Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2010

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our friends and family! 

You have found our annual Christmas letter.  If you made the effort to get here, I admire you and will do my best to keep it interesting.

First and most importantly, we want to wish all of you a most wonderful Christmas and Prosperous and Happy New Year.  We are grateful for the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ and feel to rejoice at this time for His life and sacrifice in our behalf.  We are anxious and excited to hear from you and hope that all is well in your world.


Here's what we've been up to:

Playing

Bryce got a chance to get on skis again after 30 years of being away from mountains.  He loved it and plans to get a few chances to go again this winter.   Laurie did a whole bunch of hiking.  She has a group of friends that call themselves the "Likin' Hikin' Ladies" who hike every Friday.



Bryce is happy to be on skis again after thirty years!



 





Laurie on top of the Wellsvilles - the ultimate hiking challenge.

Serving

We are happy to be able to serve in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and are so grateful for our membership.  It enriches our lives and strengthens our family.  Bryce was called to be in the Stake Presidency (counselor) of a University Stake in February.  In August, the church changed all the University Stakes to Young Single Adult Stakes, so he is now 2nd Counselor in the YSA 6th Stake.  He loves it.  Laurie continues to be Ward Relief Society President, and was also called as an assistant to the YSA 6th Stake Music Chairman.  We don't see much of each other on Sundays, as you can imagine.  We have a goal to attend the temple weekly.  Most of the time we are able to go together, but sometimes we just have to fit it in where we can.



Traveling

In April, Laurie went to California to visit and help paint Kathy and Doug's new house.  We even had a break from painting long enough to go see some whales.



Laurie and Ben waiting to get on the whale watching boat.



We planned another trip to California in June when Bryce could come along, and then suddenly added a trip to Peru in front of it.  The Peru trip was business for Bryce, but Laurie was able to go along and ended up involved in most of the meetings with high level government people.  It was an amazing experience.

Here is a link to my post about the city of Lima and the food. and here is a link to my post about some things we saw.

Bryce, Laurie and our traveling companion DeeVon with the First Lady of Peru.  I'm holding an LDS church Humanitarian Newborn Kit that is greatly appreciated and used in Peru.

We got about two hours at the beach on our trip to California.  That's all the coins we had for the parking meter.

The first week of July we had a week long family reunion in Eden, Utah at a ski resort very high in the mountains. 



Some of the family getting ready for a hike in the mountains at Eden.



At the end of July (yes, it's crazy to pick that time of year) Bryce's niece got married in Arizona so we decided to turn our trip down into a "Temple Hop."  We visited five temples in that week, Manti, Mesa, Snowflake, Gila Valley and Monticello.  I made four posts about that trip on this blog, posting from my phone.  Here's where they are.  It was wonderful to be with family at the wedding.

A very rare and special picture - Bryce with his brother and sister and both parents at the reception in Tucson.

Four Wheeling





Laurie and Bryce at Old Ephraim's Grave

 

Last fall we bought a four wheel drive Toyota Four-Runner and nicknamed it "Gus."  The major reason for four wheel drive was to be able to navigate our steep hill in winter.  But we had lots of fun with Gus this summer.  We climbed around in the mountains a few times and even spent a night "camping" in Gus after watching the Perseid Meteor Shower on top of a mountain.




Bryce loves driving Gus on dirt roads





Building
We would have liked to spend even more time on the mountain, but there was also the pressing need to keep working on the house. In July we had the concrete floor finished.  We installed nearly all of the baseboard and door and window trim before Lisa and Cody and kids moved in at the end of October.  Hopefully in next year's letter we can say we're done!

New finished floor - next up, baseboard, trim and paint doors.



It took lots of painting to get all that baseboard and trim ready to install.

 Gardening

Our garden took off this year - probably because of all the compost we hauled in from the city landfill. 


A corner of our vegetable garden.





Wow, giant onions!

Surviving! 

Laurie hit five years as a breast cancer survivor this year.



Sara and Eric were on the "Relay For Life" commttee in March.

 



At the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Salt Lake City in May







About our kids:

Kathy and Doug are expecting a brother for Ben (age 2) in January.  They are still in California and bought a house early this year.  Laurie went out to help with painting in April, and Bryce and Laurie went again in June for a visit.  We were able to have Ben here for a week in September while Kathy took a trip to New York with her sisters-in-law.



Ben when he came to visit.





Matthew and Kristin are expecting a sister for Axton (who is now almost three) in February.  They are new California residents as of December 4th.  Matthew was working as a design engineer on the Ares rocket program and when the government stopped funding, he was laid off along with many other ATK employees.  Thankfully he was only jobless for a couple of months and the new job is actually a promotion for him. 



Axton and Nerp the cat





Lisa and Cody are expecting a sister for Lee and Anna in March.  They will be moving this next week from our house, where they've been for a month, into another home here in town.  It has been fun having them here temporarily, but they are very excited to have their own home again. 



Anna at the Homecoming parade



Big Lee smile (including food on face)



Sara and Eric are not expecting a baby (whew!) but Sara will graduate from USU this week!  Her program is Food Technology management, so if you need a food product tested or developed, she's the one to call.  Unfortunately for them, they had a flood in their apartment last week and have been living with us while waiting for their apartment to dry out and get put back together.  They hope to be back in before the New Year.

If you didn't notice, we actually had three of our kids homeless at once during December.  We are so grateful that we could live near them so that we could provide some temporary housing and assistance.  We love being with our kids and plan a visit to California to visit the (now) two families there after Christmas.

We send our love and best wishes for a most joyous holiday season.  

Love, Bryce and Laurie