Happy New Year - today I put my Christmas things away. I love the freshness of the house when Christmas is put away. My kitchen is spotless - it feels great.
I am so happy that the twins are home from Russia. What an experience they had! For their birthday we went to Pocatello. Amy and Aaron came from Sugar City to spend some time. We went to Lava Hot Springs, and the Golden Corral for dinner. We also went to Salmon to see Grammy. It was a good trip and a great finish to the year. Grammy was glad we came.
Amy and Aaron moved to Iowa. Aaron has a job with John Deere. For Thanksgiving, we went out to see them. We went to Nauvoo, and drove over to Chicago to see Steve and Jaquel. We went to the Broadway show "Fiddler on the Roof." It was fantastic.
Steve and Jaquel are both getting graduate degrees in May. I hope to travel to Chicago for graduation. I will be traveling to Dubuque at the end of February for the birth of my first grandchild, a boy! We are so pleased and happy with our children and all that they have accomplished.
Elden graduated from Boise State University in Economics. He is always pleasant and helpful. I am so thankful that he is here with us. He is fun to be with and very easy to get along with.
I love my family very much. Scott has been very helpful to me. He cleaned even cleaned the oven for me today. He fixes everything that I ask him to and I have never seen anything that he couldn't fix. He put a new garage door opener in for his mom in Salmon. He is really good at figuring things out....it's the engineer in him.
I want to try to work on this blog so that I can keep a better handle on what is happening and about my thankfulness and the sweetness of life. No one has had a better life than I have.
I am thankful for so many things. I am going to write a book. I have alot of stories and things that I have collected over the years. They are my treasures. When I read things, I really internalize them quite a bit. I love stories. I love the spirit that I feel when I read uplifting messages and Ensign Articles and stories of people and their lives. One of these days I am going to make a list of the best books I have read.
Tomorrow I am going back to work in the Humanitarian Service Room. I have been serving a mission there for a little over a year. It has been one of the most awesome experiences of my life. I have met so many neat and wonderful people and I have learned so much and I have enjoyed every second of it. My book about the Service Room has been started, I just need to keep at it.
I love it here in Meridian. This winter has been very unusual. There has been very little snow. It wasn't a White Christmas at all....but I can say that I don't mind. I don't like winter and I don't really care about the snow, so for me, this has been wonderful. I hope we have enough water for the future and that kind of thing.
For Christmas, Jenny gave me the most awesome Owl Calendar that she did the artwork for. It is the cutest thing. The girls brought me several owls from their trip and that was really fun also. The wool socks from Russia are amazing. I got a little kid pair with an owl on them. I went all out this year on our tree and it was beautiful. All owls - it was stunning.
Here is a picture of it.
Jenny just helped me to fix up my new blog. I am very happy about it. Today I returned to the Humanitarian Center after 2 weeks off. The break was nice, and it was also nice to be back. I totaled up the report for deliveries in December and in the first two weeks we delivered 1972 pounds. Today was quite busy with volunteers - more than I expected. The kids came in and brought me pizza for lunch. It made my day. The weather this year has been so wonderful. No snow. Our cats are so funny. We have spunky and we have scaredy cat - because he is so nervous and scared of everything. We also call him fluffy, cause he is so fluffy and furry and soft. We have never had cats before moving here. It is no wonder that people like their cats so much. They are definitely different than dogs. I like that you don't have to get anyone to take care of them while you are gone. They are very self-sufficient. We sometimes get our neighbor Shannon to feed them if we go away, but we wouldn't have to. Cats are the ultimate scavengers. Once in awhile we see neighbor cats come and get in on whats for dinner at the Stokes....its pretty funny. It is late and I guess that I better get to bed. I have a hard time getting up as it is.
