September Days

    I haven’t written because I don’t know what to write. We are into our school time routines. The weather is nice and I enjoy the cooler temperatures. We got our computer back and thankfully were able to get things restored on it.

    Ruth is very busy with school work. She has some hard classes this year. She is really enjoying her AP Psychology class. She likes learning about the workings of the brain and what makes humans tick.  She is still working at the Kumon center. She works on Tuesdays after school and Saturdays. She is busy with keeping up with friends too. Her good friend, Brianna, moved from our ward over the summer and that was a hard transition. Brianna still lives in the area and the girls are both so busy with school they have a hard time getting together. The last few weeks they have met up on Thursday afternoons for a bit, in-between everything. Ruth is also working at her driving skills. We let her drive as often as we can, but find it hard to find opportunities with her busy schedule. Last Sunday I took a drive with her around to the other side of the mountain and it was nice to spend a little time together. Her driving is getting better but we still have a ways to go to log 50 hours of drive time before she gets her Provisional license.

Ruth with a friend at our ward chili dinner

    Andrew is very busy too. Marching band has been demanding on his time. He goes to school early every morning, leaving our house at 6:00. He has marching band before school and many days has things with band in the afternoon. The Friday evening football games have been fun but tiring. It is hard to go from 6am to 10pm on a Friday. Then to get up on Saturday for rehearsals or last week a car wash to earn money. He is enjoying it though. He is keeping up with his school work too. Andrew also finds time to do things in the yard. He is harvesting his peppers, and they keep coming. He decided to try drying some and strung them up in the garage. He likes to explore and look at things. Recently he caught a small scorpion and put it in a jar to observe. He is working on his scouting. Last week at a court of honor he received four merit badges he had finished. Today we plan on getting some signatures on his Eagle project to get it finalized. (We are bit slow in getting that done because of our computer problems.) This week end Andrew, Spencer and Neal will go on a camping trip with the boy scout troop.

   Spencer is enjoying school. It is fun that he comes home with a smile most days. He enjoys having classes with his friend Jonathan. They always work together when they can. Often I get a phone call after school from Spencer saying he is at Jonathan’s house and they will be doing homework together. I think they also have lots of fun. Last week I went to pick him up from Jonathan’s home and I could hear them as I approached the house. Spencer was playing his saxophone and Jonathan had a trumpet out. It was rather loud. I am glad he has such a good friend. I went to the middle school for a parent night and was able to meet all his teachers. He is a hard worker and does well in his classes.

Spencer being silly with pillows stuffed up his shirt, eating a brownie

    Caleb is healing well from his accident. He does have some scars but I am hopeful they will lighten up as time goes by. He went about two weeks without riding his bike to school but then one morning he said he wanted to ride again. I am glad he wasn’t afraid to get back on. He loves bike riding and also playing basketball. He is always talking about his game he had at recess. He has so many friends it is hard to keep up with them all, he is a social kid. He loves math. Right now he is working on a math interactive website he uses at school and wanted to log into at home. He is also working on writing stories on the computer. He loves to read and goes through books pretty quickly. He likes making up songs on the piano, I still have to work with and encourage him with his lesson material. He is quick to learn and is doing well with music. A couple of weeks ago Neal took Caleb to the school for an evening activity that the Sandia Labs sponsored. It was “math night” and they had all sorts of activities and games to do that involved math. They both enjoyed going. Caleb enjoys going to cub scouts. Last week at Pack Meeting he earned his Religious Knot and some other awards. I think his biggest reason for enjoying it is being with his friends and hopefully shooting a few hoops if they gym is open.

Caleb at his school jog-a-thon to earn money for the school

    Neal and I went to a Family Strong Conference together last Saturday. It was a nice day. It was a conference organized and sponsored by our church and the Catholic church. They had some great speakers. The key note speaker was Dr. Foster Cline. He wrote the books with “love and logic” themes. He was entertaining to listen to and gave me some things to think about with relationships and parenting. It was nice to spend the day with Neal and talk about things we were hearing. I am glad that we took the time to go. I have enjoyed reading and listening to books. I went to a book club last night and enjoyed the discussion. I am in two book clubs right now, so I always have plenty to read. I am also working on a Christmas quilt. I have it ready to be quilted, I plan to start working on that during General Conference next week. I have worked on pictures and working on photo books on the computer. I seem to find time for a few things each week. Things are also busy trying to keep with with the family activity.

    Neal wanted to get some firewood. We haven’t done much with our fireplace here because we haven’t had a source of wood to burn like we did in Texas. At our Texas house Neal was taking out old trees and we had a constant supply of wood to burn. Neal bought a pass from the Forest service to collect wood. It has to be down wood, no cutting down trees. But, he has enjoyed going up into the mountain were he can collect it and bringing back loads. He has done it for the last few Fridays. (He has been taking some days off to catch up on his vacation time.) The old chain saw is working great. Now we have a huge pile of wood to burn this winter and many years to come. I don’t see how we could burn it all in one year. Neal is riding his bike to work twice a week. It is a good work out for him. He has also joined a biking group here with friends from our ward. He went on a long ride a few weeks ago with them. I think it was about 77 miles. He rode from our house, around Sandia peek to the road on the east side of the mountain and then rode up the road to the summit of the peek, and then back home. He does that on his road bike, he hasn’t done much mountain biking recently. 

   Well, I guess I found things to write about. We are enjoying family life and the busy time of it. I am thankful for a good life.

