I'm Back with Updates

I've been on a little hiatus. This blog had served me well. A place for thoughts. A place for documentation. A sort of scrapbook for photos. But it seemed like it was starting to drive me instead of the other way around and I needed a break. I really didn't know if I'd come back to it. But something has been nagging me to take it up again.

So here I am.

With a little update on the fam from the past year and a half.

Tyler and Missy. 26 Years. We got to celebrate by going back to Anthony's, a restaurant we went to on our honeymoon. Our yard was featured in the Tooele Garden Tour once again. Missy completed her 10th half marathon and started her 6th year teaching 2nd grade. Tyler finally decided to fix his Achilles with surgery. It's been a slow process but he's off the knee scooter and gradually gaining strength in that foot again. 

New babies and missionaries. It was a race to see who was going to make it first: Wesley or Nate. Nate was coming on August 26, 2022 and Wesley's due date was the 27th. Wesley joined us on August 23 just in time to make it to the airport for a fabulous reunion. Did I mention school also started that week!?!

Nate finished his first year at BYU as an Economics major, is teaching piano to students in Eagle Mountain and is a TA for a business writing class. He loves to go to the gym, play basketball, pickleball, run, and tennis. You'll find him at most sporting events for BYU with a myriad of friends. He is a gatherer of friends when he comes home occasionally.

Ash graduated from high school and is finishing up hair school in Cedar City with about 6 more weeks to go. She is everyone's favorite hair stylist. She also finished up her first semester at SUU doing classes online and in the evenings because hair school is pretty much an 8 to 5 job. Ash transitioned pretty quickly to grown-up life when she moved out in June. She loves the mountains, avocado and toast, McDonald's Sprite, and hanging with friends.

Erik has one more semester to go at USU and will graduate this spring, majoring in Data Analytics. He's currently looking for job opportunities in that field. For now, he eats, drinks, sleeps tennis. He is on the club tennis team at USU, playing number one singles, and has traveled to tournaments in California and Texas. He teaches tennis classes at the Sports Academy and had a minor surgery soon after his dad. He is soon to be engaged to the wonderful Emma who is a real life pro at ice skating. For reals! She can do all the twirly, skate backward kind of stuff.

Alex has been playing more tennis and is destined to be better than his brothers if he continues playing. He loves pickleball, coding, Minecraft, and has become obsessed with Kakuro puzzles. Alex has become an only child at home and still loves hanging with mom and dad on our weekly dates and watching basketball games.

Kiersten and Jason are busy raising two wonderful little boys. Kiersten teaches piano and works for the UofU part time in a research lab. She even got her name on a published article! Jason is the maintenance guy for a company and loves fishing anytime he can. They love to be outdoors and are still driving our 2005 van they bought from us 3 1/2 years ago. Go Toyota!

We were able to take family road trip to Oregon this summer and brought Grandma instead to take Nate's place who couldn't leave FSY stuff behind. Ash caught the one-and-only salmon and Jason was enamored with crabbing.

We have been healthy, other than maxing out our insurance for the first time ever this year, and ready to see what the new year brings. One wedding for sure :)

Good Things Happening

Well, it's officially March by about 6 days and this is how we got to spend our Sunday morning.

Church got cancelled which doesn't happen too often. Alex measured 14.5 inches in our backyard.

Kiersten and Jason
Kiersten and Jason have moved back to Utah and are living in Herriman. Jason is working for the Walmarts in Utah County being their maintenance guy. Kiersten has joined a research group at the University of Utah where she meets with them once in awhile but mainly does a lot of virtual conferencing. She is hoping to get into grad school in the next few years. Oliver is growing and learning lots of new words. He gets to hang with daycare kids at Great-Grandma Laura's. AND . . . there is a new baby coming to their family in August.

Erik
Erik is at Utah State majoring in marketing. He found himself cute Ally Moss to date who loves to play board games as much as he does. We've met her a couple of times. Once when a group of them came home to quarantine for a weekend and another time when they came for a Super Bowl party..

