it except for the 48-mile commute one-way. We are hoping that he will eventually be working closer to home (maybe in a year or so). I feel like life is as busy as ever, even with only 3 children currently at home... I must be doing it wrong!

Enjoy the beautiful Fall weather... it's my favorite!

Tina

Bev's Sept 2009 Family Letter

September 28, 2009

Hi Everyone:

The days of Summer are coming to an end......and it makes me a little sad. I'll miss the warm nights, the beautiful flowers and all the tasty vegetables from our garden. We've had marvelous tomatoes. And our friend, Lyal Zaugg, got me started growing dalias this year. He has a fantastic assortment of colors and sizes...some almost as big as dinner plates. I'm enclosing a couple pictures of some of mine.

Frost is predicted later in the week...and usually our backyard is the first to get it. So we need to pick all the tomatoes and peppers and make some chili sauce or salsa. I 'think' we can face another canning project. Last Thursday...at nine in the evening...Amy and Roy and I finished up with a couple weeks of intense peach and pear canning. Thanks to David and Mary Lou who furnished us with peaches from their trees....and the Utah bartlett pears we bought while we were down there....we have lots of bottled fruit and jam on our storage shelves. Roy put all the pealing in his compost pile, but he didn't want the peach pits in there. So, as we removed them, we put them in a separate container. Just for fun, I counted them. We had 509 pits....and that doesn't include the peaches we ate fresh or made into pies!!!

We had a very nice trip to Utah this month. We went to Boise first..to visit with our granddaughter, Bethany, who is going to college there. And then on down to Garland, Utah to visit with Roy's Aunt Lizzie, who celebrated her 100th birthday in August. She is a delightful lady who lives all by herself and has a great sense of humor. She says she is going to be around for a long time yet because..to quote her..”I'm not good enough to go to Heaven...and Hell's full.”

The days went by so quickly as we enjoyed family and friends. We stayed with Dave and Mary Lou and their family and had a wonderful time....but we also had nice visits with Carol, Kent and Louise, my cousins Joan, Bob and Carol and Darlene...plus a couple of Roy's friends. It was a good time.

And now we are looking forward to the marriage of our oldest grandson, Teagen. We haven't met the young lady yet....hopefully we will soon. They plan to marry in the Portland Temple on December 19th.

We hope you are all doing well. We love you.

Bev and Roy

P.S. Let's all watch General Conference together!!!

Jana's Family letter Sept. 2009

Dear Family,

Hi everyone! Jon and I haven't written in the family letter for a very long time due to the fact that we have been very busy. Jon and I don't have a blog page but my mom and dad said they would post this letter for us. Jon has been busy working at Handstands in Draper, UT as a production worker and is still attending Salt Lake Community College studying Criminal Justice. He wants to be a profiler which is kind of like a detective and work for the government. He isn't going to school this semester because he could not afford to go. He has two classes left which are English and Math. If things go well he will graduate from Salt Lake Community College and the end of Spring semester next year with his Associates degree. After the community college Jon only has two years left before he will receive his Bachelor's degree.

Jon and I have been married for three years now and we are still enjoying life. As for me this year has been a struggle because the economy kind of went downhill and I lost my job and I have been unemployed for awhile now. It is not that I am lazy because I have been doing everything I can to get a job and I still feel like this trial that Jon and I are experiencing will end soon. I also know that this trial is something that Jon and I will get through together. This summer was a fun one for Jon and I. We had a lot of family parties, we went to Lagoon, we celebrated our wedding anniversary in August, and we went to the Depeche Mode concert at the E-Center in West Valley and had a blast.

Last weekend we went to Farmington and hung out with our friends Bronson and Katrina Barber and had fun with them.Jon and I are hoping that the situation we are in now will end soon because I am ready to go back to work so I can help contribute to bringing the money in so that we can pay our bills and it will also help Jon so he can go to school next semester and instead of living off one paycheck we can live off two. All Jon and I ask is for everyone in the family to pray for us because we both feel that with our prayers and yours that Heavenly Father will answer our prayers and he will send me a job. We hope that everyone is doing well and we look forward to hearing from you.

Love,

Jana and Jon

Louise's Sept. 2009 Letter

Sept 21, 2009

Dear Family,

It has been awhile since I have written. This summer has gone and I can’t remember a summer I have enjoyed more. Many days were spent in beautiful Star Valley, without a TV, telephone, newspaper or radio. It was great! We got up around 5:00 a.m. and worked until dark—8:00 or 9:00 p.m. My sister, Jennie, who has worked at Rick College for years planning and preparing their banquets, has been our cook. Each meal represented what you might see on the “Taste of Home” magazine cover. She bought the groceries and planned and cooked the meals. We certainly felt well taken care of. We would be so tired by bedtime we would fall into bed and sleep wonderfully well during those cool summer evenings. By morning we were refreshed and could start over again. We both got a bit healthier and a bit less stressed. It took me back to the way many summer days were spent when I was growing up. (We didn’t eat quite that well!)

The main part of the house is mostly restored. We plan to go up this coming weekend to put the laminate floor in. The carpet will hopefully go in next week and then we will be moving museum items up the next week. Our goal has been to get the project this far by the end of summer. We will have the winter to gather needed cases and make plans for the display of museum items. If anyone is interested in seeing more of our project go to callmusuem.blogspot.com.

We enjoyed Roy and Bev’s visit on Sept. 13th. We have been doing a little canning and have started cleaning up our yard for fall. We have enjoyed the produce from the garden this year especially the tomatoes, zucchinis and cucumbers..

I hope everyone is doing well.

