Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

It's hard to believe another year has come and gone. I love this time of year though, because I love starting over. I guess for me it brings new hope of things I can accomplish. I wrote out all my resolutions yesterday, and it took an entire page. I am excited to get started on it. Reading the Book of Mormon again is at the top of the list, along with losing ten pounds. I keep that one on there every year, just for the fun of it.  

We threw a last minutes New Year's Party together. Ivan and Jenn, Nichole, Mike and Rebecca Johnson and Natalie and all their kids came, along with Hunter Lundy. We ate and played games. At midnight, we went outside and lit a bunch of fireworks, along with lots of others in town, so it pretty much looked like the Fourth of July. When we ran out explosives, we came back inside to play another game. We heard a knock on the window, so we opened the blinds, only to find our Christmas tree in the middle of the circle, completely engulfed in flames. There was your little brother standing nearby with an enormous grin and a lighter. We were all amazed to see how quickly it went up in smoke, seriously, less than a minute and there was nothing left but the trunk. It was quite amazing!

Grandpa Wise gave Taylor his old snowmobile. Of course it doesn't work, so he now has a project to keep him busy. I'm grateful for that! Hopefully he can get it going before we have our first snowfall of the season. It has been the driest year I can remember, not to mention how warm it has been. I was outside on New Year's Eve, mowing the lawn, well, actually vacuuming up the leaves with the lawn mower, but still, I don't think I've ever been able to do that before. 

 I'm working at Spanky's again today while your dad is home with the kids. Only time will tell what mischief they will get into. :)

Enjoy your week! We sure do love you!

Mom




Hello,

It has been a great past couple of days. We've had a lot of cool stuff happen. We had a lot of appointments cancel again, but we had some great opportunities. Last Thursday we got to help with a service project. There's a man in our ward who has recently just started coming back to church. He has had a lot of problems in his life, and things have been really rough for him, but he's received a lot of help from the ward. A few weeks ago he found out he had cancer and now he's in the hospital getting treatment for it. He's been in the hospital a lot longer than expected. His trailer is a mess and in desperate need of repairs. Someone started up a service project to get his house back into shape for him before he got home. The ward has been a huge help. They've had so many people show up to help that they had to start turning them away. They've put in over one hundred hours of service there. We got to help for a few hours and it was great. I love how much this ward really cares about him and wants to help him out. It reminded me of what the Christmas season is really about. 

We went to have New Years dinner with the Hansen family. They moved out here a few years ago. They used to live in Tooele, so I asked them if they knew Mark and Ruth. Turns out they used to live in their ward! They knew them really well. Sister Hansen wanted me to ask Cody about his worst babysitting job ever. Haha. 

We finally got some snow last night. When we got done with dinner we went outside and there were about two inches on the road. It was Elder Long's first time driving in the snow, so that was pretty fun. 

Tell the Oleas thanks for the package of Christmas goodies. We really enjoyed it.

How did the drifting in the new car go?


Love you, 

Jared