Nathan
Australia finally opened up to missionaries again but a tad bit late for Nate to make it there. He also was moved to new area after being in the Sloan Lake area for quite awhile. He's not one to call a lot or write a lot, but thankfully his Grandma Laura has a cousin serving as a senior missionary in the same mission. SHE keeps me updated on how Nate is doing and will make sure I get those pictures. Sister Diane Ladwig tells me, "He's been a zone leader since he was with Elder Roberts. He is a humble, very hard working missionary, and his previous comps love him. He is making a difference here!"

Ashlyn
Ashlyn is a junior and working to keep her head above water while she holds a job and completes school and has an extensive social life. She was working at Fiiz, a local drink shop, but quit to work at Cold Stone.

She pops into my classroom once in awhile which my students LOVE. They love when big people come.

She's been to another dance and got asked to prom.

Alex
Alex came home with a Student of the Month sign which I'm afraid is buried under some pretty deep snow. We'll recover it one day.

He's been attending early morning math since October and his competition is this Tuesday. One day I discovered a photo of him at his 6th grade Valentine dance all hooded and masked. That was the last day I allowed him to wear his mask to school or wear his hood in class. The poor teacher probably had no idea who he was. Covid has sure done some funny things to kids. I think he felt comfortable hiding behind that mask.

He also completed basketball where his little team only lost one game. Alex managed to score a few baskets every game and has progressively gotten better. 

He's passing the sacrament in church and attending young mens. Where did this baby of mine go?

And for the rest of us . . . my little blog has suffered at the hands of mandatory LETRS training. I'm getting paid to do it, but it doesn't leave me with a lot of time. Tyler completed his year as the Tooele County Master Gardeners Association president, and during that time they severed ties with the Utah State Extension. This means that little gardening group (which is growing bigger) is figuring out a new identity with new goals and projects.

Covid is finally winding down, our temple is making progress,

and Wordle has taken over the family group chat every morning.

Mission Update on Nate

This is a tale of two missionaries with two very different stories -- one home and one currently serving. 

Erik began his mission with 2 phone calls home a year and emails once a week. Four or five months in that changed to calling home weekly either through text, phone, video chat, messaging. I could count on Erik every Monday morning between 6:30 and 7am. And if a birthday or Mother's Day/Father's Day landed that week, we could get phone calls twice a week. Covid hit with all of it's quarantine restrictions and Erik was calling home as needed which was several times a week. He began his mission the traditional way with us dropping him off at the Provo MTC and three weeks later a flight to Orlando, Florida. He did the traditional missionary contact methods. Facebook was not one of them. And when Covid came swinging with all her punches, Erik still had 6 months left and missionary work came to a standstill as they struggled to figure out how to do missionary work in the nontraditional ways that didn't involve physically interacting with people. Erik was in a biking mission. We bought him a bike which he rarely used and sold at the end of his mission. His main mode of transportation was a car.

Nate is not quite like his brother. He calls home once in awhile and seems to write even less frequently. Although, he is good to call when I tell him too. I trust he is doing well and doesn't need the interaction with home as frequently has Erik might have. His original assignment is to Australia although he's beginning to believe he might never make it there and he is totally cool with it because he is where he needs to be in the Denver North Colorado Mission. He began his mission assignment right here at home. Home MTC. No dropping him off curbside and being whisked away. That came 3 weeks later at the airport. He began his missionary service using the nontraditional ways right from the start. Facebook has been a big part of his mission experience.

Erik had two mission presidents and I'm sure they were both great. I just didn't have very much involvement with them. Nate's mission president, President Blake, has been very much involved with parents, even creating a separate Facebook page just for parents where he can update us on things unbeknownst to our missionaries. He did a Zoom call with all missionary parents a few months back to let us know how the mission was doing and what their goals were. I was impressed. Nate tells me his career was to take struggling businesses and make them better, to take people in these businesses and make them better. He is a mission president at the right time as he tackles the process of being a missionary and making it better. He's inspired Nate enough that Nate is seriously rethinking his choice of schools post-mission. He was training a greenie who came out and struggled with headaches on the mission (never at home). After testing and moving apartments and other things, it was decided last week to send him home to figure things out. I hope he'll be back. Nate has been in a biking area on a bike we did not buy. Most of the time he bikes. Once in awhile he gets access to a car.

