Much has happened since last writing! Last week was full with a Temple Session on Thursday, Interviews on Wednesday, FHE on Monday and yesterday we got the lawn mowed cars washed, repacked our 72hour kits and wedding reception and a movie all in the same day!
The week before Cathy and I got to visit Jen and JP in Klamath Falls for a couple of days. They are all doing great. I had a special time going to Jacksonville with McKenzie on a field trip. We got over to mom and dad's for Mother's Day. They seem to be doing fine. Dave and Addrianne and Scott and Donna were there at the same time and so we spent the evening visiting. We dont see enough of each other. Grandma and Grandpa will set out for Provo this Thursday. Cathy will accompany them and return in two weeks. Missy has all kind of projects to be done and mom is looking forward to seeing them all. Hopefully All of Provo will rejoice! (At least for those in our family). Mike and Mandy will have school and work but mom is hoping to spend time with them too. As well as hitting her favorite place in the world to do geneology for a few days.
We had a very productive day for the Sabbath. Meeting always start at 7:30 and I go till 3:30pm with the last of our interview. Then back for a Fireside at 7:30pm. The message was great but for some reason there was not that many in attendance. Unlike our temple session (last Thursday), we had like three YSA Wards and of those attending our Wars surpassed all other Wards with 16 from our Ward. Yeah! I guess the sun was out since many came to meetings sunburnt today in church.. Somethings always happens when the weather changes. The warm spell is suppose to be around for the next week. The fans are going full blast! I can't wait till summer. Watch out heat, it can only get warmer!
We love you all!
Love,
Dad

Family Letter!

Dear Family,
Mike came home this past Thursday night and will return on next Wednesday. Mandy came home Friday and will return Thursday of next week. (Friday we went to mom and dad's for dinner with Mike and Kyle and Maria and family). They came home for Mandy's best friend marriage ,Angelie Lindthort, soon to be Staal. We meet his whole family from Holland on Saturday (dinner at the Gibbs and temple Saturday evening). Does anyone speak Dutch? It was fun to meet them (Angelie in-Laws). The wedding will be this Wednesday.
FLASH: Saturday in the afternoon, I cut my finger while cutting some carrots for Mom's roast to be served Sunday for our family gathering. Not the best timing for cutting a finger since we had to go out to Kaiser to see if I needed stiches. Fortunately, the cut was too wide, I took a chunk out abut 1/4 inch wide x 1/2 inch long, so they bandage up the wound and sent me on our way. Darn those carrots! The finger is fine, just have to watch it for infection. I t is all bandage up and will get better day by day.

Well, Sunday was a big day also, since we had Ward Conference and I had to speak as well as the Stake President. This evening we had the big dinner over at the Institute, since the home is getting too small for all to meet in. Jake and Cindy and Family, Mike and Mandy with The Gibbs, and Maria and Kyle were all invited. We tried to get the Standings too, it would have been a great bishopric special (but they did not make it)! I am glad things will settle. At least I won't speak for a week or so. Busy till 4pm with interviews and then right into the dinner so I did not leave the church building from 7am-7pm this day! It was good to see family, but I will sleep tonight!
Love you all!
Dad

Family Letter!

Family Letter!

Dear Family,
We have anxiously been waiting for this weekend because of General Conference. What a weekend it has been! Do you have a favorite talk? I like Elder Holland, Bednar, and Perry as well as the Prophet's talk. There has been much to build us up and help in these troubled times. May we all do our part in finding an area of improvement and make a change for the next six months. I know I have made notes and will be discussing those things with my wife. What about you?
We Love and pray for you often. Next year we might go down and experience conference in person. I have never been to the new conference Center for General Conference. I do remember back in the day when Conference was in the old Tabernacle. That was the last time I went to conference. We would get up early and drive down to SLC at 4:00 am in the morning to stand in line to get into one or two sessions. Thoses were the days when the Tabernacle held only 8000 people. A large number in its own right, but today the number is something like 22,000.
I got the lawn mowed between session yesterday, and the cars washed in another. All in all, it was a productive day. I got to stay at church between session to watch the church news portion and see all the hightlights of 2008-2009.
Kyle comes home with the family this coming weekend. He gradutes on Thursday. Congratulations, Kyle!
Hope things are going well with you all!
Love,
Mom and Dad

Family Letter!

