We've had a spirited discussion about the new name for our family letter and have named it The Highlander - since we live in Highland Utah now. Other notable options we discussed were: The Utards, The Packer Post, The Highland Herald and we decided that The Highlander was best.
We moved down here in June and rented a home while we finalized the sale of our home in Greenleaf. It finally closed around mid July to a family from Arizona with 5 children. They are remodeling the home and Caleb Doty (my Brother-in-law) is doing the remodel.
As many of you may know we had a family reunion in Kirtland Ohio that we combined with a church history tour. We had purchased a Motorhome last year off of eBay with the plan to take it on this trip. I ended up selling it to ZAGG this past spring and they were going to have us combine some marketing stops with our trip and they would have paid for our gas. Unfortunately I messed that up. We wanted to film a YouTube commercial about some recent breakthroughs we've experienced as a company and had a bit of an unexpected outcome that made using our motorhome difficult. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Given the fact that this was filmed one week to the day before we were supposed to leave we had to do some last minute changes. We ended up flying to Chicago and renting a minivan. We went to Kirtland and Palmyra but skipped Nauvoo and Missouri. We had a wonderful time visiting with family, seeing church history and we were able to have Emma's baptism in Kirtland with all of my family present. My mother shared her testimony at the baptism and we really enjoyed hearing that from her.
In June my father passed away and during this trip my mother had a type of stroke. She is actually still in Cleveland after going through some therapy to regain her memory and abilities. It was a blessing that my brother and his family have been there for her to really help her out. We are hoping that she will be able to travel home to Idaho in the next week or two and that we will be able to go up and visit her. It has been a rough couple of months for her.
The kids love our new neighborhood and have made a bunch of new friends. Emma and Jarom didn't waste any time making dozens of friends - Hannah and Logan took a bit more time since they are not quite as "outgoing" and were more content to enjoy time curled up with a good book. They both went to Girls Camp for Church about a week after we came back from our trip back east - I think that really helped them both make some good friends.
Logan has a part time job at a snow cone shop - funny thing is that was my first job!! She is excited for school and has registered for her classes. She is taking Honors English and so she is working on homework that she has to have done before next week when school starts. She has also studied for her learning permit so she can start taking driver's ed in school. Wow, I can't believe my little girl is going to be driving.
Jarom is loving having so many friends - and really has quite a crew of fun boys that he hangs out with. Football started 2 weeks ago. It started with tryouts for A or B teams. Here they don't split by heavy weight and light weight like they do in Idaho - instead it is simply one A team and two B teams. He has never had to compete with kids that were so big and good. It was humbling for him - but I'm proud of him for making the A team anyway. He isn't one of the starters at this point - and he's going to have to work hard to fight for playing time. The offensive line averages 180 pounds (8th grade!!!) he has a 220 pound Samoan kid that is 6 foot 1 inch and can really move. He's got a 6 foot 3, 195 pound kid as well that plays tackle. Things are definitely more competitive here - all the kids on his team have private coaching in martial arts, go to speed and agility training, have done football camps for years and it's serious stuff. The head coach is Jason Buck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Hannah is so excited to be in 7th grade. She has a locker that she will have to stand on her books to open (she's so cute). Actually this will be the first time for all of our kids to have a locker since the Charter School they went to didn't have lockers. One of the things Hannah is excited about is taking Orchestra. We rented a violin for her yesterday. Actually she is excited about a lot of her classes, creative writing, art, Orchestra etc. We also flew Hannah's best friend from Idaho here for a week. Claire Lugar is the friend and she and Hannah are like two little peas in a pod. They like all the same things and enjoy playing American Girl dolls together.
Emma has really enjoyed running around with her friends. We've got to get her riding a bike though. All of her friends can ride bikes - and she just rides a scooter around. Because we lived in the country it is just harder to learn to ride a bike on a gravel road. Unfortunately she is really not very motivated because she can ride so fast on her scooter that she doesn't feel like she's being left behind. She and Hannah are sharing a room and love to play together. It is good for both of them to learn to share space and time with each other.
Lareen went back up to Idaho to get her last surgery on her leg. She was gone the same week the girls went to Girls Camp. She took Emma with her and I had Jarom visit with cousins while I worked. It worked out good and Lareen is feeling a bit better now after a couple of weeks of icing her leg. What was really great was the fact that a new friend that she has made down here (April Widmer) went with her to help her drive back. April and Lareen have really become great friends and April has a lot of health experience and knowledge that Lareen has really enjoyed gleaning from her.
My job is going really well - ZAGG is going great. We have been breaking all sorts of sales records and will be posting some really incredible sales results from July thanks to the release of the new Apple iPhone 3G.
Most of all we are grateful. We have felt that this move has been a blessing for our family but we certainly miss our Idaho friends.
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