January 28, 2015

Salutations,

Well Maggie gives me crap when my letter does not get out on Sunday or Monday, so I need to do a better job of getting it our a little earlier. This past week, Maggs got the go ahead from the Dr. to start jogging! So, she has been participating in PE which she really enjoys and she was able to go to a conditioning session with her soccer team last week which she was Way excited about.

We have a good dog story from this past week. Sal made a big pan of enchilada's that were quite tasty. Maggs and I had to get to her soccer workout so we told Coop and Al to put the food away which was sitting on the stove. About 45 minutes later I get a call from Coop going something like this, "Uh Dad, I was reading in the front room when I heard Duke making a lot of noise. I thought he was drinking out of his bowl really loud, but he actually got up to the stove and ate the rest of the enchiladas." Seriously! Our dog got up on his hind legs rested his front paws on the front of the stove and helped himself to about a half pan of our left overs! Luckily he did not get to sick. I think that is lucky anyway.

Sal has been subbing quite bit lately and she has been working on Allie's room painting dressers re-doing the drawers all kinds of fun stuff. 

We went to a wedding reception last Friday for some folks in our ward and when we got done it was about 7:30 and we had still not had dinner so we stopped off at Taco Bell for something quick. Coop thought the "Fire" taco sounded good and Maggs got the spicy Tostada. The fire taco ended up being pretty accurate to its name. The funny thing is we did not order drinks and oddly enough we did not have any water in the van, so his mouth was burning for a minute. We all got a kick out of that one.

We did chores and ran some errands on Saturday... nothing real exciting and we had a good Sunday. I have really been enjoying teaching my Sunday School class I have 16-17 year olds and they are really good kids. We have a member of our class that has some disabilities he is a great kid and the other kids in the class take really good care of him. It is fun to see that age of kids treat one of their peers with so much kindness. One of the kids that used to be in my Young Men's group had his mission farewell on Sunday. He did a really good job. It is fun to see these kids grow up.

Life goes by at a very fast clip. We have been enjoying playing Racko almost every night, after dinner.  I may have only won once but it was a very sweet victory as I beat my 9 and 11 year old kids! They actually beat me most of the time. Coop got a game of Monopoly Empire for his birthday; it is the concept of Monopoly, but it lasts 20 minutes or so. Allie affectionately calls herself "Allie Empire" because she seems to win quite often. Nothing real exciting this week. I hope everyone has a great week and hopefully I will get this letter out on Sunday or Monday next week!

Love,

Chris

21 Day Testimony Challenge

Try it!  You might like it!

January 18, 2015

Greetings Babushka’s

Not sure what that means, but I think it sounds cool!  Wel,l this past week started with Coop and myself headed over to my mom and dad’s to watch the NCAA Championship football game.  We had the Hislop family there along with Rob and my mom and dad.  When we got there the Satellite was not working so I was going to head back home, but Lance, Grace, Teresa and my dad were problem solvers and after a few Mcgyver moves the dish was up and running.  It is fun to watch a game with no rooting interest. I switched teams like 12 times. All in all, it was fun. My Ohio State Buckeyes ended up winning J 

The weeks really do end up being one big blur as times goes by so incredibly fast, at least it feels that way.    The biggest highlight of the week was the fact I celebrated 16 years with my beautiful wife Sal.  We were gonna keep it low key, but then I decided to throw away the key and make it a little more fun.

So,  we got a nice hotel in SLC, but we headed to the Radisson, we made a few stops along the way.  First stop: Kohls.  Sal bought a coat at Kohls that she got as a Christmas present.  As we were planning our little staycation, we wanted to do things we normally don’t do, so we got couples massages...okay, so it wasn't a "real" massage. (There was a health fair at the Clearfield Aquatic Center and there was a chiropractor giving free massages, so we called it a couples massage J)  Then we window shopped at Farmington Station and then went to the movie, Taken 3. Sal won free movie tickets in a trivia contest so we took advantage of that.  We then checked into the Radisson downtown. We found it on Priceline... love Captain Kirk and Penny from Big Bang Theory advertising for that one. 

Anyway, we got a KSL deal for a fancy shamncy steak house called Christopher’s in down town SL.  Sal had steak and I had shrimp it was pretty tasty.  We got a carrot cake for dessert, on the house, which we both liked-- the cake and it being free. 

We then hung out in the pool and the hot tub at the hotel. As I was sitting in the sauna, there was a 29 year old "kid" who brought me back through memory lane. As he entered the sauna, he had on  four layers of sweats including a plastic sweat suit.  He has to drop 30 pounds for a MMA fight he has in three weeks.  Oh I am glad I am not a MMA fighter.

