Happenings 12/2 - 1/10

Dear family,

We are writing for the whole month of December and half of January, but we will be short on the details as much as possible. After Thanksgiving, I had two more weeks of classes and then finals week, but since I don't require finals, that week was time for grading and preparation for next semester. It would
have been extra relaxing except that our ward seminary teacher asked me to substitute for her that week, so that meant early mornings and some extra time preparing lessons. I don't know how well I did, but it was a good experience though I hope that I don't get that calling anytime soon. (Him saying that is a good way to ensure that he will have that calling sometime.)

I was glad to finish the semester. I had some good students that will be in one of my classes next semester, but otherwise, it wasn't the ideal set up. Because of the timing of textbook orders, I had to use textbooks that I didn't like or hadn't used before, so that meant extra work to prepare and align the syllabus. Also, I taught two sections of one course, but they were on different days and schedules, which was confusing for me and the students because I kept having to check with them
to see if I had talked about something or not. Luckily, next semester the two sections of one course are both on the same schedule, which will make it easy to teach.

J.J. turned out to be a "gift from above" for a local doctor this month. Several weeks ago, she was with Rachel at the pediatrician's office and she found out that an orthopedic surgeon was looking for a PA. She contacted their office, took her resume to them, (I just wanted to see what was out there and see if they used PA's, how they used, them, etc. I hadn't even decided if I was ready to go back to yet or not.) and a couple of weeks later, without any formal interview or process, was told that she was hired, and would start working on Mondays and Wednesdays in February. We were invited to their Christmas party, which wasn't large because he is the only doctor, and he told me that he was amazed that someone with J.J.'s experience was actually in Murray. J.J. is excited to get back to work and still have time at home, and they
happily agreed to her condition of allowing her some time off in the summer when we go out west. (I told Paul that I am going to start all my job interviews with "I am planning to be gone for 4-6 weeks this summer and don't want to start until late Jan or early Feb. and I only want to work part time." because it seemed to work out so well with this one. The doctor's wife, who is running the office pretty much had me hired before I met anyone else or really talked to anyone else. It was kind of weird. But they all seemed nice and it's a very small office. I think it will be good. I am looking forward to keeping up my skills and getting out of the house a couple days each week.)


The early part of the month was busy for J.J. with our ward Christmas party and Relief Society dinner. (It seemed as if I was at the church every night for a couple of weeks, setting up, cooking, having the dinners, cleaning up, something. Everything seemed to be at the same time.) We were able to get our Christmas cards out fairly early, though we weren't sure if they were early enough to inform people of our new address. I also was asked to drive to Nashville to pick up 800 lbs. of flour from the bishop's storehouse to donate to a local organization that gives away Christmas baskets to the needy. It wasn't really winter weather for us after the beginning of
the month -- it warmed up to almost 70 on the 11th. But it rained for almost a week before that and several days after. Snow was hoped for on the 16th, but it was only rain for us. I think we received almost 8 inches of rain in 3 weeks. (Over 2 weeks of rain almost everyday, or at least gloomy, gray skies is too much for me. It gets to me after a day or two. Paul quickly learned why I will never live in the Western Oregon/Washington area where they get so much rain. I would be miserable and in turn, my family would be miserable.)

We had the crazy idea that we would be able to relax during finals week and have plenty of time to pack for our trip. But everything seemed to stack up for us that week so Saturday the 15th was a busy day getting ready and attending two Christmas parties. But it was enjoyable, and we were able to get out of town on the 17th around 9:30 a.m. We drove from Murray south to I-40 in Tennessee, and then stayed on 40 until Albuquerque. We stopped in Memphis the first day to let Claire play at a kids' play area at the mall, and we had a "picnic" lunch in the parking lot. We drove through
Arkansas and stayed in Salisaw, Oklahoma the first night.