The Start of School

I want to keep caught up on writing so I will try doing it today. First off, our computer is having problems so I don’t have access to my pictures. Sorry in advance that I can’t share pictures of all the fun things going on. Hopefully we can get everything working again and I can enjoy working on my picture projects again, as well as sharing them with you.

The kids are getting into their school routines. They have completed three weeks of school now. Ruth and Andrew have an early start to their day. Ruth goes to seminary that starts at 5:50 Monday through Thursday. She has Friday mornings off. Andrew goes to the high school for band, that starts at 6:30. He leaves about 6:00 every morning. Andrew is doing an afternoon seminary class that meets at 4:00.  I am glad they have option for the kids involved with before school extracurricular activities. Most mornings Ruth, Andrew and Neal, who gives Ruth a ride to the church, are gone before the younger boys even wake up. I get up early to help them get off, so I see them. Their classes are going well. Ruth is already very busy with homework. She is taking three AP classes and one honors class. She also has a fun class of creative writing. She is enjoying her new French teacher that the school hired over the summer. Andrew is keeping up with things well in his classes, getting used to high school and keeping up with band commitments. He is enjoying being in the band and enjoys jazz band too. He is working hard and wishes he could get more sleep. Spencer is doing well with school. He likes that he has multiple classes with his friend, Jonathan Merrill. Spencer decided to join the beginning jazz band, they meet after school on Tuesday and Thursdays. He said that it is a fun class. Caleb loves school. He enjoys learning and being with his friends. 

I was able to go to the elementary school and high school parent open house nights. I enjoyed meeting some of the teachers and seeing more of what happens at their schools. The middle school will have theirs next week, then I will get to see Spencer’s classes. 

I have enjoyed starting up helping in the elementary school library again this year. It is nice to feel I can contribute to the school. I enjoyed going to a baby shower for two ladies in my ward, both were having their first baby and that made it fun. They are so excited about it. Neal and I also went to a wedding reception for a families son in our ward. We didn’t know the bride and groom very well, but we know the groom’s parents and it was nice to support them. I enjoyed going to a book club last night. I am thankful for good books.

Other activities that we did this month involved supporting the band. Andrew is playing field shows at the football games. Neal attended one game that was held on a Thursday evening. This last Saturday Ruth and I went to a game together. It was Ruth’s first football game, I think she enjoyed it. I talked her through a lot of the game so she would understand what was going on. I know what I know from attending BYU football games with Doug, that was a long time ago! It was fun to watch the band and they are doing a good job. They are still working on finishing up their whole routine that will be performed in October at band competitions. We also helped with a flea market to raise money for the band. The day of the flea market the band marched around the neighborhood streets playing. It was fun to watch them go by. 

I think a big event this month was that Caleb had a bike accident. At least it was big for Caleb and me. It was two weeks ago. He was riding his bike home from school. He was carrying a basket ball in a bag on his handlebars and we believe this caused an imbalance as he curved around the corner onto our street. He was going fast and lost control. It was pretty sad. He had a friend following him home, she wanted to ask if he could come over to play, but instead she ran and got me. I was glad he had a friend to help. He was pretty cut up and I had to take him to an urgent care. He got cleaned up and got stitches on his face and leg. He was swollen and sore for a few days. He didn’t want to miss school and was determined to go. But, he was also very worried about how kids would react to him. He didn’t like the stares and questions, but over all the kids were kind to him and worried about their friend. He is doing so well at healing. I can tell he is a healthy boy. He got his stitches out last week and they looked great. Now all the sores are mostly healed, only the deepest “road rash” places have scabs. I am thankful he didn’t break any bones or knock out teeth! The same day as the crash we had a cub scout activity about bike safety. I went to it because of my responsibilities in cub scouts and also took a minute to tell the boys how important it is to wear a helmet, it helped Caleb. Also, don’t try to carry things on the handlebars, it doesn’t work well.

I was sad to hear that my uncle Kenneth Anderson passed away on Monday. I have many good memories of him. I hope all who might be traveling to the funeral will be safe and know that I will be thinking of them. I don’t feel like I can travel at this time. 

Our iMac stopped working on the first week of school. Neal was in California on a business trip. The kids were coming home each day from school needing a computer to do homework. Thankfully we were able to manage for a week with just the iPad to get the work done. Ruth was able to go into the school computer lab to print things she needed. Then we decided to buy a chromebook that was a good deal at Costco. It has been very handy for the internet access it gives us. The kids can do their homework now easily, since most of what they need is is web based. I know it is a simple computer but it works great for the kids. We have tried getting our computer repaired but it is looking like it might really be out of commission. It is always hard when things break and you need to fix or replace them. I hope we can get things going better with that soon. I am thankful we have back ups of our stuff. 

Well, I am grateful for the good things in life. I am thankful for the temple close by and that I can go easier now that the kids are back in school. Life is busy but good.


I was quick to finish this letter and realized I forgot an important event, Spencer’s 12th birthday! He was so excited for this birthday. He was all smiles all day long. It was fun to see his excitement. He had his traditional peanut butter pie as his dessert of choice. He was excited to get Lego kits to work on. He also got a special gift from Grandma Hubbard. It is a giant hex bug. She told us that Grandpa had worked on putting it together and playing with it some before he passed away. She thought Spencer would enjoy it since he likes robotic things. He loves it. I am thankful for our Spencer!