The next day we headed to the Leonardo museum and saw Body World Exhibit where you see real bodies on display that have ben plastasised.  That was very interesting.  Heavenly Father is definitely the Master Architect.  It is way incredible how the human body is all put together and works together.

After our trip to Salt Lake, we then grabbed some lunch at Buffalo Wild wings with a gift card I got for Chritmas. There are 50 TVs in that place and all were on different sports channels.  I was in heaven!  We then headed home and got our kids--Maggie, Allie, and Duke stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Hislolp and Cooper stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Davidson with Tyson his cousin.

It was a fun little excursion with my lady, and we are both deal searchers so we landed some good deals as well.

As we were at the Hislops, Sallie talked Grandpa Chick into getting a futon for his TV room.  He only had 2 recliners in there, so seating was limited.  She convinced them to get a futon in the TV room. Sal worked her magic and we ended up getting the couch later that night.  Did you know you can fit a full-size couch in the back of our van?  Sal has used our van many times as a truck.

We were also lucky enough to go to our nephew Brandon’s Eagle court of honor Saturday night.  It was really good. He and our other nephews have set a good example for our son and the younger boys to get their Eagles.  

We had a good day at church.  The missionaries spoke: one from Spain and the other one from Italy. They issued a 21 day challenge to everyone, which we will start this week on reading the Book of Mormon.   Later that evening,  we had a good family home evening at the Davidson’s with most of Sal's family.  

I hope everyone has a great week!

January 12, 2015

Dearest Compadres y Familia;

Sunday will typically be the day send these out.  We are getting used to our dog Duke. I made a mistake in last week's letter. He is a Goldendoodle, not a labra doodle.  Either way, he is a bundle of energy and the kids love him.

This past wee,k Coop and his cousin Miles went to the Roy City council meeting for a merit badge they are working on.   That was the day that Roy High football team  got recognized for taking second in State. They really seemed to enjoy that and I think they liked being there.

Coop had his first  basketball game on Saturday. He played against Miles. Coop’s team lost 11-7. It was a defensive struggle!  Coop was struggling with a cold, but Miles had a great game.

We went to grandma and grandpa’s house and showed them the dog that is officially ours even though they saw it last week!  It was fun following the NFL playoffs to see who is going to make it to the Superbowl.  

Saturday night we had our annual Davidson Cousin party.  It was at a little Chinese joint in Bountiful called the Chinese Platter.  It was a very fun night.  Jeff and Lucy dropped off their kids at our house.  Coop actually watched them as a part of earning a merit badge.  Once we got there we ate dinner then did the white elephant gift exchange I got an awesome coffee mug in the shape of a toilet bowl it was pretty cool.  There ended up being an extra gift, the funny things is the extra gift came from my sweet wife who got the idea from my sweet mother.  Our cousin Sam was able to pick this the last gift and it was a Pillow and on the pillow case on side had a big N and the other side had a big Y  each representing YES and NO  on the pillow…wink wink.  We all got a really good laugh out of that, Sal was a little disappointed that it did not get selected but how it ended up there were a ton of inside jokes that were made.  It ended up being pretty funny.

We got home and found everything in order pretty much.  Coop did a good job watching the younger boys and my girls had fun watching some Halmark movies.  Sal and Coop stayed home from Church. 

We had a very good sacrament meeting, there was a boy who just graduated a few months agon that is off to college and he talked about his experiences at school and how he has learned from some bad choices he has made.  My lesson went pretty good we have about 10-15 folks packed in a small office pretty tight.  I asked one kid to put his phone away and he said he was looking up a scripture, I like the kid and we are buddies so I asked him what scripture he was looking up, knowing he was full of crap and he them gave him a fist bump telling him he is a rookie when it comes to making up stuff like that and I am the master!  They laughed.  We had a gal sing all four versus of How Great Thy Art in the small class it was pretty cool I think the kids enjoyed it.

Nothing real exciting this week, I hope everyone has a good one.

Love,

Chris

January 9, 2015

Family, Friends and Friends Back East,

Well, it as has been several years since I have consistently written a weekly letter. My sister in law, Teresa, is incredibly consistent, so I am using her example for this year in writing a weekly letter.

As the years go by, I still find joy in reading the letters I wrote in 2001 to remember all the things we did as a small family. So for selfish reasons, I am going to write a weekly letter and  am counting on  being consistent so I have great memories of all that we accomplished this year.

Well, the new year was brought in at our house with a New Year's Eve Party. We had Jill and Kurt and their kids, Kim and Andy and their kids, Joyce,  and Kevin and Stacy and their kids.  We ate, played catch phrase ,and watched a documentary on Randy Moss, well me and Kevin and Andy watched it, while the others chatted.  I may have gone and taken a quick nap at 10:30 for a few minutes, but I came down and welcomed the new year with the family.  Before the party, we were working on a project from a family friend, Bill Haaser, getting his calendars out for his real estate business.  We had a great assembly line humming and we finished the project New Years Day.  To the kids delight, they all earned according to the time and effort they put in.