Tomorrow is p-day. Any bets on whether Nate calls tomorrow or sends an email?

He's happy sharing the good news of Jesus Christ and that's all I could ask for. These young people just radiate joy. You can see it in their faces. That is the spirit of God radiating goodness.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." --Galatians 5:22-23

Photos

I've been a bit remiss with this blog. I've been on a huge learning endeavor in regards to education and reading and writing as I strive to become a better teacher. I've made considerable growth just from where I was two years ago. Sadly this little blog of mine had to take back burner.

However, my goal this Christmas break was to learn how to teach writing in a better way to little 8 year olds. If I want them to write better, I told myself that I need to write more.

That said, I'm leaving 2020 with photos instead. I didn't take very many as I sat and relished the moment of having our grandbaby and MOST of my kids with us. It was simply glorious.

Christmas break began with a quick trip to Ferron. This was a run/hike I went on one morning. It was absolutely beautiful with cool, crisp, clean air.

Nate accompanied the sister missionaries on a Christmas song. Thanks to some pretty remarkable technology, we were able to "zoom" in and watch.

The cutest baby in the world; no biases here.

Our traditional Christmas meal of Korean bulgogi was moved from Christmas Day to Christmas Eve since we were losing KJ and baby to the other inlaws. It was a great present to me. I LOVED not having to make a meal on Christmas day.

Nate left behind a bag for us open on Christmas (or any other time . . . We chose Christmas Eve). In September while he was busily getting ready to leave home for 2 years to bring people to Christ, he was also exemplifying Christ's attributes of thoughtfulness and kindness by preparing that bag for us. It was a bunch of random gadgets from work but I was touched that he was thinking of us months in advance.

I also discovered a shared family photos album where Nate had uploaded some photos from his mission. He hasn't been as diligent with attaching photos to his weekly email as Erik did. I was extremely happy to peruse and save.

COVID-19

In the beginning . . . as in last March . . . it was rare to know anyone with COVID-19. Over the past seven months, it has slithered and crept and inched itself ever so close to our family and finally struck this past week.

The day before our fall break trip, I got the dreaded Scarlet Q letter from the high school informing us that Ashlyn has been exposed to someone with COVID. She immediately knew it was her tennis partner whom she sits by in seminary.

Now what to do?

It had been eight days since that day of exposure and Ashlyn was showing no signs.

Do we go?

Do we stay home?

The decision was made to get her tested and head out.

First stop was Moab and a sunrise hike to Delicate Arch. As we came around the bend to find the arch, we also found others who had the same idea. Quite a few in fact. But you never would have known that many people were up there due to the silence. It was a very reverent few minutes as we all watched the grandeur and beauty of the morning unfold before our eyes.

In Denver we loved on our baby, hiked some more, and took our missionary Nate and his companion Elder Hales out to dinner (with permission).

Upon returning home, there was a message about Ashlyn's test. I called the next morning.

Negative. She was free to return to school.

Fast forward a few days. Kiersten informed us that her and Jason had been exposed to COVID. Jason stayed home from work for a day or two and got tested which came back negative.

Fast forward a few more days to today. Nate messaged us to say that Elder Hales had been feeling sick Monday night. They both got tested. Elder Hales's came back positive while Nate's was negative. However, Tuesday night Nate began getting little headaches which have been on and off for 5 days along with a sore throat. He's pretty sure he has COVID too.

There is nothing worse than being sick when you are away from home. I sure hope those two boys are going to be okay and that someone is taking care of them. I know they are in the Lord's hands. This is where faith steps in. When you are powerless to do something for yourself, Jesus Christ is the one with power to heal and save and make things right. I have to trust that they will be okay.

And so with that little bit of news . . . we are all lying low for a few days.