April 09 Highland Post

Dear friends and family,

We just got back from Idaho for a quick trip during our spring break. ZAGG sponsored a SnowBoard competition in the BSU football stadium parking lot so we brought the ZAGGbus up. It was fun and successful, and the kids enjoy the extra elbow room available when riding in the ZAGGbus compared to the minivan.

I'll start with Emma - she has a palate seperator in her mouth to help spread her teeth and limit her need for braces in the future. She has had it for a couple of weeks now and is doing quite well. Her mouth hurt for a bit but she was pretty brave. Her exciting news is that she is going to be the lead in her school play of "Little Red Riding Hood" - she will be "Red". The play will be sometime in May and she is very excited about it.

Hannah has braces on the top of her mouth and will be getting them on the bottom in another week or so. It is pretty funny because all of her friends have braces - so she is getting them right at the right time. She is doing well in school and enjoying orchestra. Her last orchestra concert will hopefully be the week of Emma's concert - but not the same night. Grandma Linda might come down so we are hoping things coincide nicely.

Jarom started Baseball and is on the American Fork Yankees. He's excited to play since he missed last year. It was simply too much for Lareen and since we knew we would be moving part way into the season it just made sense to skip it last year. He's pretty excited that he has been hitting well right out of the blocks this year since he was worried he'd loose a bit having missed last season. He's started another growth spurt lately and we can tell the hormones are starting to "change some things" in him.

Logan also got braces - so all the girls have had some Orthodontist time this past month. Logan also has them only on top for the time being and will get the bottom in a week or so - right after Prom. Yes, she's going to Prom and so we got her a Prom dress last Saturday and she's pretty excited to wear her pink prom dress with some pink converse all-stars. She isn't a "high heel" type of girl but her date is shorter than her so she definitely wanted to do something different - and Converse All-Stars are definitely different.

Lareen is enjoying life and doing really well. She is serving in the Nursery and as the Ward Activities Chairperson and already knows more about more people in the ward than people who've lived here for years... not in a gossipy way, but in a true charitable "Lareen" type of way. She is great - and really loves people and they LOVE her. This is part of the reason that we really feel like we don't want to move from this little neighborhood and ward. Sure we could find another nice place, but finding friends, and neighbors as good as we have is not common and we feel like we'd be stupid to leave it. So - we've just put an offer on another home in our neighborhood. If you remember we did this once already and the bank didn't accept our offer (short sale) so we hope this time will work out. If not we'll keep renting until the right deal comes along.

I'm loving work and serving with the 12 to 13 year old boys. I'm having a blast in both assignments. The family is doing well and we feel very blessed at this time with all that is going on around us. Listening to our beloved Church leadership encourage us to do better and remind us of what is truly important during these tough times was very nice. We are thankful. We have truly been blessed.

Love,
Brian, Lareen, Logan, Jarom, Hannah and Emma Packer