I have really slacked off in writing my family letters. Things get busy and I find other things to fill up my time with. A new year has started and I am committed to do better. I will give a little summary of what the kids were up to the last couple of months.
Ruth has worked hard to get her drivers license. It was a bit tedious to log 50 hours of drive time but we did it. Last week she took the driving test and we hope to get the papers back from the driving school today or tomorrow. Then we can go get her license! She is excited and also anxious to be driving on her own. Ruth has enjoyed doing things with friends. She likes to go out to eat with friends and has done that a couple of times in the last few weeks. On January 1st she went with some friends to an escape room and loved it. Ruth worked hard in school last semester. She earned excellent grades, even with her hard AP classes. She is working hard to prepare for college and is excited and nervous that it is getting closer. She is working a few more hours a week at Kumon by going in early Saturday to help in the office. She likes doing that. She also babysits once in a while for the Rack family. They pay her well and she enjoys the kids. For the new years she went to a Stake dance that she helped plan. She is on the Stake Youth Council and was involved with planning the dance and activities for the kids. She enjoys being involved with that. They are working on planning a Pioneer Trek for this summer. She also needs to demonstrate Pioneer dress at the fireside for it in a few weeks. We have worked on making her a dress and bonnet. She has also started going to Stake Youth Camp Leader meetings and is excited about camp this summer. I think it is great they involve the youth in planning their activities. This fall Ruth earned her Young Women Recognition award. She worked hard to get it done before the program changed this year. Ruth is happy and doing well and I am proud of her and all she is achieving.
Ruth and I in our matching pajamas
Ruth dressed up for the new years eve dance,
they needed to dress up from an older decade.
Ruth at Christmas time
Andrew has been busy this fall too. He worked hard with being in marching band. They did well with their fall competitions. Andrew had fun playing with them and being involved. It was nice when the rehearsals dropped back and it wasn’t so demanding. With all of that going on Andrew was also pushing to finishing his Eagle Scout Rank. He was able to do the last five merit badges in just two months. He also helped to organize a couple of camping trips so he could finish the camping merit badge. Then he passed his Board of Review in December. We will be doing a Court of Honor this month to honor him and four other boys in the Troop who reached Eagle this fall. I am proud of him and his hard work. With all of those things going on he managed to also have straight A’s his first semester of high school. Andrew also has looked for opportunities to earn money. He did some yard work for Brother Phillips in our ward for a few Saturdays. He also helped the Jensen’s with their animals over Thanksgiving break and Christmas break. He enjoyed going to the youth dance on the 31st and enjoys being with his friends. Andrew has worked on his n-scale train layout more the last month, now that band and scouts have slowed down. He enjoys doing the artistic work on it. He works hard at all he puts his mind to do.
Andrew in the band
Andrew working on his train and in his scout uniform
Andrew in the church program and on Christmas morning
Making gingerbread houses and ready to go to the
new years eve dance
Spencer enjoyed doing the scouting activities and camping with the boys during the fall. He decided to not worry about getting requirements done and finishing ranks. He just enjoyed the activities. Spencer had fun with Halloween. He carved a large pumpkin to fit over his head and he wore that as his costume. It got a little heavy when he went out trick-o-treating and Neal helped him carry his pumpkin head between houses, but he had fun with it. They stayed out a long time gathering candy. They found that since it was a cold night and the longer they stayed out the more candy they got at each house. Spencer weighed his candy at the end and had over 13 pounds! Spencer is enjoying Lego building. He is amazing at what he can figure out with making things. He is creative and understands how things work. He loves working with the Technic Lego and has made some awesome trucks and designs. He had to do a science project this fall and he did a project with Lego cars and how gears effect the drive. I didn’t see the whole thing, so I can’t explain it all. Spencer enjoys band. He is in his second year of playing saxophone. Yesterday he told me that they had new chair assignments related to tests they did before Christmas break and he was placed as first chair, he was happy with that. We had some repair work done on his sax and it has helped him to play better. He also does an after school jazz band class. He enjoys that too and did well with a solo he played at the jazz band concert. He also had straight A’s last semester and is working hard at doing good things.