We were able to leave by 8:00 the next morning and made good time until we stopped in Amarillo at the Wal-Mart to pick up a few supplies that we needed. Due to some carelessness on our part, we forgot to take two bags from the turnstile after we paid for the stuff, and then when J.J. went back in to see if they were still there, the customer service manager acted as if J.J. was trying to steal something, and said they would have to look at the surveillance tapes later. I went back in and tried to get a different result, and the same manager got frustrated with me and tried to walk
away from me -- in my direction -- and trying to keep her attention I leaned into her as I kept talking to her. She immediately yelled that I had "laid a hand on me" and yelled "Get out of my store!" over and over to me. I was bemusedly stunned, and just asked another worker nearby to speak with the real manager. But before he could get called, the customer service manager got on her radio and said, "We have a code 500 at
the registers." Soon, the manager and a bunch of male back room and other workers came and nicely surrounded me while the store manager spoke with the customer service manager away from me. The guys, I think, were a little disappointed or relieved when they saw me, because I was calmly standing there. All I was asking for was for someone to look around to see if there were two bags that were hanging around and not to be accused of stealing. Eventually, with a little effort, someone found the bags, and all was well. But what was really funny, as the manager and I spoke after the bags were found, he told me that I'm lucky the other manager didn't press charges, because in the state of Texas, someone can press charges if touched without permission. I couldn't help chuckle as I left the store with our stuff, and told J.J. we better hurry out of the state before were caught. It was a relief to cross the border into New Mexico. (Paul wants to boycott Wal-Mart, and I am all for it on account of our experience with Phyllis, the customer service manager in Amarillo and narrowly escaping felony charges there, but living in Murray, where Wal-Mart is the only store of it's kind and is the cheapest, it may be difficult. I did have to sneak a trip in a couple of days ago, but I had to return a few things and I decided to make the most of it while I was there.)

With the time change in New Mexico, we got an early start out of Santa Rosa and made it to Monticello at 3:00, about 30 minutes before Mom and Dad arrived from Salt Lake. Claire immediately donned her snow clothes and played in the snow and we built two snowmen. She didn't seem to get cold at all and played for a long time.

Since we've been in Monticello, we have gone sledding in fresh snow on Saturday, Dad and I went to high school wrestling match and basketball games, and we took Claire and Rachel to the library where the librarian read The Polar Express and Santa came (Claire carefully noticed that "Santa forgot to wear his glasses"). Also, Santa (Don Kilgrow) came to the house and brought Claire a treat on Friday night. (That night, Rudolph and the other reindeer were resting because they were going to be very busy on Christmas Eve, so as Claire astutely noticed, "Santa came in his van.") We went to the temple twice, which is great since we aren't very close to one at home, and on Christmas Eve day we drove to Hovenweep and walked around the ruins there. It was been very cold, so we have mostly stayed inside except for the sledding trip and Hovenweep, but we have played at the church gym a couple of times also. Claire has been able to watch some Shirley Temple movies, and has altered her personas from Heidi to Clara (both characters in the movie "Heidi") to Mary to Santa to Frosty to Karen (Frosty's friend in the cartoon).

Christmas Eve was a serious affair for Claire, as she treated her role as Mary with the utmost importance. (We have been practicing being, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, the donkey for weeks now and all her practice was evident as she played her role well.) All the adults watched Santa Clause the movie, probably made in 1980, and it was a
little odd. Everyone was up early for Christmas as the kids didn't sleep too soundly with all of the excitement, and it was fun to watch Claire open her gifts with her true belief in Santa -- she was just amazed that Santa knew that she wanted roller skates.(She even got "My own chapstick!!!!!!") Later that day, I asked her if she
had a good Christmas, and she named everything she received, even little things in her stocking. Both she and Rachel went to bed early because they were so excited and tired, and the rest of us did a lot of reading and relaxing that day.