As a family, we headed down to Salt Lake on January 2nd, and met the Kevin Davidson family there and we watched Meet the Mormons at the Legacy theater.  It was a documentary style movie that followed the lives of six LDS "Mormon" families.  I found the messages to be very powerful and I hope folks not of our faith can see "Mormons" are not as odd or weird as the media or folklore has us sound. 

As we left, I noticed my wallet was not in my pocket. I thought I had brought it with me. We went back and looked for it and could not find it.  As we walked back to our car, Coop had my Gumby beanie over his eyes and I was directing him down the sidewalk as normally as I could, given the circumstances :).  Kevin called us and let us know the folks at the Joseph Smith Memorial found my wallet and was calling my name. Luckily, Stacy heard it and assured them she was related to me and she would give me my wallet.  Kevin called me and we met them in front of the City Creek mall.  We stopped for a Chick-Fil- A lunch in Bountiful and the kids sat on one table and Sal and I sat on the other.  It was kind of nice having a little bit of room.  We ran some errands on the way home:  bank, bike shop, and then we proceeded to take down the Christmas Tree.  Coop and I had fun tossing ornaments in the boxes and we hoped not to break too many. 

Maggs and her cousin Grace have a little business called Princesses on the Go. Sal and Teresa helped them in their costumes and they took pictures, created a blog, and got a facebook post up and running!  Pretty cool.

Our kids insisted we go on a date, so we headed to a place called Tony Burgers. So on January 3rd with a lot of goals in my mind, I had gone out to eat twice in the same day, nice!!! It was nice hanging out with Sal as we were about done  when I noticed a good friend I grew up with Derek Crimin and his wife Rochelle enter the burger joint.  I told him there were going to have dinner with us they liked it or not.  They gracefully obliged and we sat there for nearly two hours and just chatted about life.  It was a really enjoyable.

We have 11:00 church and I was proud of my crew; we actually showed up to church on time!  We were even 7 minutes early Yikes!  I am teaching the 16-17 year old Sunday school class.  It was a lot of fun. I am excited to work and teach these kids this year.  We had a relaxing day at home and visited my mom and dad that night.  I think we went through 4 bags of popcorn.  Thanks mom and dad for letting us steal your food. We did bring sherbet and Sprite for floats.

The kids made it back to school on the 5th.  Allie got sick and stayed home.  Sal took her to the doctor and she has a UTI.  The other two seemed to enjoy going back. 

The biggest event of the week came when Sal texted me on Tuesday, January 6th, stating her niece, Kristen, wanted to give their Golden Doodle, Duke, to us.  She asked if I was interested.  I playfully responded that we need to discuss something like this in person rather than text and I was thinking taking a job in Belize and wanted her to sign off via text (That is not true about the job offer I was just making a point J) Sal is a school teacher by trade but she has the gift of sales like her mama, Joyce.  On Wednesday, Sal showed up to my work with a visitor, Duke!  My receptionist and recruiter at work fell in love with the dog instantly.  I liked him but the thought of having another dog did not excite me.  After they hung out for a while, Sal and Duke went to my mom and dad's house.  Sal called me and said my mom and dad were excited to meet their new grand dog!  Once Sal texted me a picture of Dad and Duke, I knew it was a done deal.  I do have a sense of security that if  Sal ever wanted a sales job, she would earn a lot of money with her convincing  techniques!

That night, we had Reflections Awards Night at Roy High where all three of our kids received awards: Allie getting Merit and the other two getting participation.  I  was proud of all three of them.  Then we headed to Coop's basketball practice then we headed home to find Sal and Maggs returned home from Young Women’s. 

We told the kids we had to go to Ogden to run an errand, Coop and Al did not know that we were getting a new member of the family.  As we were at 36th and Washington Cooper said to the girls they should put their money together and get a dog.  Our neighbors just got a puppy, a Golden Doodle, for Christmas, so it has been on their mind.  Al wanted a Golden Doodle, Coop wanted a Lab and Maggs knew it did not matter since she was in on the plan the whole time!

When we got to Kristen and Nate's house Sal went in the back, me and the kids went in the front.  We told them that mom had left something at their house that day and we had to pick it up.  As we got in the house, Coop tackled Duke and started playing with him not knowing that Duke was going to be ours in a few minutes.  We hung out and then I said, "alright we need to go." and I looked at the dog and said, "that is what mom left. We are taking Duke home!"  Nate asked the kids if it would be okay if we took Duke. They all screamed and were very excited.  We drove home that night, Wednesday, January 7th,as new dog owners.....Oh my!!!  Have a great weekend!!!

Love Chris