Dear Family,
Don't you think my title is So orginial! We have spent the Spring Break, just doing what "spring break" indicates: working around the house and yard.
Mike and Mandy drove in this morning at 5 am. They have come for a quick wedding of Mike's old time friend: Ryan Hunter. Mandy has got up and is off doing the hair for the wedding party after just three hours of sleep. (Poor Girl!) Mike is up too after 4 1/2 hours. He says lets go shopping, hang out: sounds like he has the right idea for a quick vacation. The wedding will be later on in the day 5pm so plenty of time for play.We will have a chance to have Kevins fiance get to know us this afternoon too, as she will be with Mike and Mandy for the wedding. Most of the group of boys that Mike grew up with will be at the wedding and then come here to visit later in the evening. Kevin is away at boot camp right now.

In the mean time today, our Ward is involved with March Madness over at Mt. Hood Community College... playing basketball all day against the various YSA Wards in this region. We have our honor to protect, since we took first place last year. This year it could be all different, since the Ward changes ever 4 months and those playing last year are almost completely different! Cathy and Patti enjoyed a quick catch up for a minute at the game and then Cathy got to go with the Sister Missionaries to give a discussion in Sandy before heading back for the wedding.
We got a load of garden soil from Estacada Nursery yesterday (funny their price is cheaper than the local nurseries, and even with the delivery it was better to go with JP's old home town!). Now we have never been great gardeners, so hope for the best for our new raised garden. Any suggestions on what you want fresh out of the garden?
We got to spend a day at Mom and Dad's, Thursday. We did some spring cleaning over there and went out to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner with them. Thanks Mom and Dad! That was fun, of course no one ever over eats when they go there. Ha- ha

Friday afternoon we drove to Stevenson, about 30 miles up the gorge, to help with a Family Fair that a friend from the ward and her mom put on at the fairgrounds there. We volunteered last year too and it is a lot of fun. This year they had a talent show as part of the entertainment and one of our Young Adults, Brantley sang a number of songs for it. He has an incredible voice and has alot of songs that he has written himself. He reminds me of Michael McLean alot. We enjoyed his songs so much that we almost...I repeat....almost got up and did the swing to one of his songs! Most of the night we were taking care of the cheesecakes ect..needless to say.it was a fun night.

Hope your Spring Break was as good as ours!
Love,
Dad

Nates Special Day!

Nates Special Day!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE! Nate came to Grandpa and Grandmas house today to buy his birthday present. His Birthday was actually a few days ago but today we are celebrating together today. First we went to the video game store and Nate looked everything over and decided on a DS game...Kung Foo Panda and then we hit Mc Donalds for a Happy Meal which we expecially requested a spiderman toy...but to our dismay we ended up with an
American Idol headset that plays music...an okay toy. And then we went to the bank to get more money and then out to Walmart to get a Wilson baseball mitt...an A200 and then an alien out of the gumball machines. What a day. Nate liked everything about the shopping trip. He thinks the middle picture is the best. Now we are going hme to watch Bolt with his brothers and sister. We had a great time. When his mommy was a little girl her grandma and grandpa used to take her shopping by herself on her birthday too....a fun tradition. Hopefully we will be able to spend some one on one time with all our grandkids this year...

Wonderful Busy Week

Dear Family,

This first pictures has to do with Scott and Evelyn who were playing before the family Blessing of Coleman Paker. We were excited to witness the blessing.

The next couple of pictures are from the blessing of Coleman Paker. Four generations of hands. Now that is impressive.

