8 December 2019

 Dear family,

   Time keeps flying by!  Thanksgiving is over and Christmas isn't far away! Even Stephen's mission is going much faster than I thought it would, almost a year now. Gran and I will be watching the First Presidency Christmas devotional in a few minutes.  That's always a good one. Dad is between meetings and spending the weekend in Meridian. Most of the Christmas packages are wrapped and on the way to your houses . . . just a few more to go!  

   I got a message from the Stake Clerk today, inviting my whole presidency to meet with the Stake Presidency this Tuesday evening at 7:30.  This means we'll be getting released soon. I'm relieved in some ways, but a little sad too. On to knew challenges, I guess. 

   Two photos to share with you.  One is a suburban I parked next to at work last week. I think it belongs to a relative of Dad's cousin, DeRay.  And the other is a picture my cousin, Kim Sullivan sent me in an email the other day. It's Grandmama Templin's recipe for cereal mix, or Nuts and Bolts, as she called it.  It is from her own recipe collection, that's the typeface I always connect with letters from her. I always use butter instead of margarine, but other than that it's the same.  Enjoy!

   Love you, each one!  

   Mom/Johanna/Nana

Hi Guys!

Whew, this was kind of a different week. I'm glad to start a new one next week. 

This was the week back to school after Thanksgiving break, but Noah and Spencer started the week by getting sick. I hope we didn't share too much with everyone in Meridian! Dixie, how is Stella?? Throughout the week, every kid here missed at least half a day of school because they were sick. Annie missed the least, half a day. Ellen and Naomi each missed one day, Spencer missed two, and Noah missed the most. All week! It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't already missed 4 out of 5 days of the week before Thanksgiving break! Poor kid is going to have a bit of catching up to do. And they were totally different sicknesses too! Before Thanksgiving it was a weird stomach thing and this week was a fever/sore throat/cough thing. But tomorrow, everyone is going back to school! We still have a couple of sniffles hanging on, but really nothing bad.

On Wednesday for mutual, the girls helped set up for the Christmas Community Festival at the church. It was really nice. We went to the concert this afternoon and it was pretty cool. Most of the people participating, including the opening and closing prayers, were from other churches or community groups. They only LDS people on the program were the organist and chorister for the two congregational songs and President Cook welcoming and then ending the concert. There were a handful of LDS members in some of the community groups, but nothing exclusively LDS. I thought it was really neat. 

Friday afternoon James went bowling with his group from work to celebrate the release of their new product. He was not super excited about going, but said he actually had a good time! While he was bowling, Ellen, Naomi, Spencer and I went to help clean the church. Then we drove over to Pullman and met James at one of his co-worker's houses for a Christmas party. Annie marched in the Christmas parade in Moscow. And Noah stayed home by himself and watched Star Wars. As you can see, we still don't have any snow. 

Yesterday was busy. A family in our ward, the Schmucks, had a baby last month but she had a super rare brain disease and ended up passing away after three weeks. Her funeral was yesterday and it was very sweet but also emotional. I spent most of the day at the Blaine St. building (our building was totally occupied by the Christmas Festival) for that and the luncheon afterwards. Dad, Ellen, Naomi, and Spencer went with our friends, the Foulgers, to get our Christmas tree! Yay! Ellen drove the whole way there and back. She's getting super close to being able to get her license. Noah was still not feeling super great, so he stayed home. Annie went to the funeral then headed back home to get some homework done. I got home just a few minutes before Dad and the kids got back with the tree. 

Today we went to church in Troy to listen to Whitney Cook speak. It was so fun to see her again! She just got home from serving her mission in Manchester England. It sure went fast for us! 

We decorated the tree and put up the other Christmas decorations after church. 

Bathroom update! The tub is gone! James and I carried it out, just the two of us. It was a lot lighter than we were expecting it to be. We are for sure putting in a walk in shower. Yay!!!

James and Spencer got all the linoleum and the particle board it was stuck to out. It was quite a job! So now we are down to just a layer of plywood for the floor. Except where the toilet is. We're leaving that in as long as possible! Being down to one shower is bad enough, being down to just one toilet is sounding a little scary!

Next James will clean up and patch the walls, except that wall under the window will actually be tiled, then I'll paint, then he'll put in the new vanity, sink, and mirror and lay backer board and build the shower, then I'll tile. He says hopefully it will be done before Stephen gets home. Haha! I hope so too! Actually I'm pretty impressed with the progress he's made so far. He took the pickup full of stuff, including the tub, to the dump on Thursday. I'm trying to figure out what color paint and what tile to pick. The only thing I know for sure right now is that the shower will have a flat pebble floor, but I don't know what color yet. Maybe this one? 

But I also really like this one...

I'm leaning towards the second one, but I really need to pick out the rest of the tile for the walls and floor before I decide for sure.

I think that's about it. We love you all so much!!!

Love,

Aimee