Spencer at a band concert. The pumpkin head Spencer.
Spencer and his candy.
Spencer wanted a long Santa hat and we made this one together.
Spencer playing Joseph at the church program.
Spencer with his creative house.
Spencer opening gifts at Christmas. With Grandma making his
gingerbread house.
Caleb has gotten into basketball. He is my first child who has asked to watch sports. Right now he is watching a BYU basketball game on BYUTV. He likes that he can watch some ball on his early day out. He likes to play basketball at recess every day. Caleb enjoys school, I wonder sometimes if it is for the social aspect more than anything. He enjoyed doing Cub Scouts this fall. We went on a fun hike in November with the boys. Caleb did a few things at home with me and was able to finish the requirements for his Bear Rank. It was a good way to end his time in scouts. I also ended my time with being a den leader/acting committee chair. Caleb likes making up songs on the piano. He figures out little rhythms and melodies and enjoys playing them. He isn’t always happy about doing lessons and learning songs from books like I have him do, but he learns them fast and does well musically. For the PTA Reflections program this year he decided to submit one of his songs. We discovered that elementary school kids don’t need to submit written music any more and this made it easy for him to record a song and not worry about writing it out. (I remember they did need to a written score before because Ruth had to do it when she did a song in elementary school.) In December we attended an awards ceremony for Reflections and found that Caleb earned first place in the Music division. His entry will go on to State competition. Pretty exciting for a budding musician. Caleb loves playing board games and always is asking people to play with him. The other kids are often too busy with school work and activities, so I often play games with him. He is doing well in school and loves his teachers.
Caleb pinning his Bear Rank parent pin on me.
Caleb at Christmas time
With all the things the kids are doing I stay busy supporting them. I also have had time to help at the schools with the library and book fairs. I enjoy going to Relief Society activities and book club nights. Neal, Ruth, Andrew and I have enjoyed participating in the ward choir. It is a fun way to make friends and be involved in the ward. I have been listening to audio books more and enjoy the stories. We decided to stay home for Thanksgiving this year. The fun part was that we woke up that morning to six inches of snow. I was glad we hadn’t traveled anywhere. We had fun playing in the snow in the yard and having a quiet week end at home.
Playing in the snow on Thanksgiving
We enjoyed going to the Isakson’s Christmas party and the wedding reception for Rachel Cherry. We also had a nice ward Christmas party where Andrew played the part of Samuel the Lamanite teaching the people about Christ’s coming and Spencer played the part of Joseph. The youth did a great job with the Christmas program they did. For Christmas this year we stayed home and Grandma Hubbard came to us! We had a nice visit with her for about ten days. Neal also took two weeks off work and it was nice to have him around. We played lots of games, often initiated by Caleb. We did lots of arts and crafts. The boys tried doing some short story movies and Spencer did a cross stitch project, Ruth worked on sewing her pioneer dress, Spencer made a pajama top, I made pajamas for Ruth and I, Andrew made a wooden cart, etc. It seems like there is always a project going on. The boys like bike riding and learning how to maintain their bikes. Last week Neal took the three boys to the other side of Sandia mountain and played in the snow. We don’t have much snow on the west side of the mountain, but they found areas where there was multiple feet of snow to play in.
We got a couch for Christmas and the kids are enjoying it.
Neal got a Mountain man jacket for Christmas, something
he has wanted and he loves it.
We enjoyed visiting a Muppet exhibit at the museum.
Yesterday the kids went back to school. I am tired. I guess I need to get use to the school schedule again. The kids are happy to be back in a schedule and seeing their friends again. Today I went to a Christmas lunch party for the library volunteers. Things got busy before the break and we had to push our party time to January. It was nice to visit with the other volunteers who came and be a part of something. We are busy getting the Eagle Court of Honor planned and ready for Andrew and his friends. It seems like there is aways something to work on. We think about our family often and wish you all the best for this new year.
