We just got home from the 1st Presidency’s Christmas Devotional. Elder Uchtdorf shared a story about a man from Africa who got a wheelchair from the LDS missionaries, and was so grateful. It was a cool story, and a great start to the Christmas Season. This week for family home evening, we made a gingerbread nativity. Each of us was assigned to make one character or type of characters (I had shepherds and sheep). Drew and mom were supposed to team up for Mary, but Drew kind of took over. She ended up looking a lot like sea turtle roadkill. We probably won’t send a picture, as it’s probably sacrilegious.
Today was fast Sunday, so the newsletter went out with paragraphs from 3 of your letters. Your letters were so short, we had to splice all 3 together to fill the space :) Just kidding. We just chose the most representative paragraphs. Lots of people stopped us to say how much they enjoyed reading. Keep it up.
DREW: Drew wants you to know we’re going to have a bunch of presents. Paul Hill’s great-grandson, Peter (age 3), moved into the ward. Paul moved to Ririe with his daughter, so his granddaughter and her husband from Washington moved into his house. So now Drew has a new friend. Drew has also been giving hugs from the advent calendar, but he can’t get a treat for hugging you, so we’ll have to leave that one in the drawer until you get back.
DAVIS: Davis was sent to bed early for being a pain to his mother. You’re probably missing that. On the bright side, he is speaking Chinese in public (on occasion), which is a significant shift.
TAD: Tad would like to get a new trombone this summer, and is hoping to fund the venture by raising 15 sheep. He and Brigham have big ideas, but are short on plans. We’ll see what comes of that. Tad, Porter and Pace have been making blow dart guns from drinking straws, finishing nails and q-tips. Porter made a trombone-themed blow dart gun, but Tad topped that with a mounted laser sighted, accurate up to 3 inches. Tad also claimed Grandpa Johnson’s anvil in the ‘great garage give-away’. Davis sleeps with stuffed animals. Tad sleeps with metal objects given to him by Johnson relatives. (Right now, he is trying to play pingpong with a bean bag).
SADIE: We have departed from our traditional “anything the kids made in school” Christmas Tree decorations this year. Sadie asked mom if they could color coordinate the ornaments, so the tree looks really fun this year. It has glass balls, blue and green mesh ribbon, white birds, white angels, and big green bloom looking flowers. It’s really pretty, and probably marks the beginning of a new era in our home where estrogen plays a larger role in our lives.
PACE: Tad Haight told Pace that it looked like he had a "bouffant” going. Pace said, “what’s a bouffant” so Tad Googled pictures of the women’s hairstyle from the 60’s, and told Pace, some of them made it hard to walk through a doorway. We give Pace a hard time about his vertical approach to styling his hair. Pace has Mr. Johnson in school, who remembers having you in class. He said you’re a “good kid”. It turns out Abby Nelson is Pace’s seminary companion, and she told him that on Black Friday she took Harrison Moon (dressed in a bear costume) to terrorize the people camped in tents outside the stores in Idaho Falls. Good times. Probably best to avoid the Cabela’s crowd.
PORTER: Porter went to winter ball with Olivia Gneiting (boy’s choice tee shirt dance). He teamed up with Colton, Harrison, Braden, Jacob and Zach to take their dates to watch a movie in the civil defense caves and sledding at the sand dunes. They were going to take their dates to the Grant 2nd Ward Christmas Party for dinner (does a date get cheaper?), but ran out of time. Later, while the other couples on the date built gingerbread houses, he and his date built a gingerbread arch. He’s hopeless, but did get his application in for the ISAS program (Idaho NASA Engineer Training). The Jeep has been vandalized. We’re not sure how long it’s been this way, but there is a BYU sticker on top of the Thule. We suspect Jared…
MOM: Mom finished a quilt from my old jeans and button-up shirts this week. It’s designed for outdoors and picnics. This week, we also called a plumber repair our outdoor faucet, which split when the water froze. It turns out, you’re supposed to remove hoses from the outdoor faucets before winter. Mom knows that now (I had put the hoses away once, but one of them snuck back to the house). That’s a little piece of helpful advice you can pass out to all of your new friends in Africa.
DAD: We mostly finished the cabinet in the Mud Room. A little hardware and some paint, and we will have doubled the value of our house. We’ve finally split Delorum from Pagoda Box. I felt the need to move on, and finally felt that the timing was right. Pagoda Box is nearly at a ‘break-even’ state, so we put everyone but Eric and I into that business, and we’ll start again. It felt like a prompting. We’ll see what comes of it. Thanks for your letters. Thanks for your friends. Thanks for being willing and worthy to serve.
This week’s advice: Look for examples of good missionaries in the scriptures (Son’s of Mosiah, Alma, Enoch, Nephi & Lehi, etc.), find the scriptures that detail why they were good, and learn from the best.
Let us know if you want longer, shorter, more spiritual, other? letters.
Love Dad
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