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
No comments:
Post a Comment