We left for Provo on the morning of the 27th, starting off in blowing snow and very cold weather from Monticello, but as Mom and Dad predicted, the snow was gone after Peter’s hill. But it didn’t warm up very much, which was a problem for our windshield washer fluid, which was frozen, so we couldn’t see very well after getting road mush on our windshield. We had to pull over once to pour water on the glass and immediately it began to freeze. But we made it to Megan’s mom’s house okay, and there poured hot water on the washer fluid dispensers and that worked. We had a fun visit with Megan, and Claire had fun playing with Ethan and Madeline. Rachel enjoyed getting out of the car seat, which was always a big highlight for her the whole trip. We left there around 2:00 and hit the road for Nevada, and stopped for the night in Elko.

Bad weather came in overnight, and we woke up to a few inches of snow, but the freeway was clear enough so we drove to Winnemucca and then turned off into the unknown north toward Oregon. The road from Winnemucca to Lakeview, OR (90 miles east of Klamath Falls) is really one of the most isolated places in the country, so we were a bit worried about hitting bad weather while on that 200-mile road. There was snow on the road, but it wasn’t too slick, so we were able to get along pretty well. The Nevada plows were much more thorough than the Oregon plows, so once we hit the border, it became worse. It was snowing quite heavily when we stopped for lunch in Lakeview, and the road from there took us over three mountain passes, but we made it. The irony of it all was when we arrived in Klamath Falls, we started up the road to J.J.’s parents’ home, which is steep, and 75 yards from their driveway didn’t have enough momentum to overcome the slickness of the snow, so we stopped. (After 36 or so hours in the car, we got stuck within sight of Mom and Dad's house.) Fortunately, for us anyway, J.J.’s mom had been forced to try to go around a FedEx truck earlier and had gotten stuck in the ditch on the side, so within minutes of our arrival, a tow truck was there to get her vehicle out and he then winched us up to the driveway. It was snowy the whole time we were there so we didn’t even use the van while we were there, but carried chains when we left, just in case. (Grandpa Bob let us use his little Subaru wagon while we were there and that worked pretty good.)

We had a fun time in Klamath Falls, me watching football games with Ken and Rob, J.J. Hanging out with her sisters and her Mom, and the girl cousins all playing to exhaustion every day. We sledded on the hill by their house, and even tried our snowboards, but it wasn’t steep enough to really go farther than what had already been packed because the snow was quite sticky. (Nicolette did get a chance to use my "real" snowboard and after only one ride down the hill, she stated, "I kind of feel like a pro already." She did do pretty good. We went out another day and she took a good wipeout, so we didn't get much more pro boarding in. I got to take Grandpa Bob to Klamoya - the Indian Casino not far from KFalls. He loves to go every other week or so for a couple of hours and for the first time since I've gone with him, we both came out winners.) We visited with J.J.’s friend Gretchen and her family one evening, but mostly enjoyed being together with everyone. They all started school on Jan. 2, and then we headed back on Friday, the 4th. I had been checking the weather obsessively, and it always looked bad, so we left on Friday morning in a snowstorm hoping to beat the worst of the storm that was still on its way. We reached the mountain passes just in time, because they were snowy and not plowed yet, and if there had been anymore snow, we may have not made it up one of them without the chains, and I didn’t really want to have to put on chains in the cold and snowy weather. The roads were clear after that, but it was very windy, so it wasn’t a very fun drive. It was even more windy in Nevada, where the storm was hitting the Sierras to the west of us really badly, so we drove as far as Rachel could make it, which was Wendover (further than I thought we would). The storm passed by us overnight, so we took our time before we left, which worked out because by the time we reached the Salt Lake airport, what snow had fallen there was plowed away.

We called our friend, Dionne Russell, who is from Flagstaff and was there to drop her daughter off at BYU, and we met her for lunch in South Jordan. With her was Carrie Fox, whose family we are good friends with and who goes to BYU-Idaho in the Summer and Fall, and Dionne’s new adopted baby, Bethanie. (They took their daughter Bailee to school at BYU in August last year and adopted a newborn baby in October. What a life change for them. They were only empty nesters for a month or so. They are our age, so having a little one is not crazy, it's just taking one to college and starting over a month later.) It was great to see them and visit with them and catch up on Flagstaff news. After lunch we headed up to Kaysville to stay with Russell and Julia. Shortly after we arrived, Claire and I went with Russell to watch Jason play basketball, and then we had dinner with everyone that night.