Another picture of the blessings with 4 generations again!

The last picture is the breakfast before leaving on a meeting with Elder Brinkerhoff at the Oregon City Stake Center. What a meeting that was! President Dykes of the Oregon Portland Mission was ther too. We left that meeting with a clear vision of the missionary work in each ward and direction for the coming weeks. From that meeting two Saturdays ago, we have been going forward looking to our Easter Sunday. That will be a great day for our Ward. I spoke today in Sacrament Meeting rolling out the plan for "Invite a friend". It will be a great occurence !

Jennifer and gang arrived on Friday and stayed the evening till Sunay morning.

Yesterday was a good day. Our Ward met at Skate World (for your information was the first date where Jake and Cindy held hands after his mission) to have a 2 hour session with only our Ward members for skating, pizza and birthday cake for Sister Gibbs. Happy Birthday Sister Gibbs!

As a family, we all gather at 6:00 pm at the Institute to have the blessing for Coleman Parker Richards. We got some cute shots of Coleman with male members, hands and gathering at the blessings. We were grateful for all family members and friends that came.

Another pictures shows Grandpa. He sure enjoyed his time with Chase Richards. Chase kept on turning off the music grandpa was plays and would laugh and laugh. That kept us rolling with laughter. Sunday Jennifer and the gang went out to Church in Estacada and then spent the evening with JP's parents. They will be going to the coast for Spring Break. We plan on staying around home front and doing so jobs here at home. We will be going out with Scott and Donna and mom and dad for dinner on this coming Thursday. That should be fun!

What do you have plannned for Spring Break?

I know that Guy has us all "hands down" with his vacation in Florida. They blessed Tyler this Sunday in one of the local Bishop Offices. They will be visiting Sea World and Disney Animal World and lots more. Love to see you Spring Break Blogs!

Blog on!

Love,

Dad

Getting zzzzz's

So its 2:20 am and I just got off the new.familysearch site. I have been on it trying to get things cleaned up for the last couple of hours. Earlier tonight I talked with Maria about a book that I picked up on the exchange rack at the library. Its called The Ruins....yup, I had also just gone to the redbox and seen that it has been made into a movie...an R rated movie at that. I was about half of the way into the book and so far hadnt encountered anything that was R rated it just seemed like a silly sy fi book to me....and I had glanced at the ending to see if the people made it off of the hill and it appeared that they had....so I decided to skim the rest of the book...I hate to leave a book in the middle...anyways, it took me about an hour or so to skim through the rest of it and then an hour of laying in bed listening to daddy snore, wishing that I hadnt. I was wrong about my assumptions from reading the last couple of pages....the whole group of kids got wiped out on this hill by carviverous vines....okay...sounds dorky but even skimming and not really reading the whole content was enough to give me the eby jebbies...it reminded me of when I was a kid...probably 4th grade and we were at a girls slumber party and someone told me about a girl who got an ant up her nose and it made this big bumb that she eventually poked at with her fork and a ton of ants came out! Yup, I remember it to this day! I dont think this book hit me quite that hard because there was stuff in it that was inconsistant and that bugs me when i can find obvious flaws in the writers stuff....but enough that I wished I hadnt pursuded it. The thought of vines growing inside someone is gross...now if it had been tapeworms or something then I would have been having nightmares! Why do we do stuff like that to ourselves? Even knowing...I should have just put it down and then I would not be up at this rediculous hour telling you all how stupid I am. Oh well, some good came out of it. Instead of laying there in bed listening to daddy snore, I decided to get up and do something productive cause you can bet you lucky stars that I am gonna be sleeping in tomorrow morning. Daddy will get up in 3 hours to start his day and with my luck...I will just be finally settling in. Theres some advantages to this getting old stuff after all! This whole thing reminds me of the saying from the old FHE movies about the snake that the kid picked up and carried up the mountain with him and then it bit him...well, ...."You knew what I was when You picked me up" ... Sweet dreams!