Love, Louise

Sept 26, 2009 Family Letter

Dear Family,

I have experienced a very interesting summer! The sad thing is that it has come to an end all too fast! As I have mentioned before Louise and I have been spending a lot of time over in Afton, Wyoming working on restoring the house she grew up in. While we have been doing that others have been building a "barn" (actually it looks like a barn but it has a nice apartment in it and lots of space for reunions, museum displays, etc.) in the lot just to the south of the house. The fun part about it all is the good time we have had getting to know her brothers and sisters better as they have worked right along side of us. It's been a goreous summer! We had moisture late into the spring and things this year really haven't gotten too brown or dry. Even now, especially in the mountains surrounding us, the leaves have turned color and they are beautiful! I suppose this week will about be the end of the color though as snow is supposed to make it's debut on Wednesday.

I've had another somewhat unusual experience this past month. I have gone back to work on a temporary basis for the Forest Service. They have several projects going and too few people to administer the contracts. So they made me a reasonably good offer. I'm only going to work until the end of October. There has already been talk about more work next year. I'll cross that bridge when the time comes and if it actually materializes. I really actually enjoy the work! They furnished me with a vehicle, a Ford Expedition, which only had 13K miles on it. In the month I've been using it I've had three flat tires!.... the third one just today (Sept. 28th). It's obvious that the tires they come with aren't made for the back woods.

We enjoyed our visit with Bev and Roy a few weeks back when they stopped by on their way home from Orem. We need to see each other once in awhile just to remember what we look like. There are some of you I probably wouldn't recognize if I passed you on the street.

Life has been good to us. We are pretty healthy and still able to do most things that come our way. We do know we are getting older, not necessarily because we feel that way but because we look that way. And also, having two grandsons serving missions and a grandson, Sam Feil, and granddaughter, Britta Syddall, attending BYU. Makes us know time is marching on! Both Jill and Tina and their husbands and some family came just last weekend to Provo because of special activities being held for parents, and they attended the BYU-CSU football game. They had invited us to the game but we don't like the traffic to and from such occasions so we didn't go. We did go down to Provo on Sunday because Sam was ordained an Elder. It gave us a chance to see everybody and also to see where Sam and Britta live. They are both at Y-View and even in the same ward! Simply coincidence!

Our grandson, Josh, is down to 10 months left for his mission. He learned Ukranian for his mission but has since been transferred to Kiev and has had to learn Russian, which is somewhat different. Our grandson, Taylor, has about 11 months to go and is enjoying the work in Mexico City.

I love each of you and hope life for you is what you want it to be.

Kent

September comes in like a hurricane...

Dear family--

So the likelihood that I will be aware enough to remember on September 27th (Happy Birthday, Jeff, btw, on that day) to write in the family blog is so minute that I am going to dash off a quick entry now.

We are enjoying a beautiful September in Utah. We have had summer-like temperatures and with those our garden is kicking into overdrive. We have canned and frozen peaches until we are about sick of them. Luckily, Mom and Dad came down from Hayden Lake and hauled a bunch away with them. Otherwise, I don't know what we would have done. And for the first time ever we have had enough tomatoes out of our own garden to make my Grandma Wise's chili sauce.

We have a triple batch done on the stove, just waiting to be bottled.

Along with that, we are struggling to get back into the swing of the fall schedule. The kids are busy...piano lessons, voice lessons, hockey games, tae kwon do practices, ballroom dance practices, homework, etc. And I am trying to get used to still being the one mainly responsible for getting them to all those places.

Holly is a senior this year and just had her pictures done. We are still editing the files, but here is a quick look at one of our favorites....

Yeah...our little Boo is definitely growing up. And we hardly ever see her anymore with her busy schedule. Thank heavens she can drive herself places now!

Sierra is in 9th grade and is now one of the "big cheeses" in Jr. High. She is taking her first college-credit course (geography) and is busy with choir, drama, and art. She is also in "Annie" this year, the musical being put on by her school. She's also being stalked by one of her male co-actors, but that's another story.

Lincoln is also in Jr. High. Hard to believe, but true. He has just begun to play the trombone. He's not sure if he likes it or not, yet (although he can already play The Teensy Weensy Spider AND the Superman theme...I mean, how much more does he need than that?). But his school requires a musical arts credit so he is in band. And the school has exactly one year to prove to him that he should love it.

Mackenzie is now our last kid in both primary and in elementary school. But, like most youngest kids, she believes in her heart that she is too mature for either of them anymore. And she still has two full years to go! The horror! She is trying to figure out if she wants to be like her other tween friends and start putting pictures of David Archleta up in her room. Some days they're up. Some days their down. Some days her stuffed animals are all arranged on her bed. Somedays they are all in a plastic bag and in the basement storage room. I tell ya, being raised in a family of boys doesn't prepare one for a 10-yr-old girl...

Mary Lou is still working at Center for Change counseling with the eating disorder girls. She shared a funny letter yesterday from one of her former patients who wrote her a note now that she is out on her own. In it, she said something like "when I first met you [meaning Mary Lou], I wondered how you could ever teach me anything. I mean, you didn't even seem to understand fashion."....and that sums up the eating disorder mind-set in a nutshell. The operative word, here, is "nutshell." It does make Mary Lou appreciate the normality of her own daughter's daily challenges.

For me, well, I am flying to Geneva to pick up my third Nobel Peace Prize.....in my own mind. Really, I am getting ready to build and release my next product. It will either be a custom one for my old employer or an IRA-instructional piece we will sell through the place where Holly used to work. So plenty of good potentials out there. Also, I have a couple of old guys who want me to buy their dumpster rental business. That could be a giggle a minute!

We hope you are all well and enjoying the beautiful sunshiney days of September. We look forward to hearing from many more of you in this blog!

David

Blue Salvia and Golden Barberry in our front yard.