November 08 Highland Post

Dear friends and family,

It snowed a number of inches today in Utah... a reminder that we are approx 3000 feet higher in elevation than we were in Greenleaf. The ski season is coming - and we are thinking we'd like to try doing a bit more of that as a family than we have done in the past. We've done the school ski trips - and not much else. I think we may try to take advantage of being here in Utah where skiing is available up every canyon.

October went by really quick. The kids had a break from school and we were able to go with the other executives of ZAGG on an executive retreat to Disneyland for 4 days. It was so much fun. It is fun to be a part of a company where the executives are all family oriented and this is the type of thing we'd prefer to do. Loved it, had a great time, stayed right at Disneyland. We also took a break from Disney the one day and hung out at the beach and let the kids play in the sand and surf and catch hermit crabs (a favorite of our kids).

School is going great for the kids - they really enjoy regular public school, lockers, changing classes, more options for friends and not such tough homework.

Jarom turned 14!! He's so excited to go to church dances now. He's got a pretty big crush on a girl that we go to church with, but she is only 13 so he's going to have to wait a year before he can dance with her at the Stake Dances, but he's danced with her at a neighborhood dance and a school Halloween dance.

Hannah is playing the violin and has had a concert. She is so cute playing the violin and has really picked it up well. Actually she and Jarom have had concerts - he's in a boys choir.

One big deal is that we have started doing Geneology. I can't believe it - we're actually finally doing some. Our Stake and Ward here are really encouraging the youth to get involved so they've called some of them to be Family Search Indexing (FSI) Specialists. FSI is where you log into a web server, download scanned census records and type in the information. It is like a puzzle. Hannah was called as an FSI specialist and has done a couple of hundred names and has taught the rest of the family Monday night for Family Home Evening. We set a goal to finish 10 batches or 500 names by the following Monday and we'll have a movie and ice-cream shake night if we do. It has been great. Instead of playing video games or watching mindless TV we've all been sitting with our 3 laptops and doing FSI together and laughing about how hard it is to read some of the handwriting and some of the funny names we end up with. It has been awesome. I think we've done around 300 so far - so we're well on our way to our goal. Hannah alone needs to do 500 before Christmas and is doing great. She really knows her stuff and will be training the other 12 and 13 year old girls. Really a cool thing.

Anyway, we are happy, healthy and enjoying Utah.

Love, The Packers