Sunday we didn’t have church until 1:30, and it snowed constantly that day. After church, Gordon came up and then went back to Provo with Russell, me, and Steven so we could drop him off for the new semester. It was fun for all of us to visit during the drive, and hopefully, Steven heard some of the advice we gave him:).

Monday was cold, but with the recent snow, Gordon, JJ, and I were excited for skiing. We chose Powder Mountain because it seemed close to Kaysville and had lessons for 3-year-olds. Claire was all decked out to go, and was excited, but when she was left with the instructor she got scared being on skis and ended up staying inside the lodge watching a movie — expensive babysitting. We still had the skis, though, and after lunch, she was much more full of energy, and Gordon got her to not be afraid and she did several little runs on the slight decline by the lodge, so all was not wasted. And she liked playing in all the snow when she wasn’t on skis. As for us older people, it was one of best powder days we had ever encountered, and with so few people there, we never lacked for foot-deep powder runs all day long. That type of skiing can be tiring, especially for skiers, but it was a great day — “epic” as I overheard by a snowboarder by the lift — and we were glad we stayed long enough to go.

We were off for home the next morning, heading on I-80 through frigid and windy Wyoming -- -7 degrees without wind chill and 40-50 mph winds — and wondering why anyone lives there. There was some ice on the road for some of that time, and we saw one car slide off, but we made it fine until Cheyenne when the wind decreased and we could actually see the road without snow blowing across it. One highlight of that trip was seeing 6 wolves on the side of the road — JJ had seen one and said, “Look, a dog!” and I thought, “A dog? Out here?” and then I saw more and they were bigger than coyotes so figured them to be wolves. JJ counted 5 more all together away from the first one. Over the next rise was about 40 antelope — we wondered if the wolves knew about them — and later we saw another big herd of antelope.

We stopped in Sidney, Nebraska and visited the Cabela’s store — the headquarters — and Claire did not like the stuffed game around the store, wanting to go back to the motel. The only one that was intriguing to her was the elephant, but even it was so big and lifelike that it scared her. (Rachel had had a blow out in the car, so she and I went to the motel for a bath instead of Cabelas. I wasn't too sad.)

We drove through Nebraska the next day and drove south to I-70, then stopped in a small town east of Kansas City, Missouri. Through normal conversation with the hotel owners, we found out they were LDS, so that was kind of neat and we were able to talk about their branch and how things are going there. (We started out the next day by getting everything packed up the girls all ready to go, Rachel in her car seat and picked her up to go out when she began throwing up all over. So we unpacked her suitcase, cleaned her up, did the best with the car seat and started on our way.) We made it home, driving through hard rain through St. Louis — nixing our plan to go up the Arch — pulling into our house at about 3:00. It was so nice to be home after our trip, and everything was in fine condition, although we had to coax JB out from under a bed. She probably thought she was abandoned by us forever. Also enjoyable was the 60 degree weather when we arrived, though that changed quickly, but it wasn’t 10 degrees or less as we had experienced on our trip. We are glad we were able to go and being able to see so many of our family, but because of the weather anxiety, we probably won’t make the trip in the winter again. (Airplanes with have to do instead of cars - at least in the winter) Summer trips should be fine from now on. That way, when we are in Oregon, we will be able to see family in Eugene as well.

Getting back to normal takes a few days, especially because Rachel got sick the day before we got home and was still sick when we got here, and then JJ got something Saturday afternoon that lasted all night so she was unable to go to church on Sunday so just Claire and I went. I was able to get everything ready for the new semester done on Friday, and then on Monday, of my classes began and everything went fine. Breaks are nice, but I also like going back to work to get back into a routine.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. We love you all!

Paul & J.J.