April 12, 2009

Dear Children,

HAPPY EASTER! We had a different Easter this year, more quiet than last year with an egg hunt including the neighborhood children, a visit from the grandchildren and the several March birthday celebrations since Easter landed in March last year. We had our Easter dinner this year on Saturday evening since Morty was visiting and his flight was this afternoon. We did enjoy a great Easter breakfast, at Morty’s request, and even a showing of chocolate eggs. Our Easter bunny outsmarted the retail world of See’s and picked up the highly sought after Mayfair eggs before they sold out, as is always the case each Easter. I am hording mine!

I hope that you all enjoyed the family fun of the holiday and also the gratitude for the reason that we celebrate, that we may all be resurrected and have the ability to live with God again if we will take advantage of the Atonement.

Shawn reported that Gregory was signed up for an egg hunt at a nearby park. Shawn and Aubrey “practiced” with Gregory at home beforehand so he would know what to do. Shawn said, “We weren’t going t send a slacker into the court!” Klaire went to an egg hunt at Adam’s school and, with her fireball personality, had an overflowing basket of eggs. Rebekah and Jenna’s Easter activity was cancelled due to a storm warning so they went down to Orem and colored eggs with Jenni Marchant and her children before they leave for California and then Viet Nam. They went to Uncle Jerry’s Easter Egg hunt in Alpine afterwards. Rebekah was most anxious about her Easter dress that she picked out at Costco this year. We hope to get some pictures.

Katie said the St Louis Easter Bunny left her an Easter Basket with lottery tickets in it; not the usual Easter Bunny to which we are accustomed! She started her day with stake conference. It was a satellite broadcasted meeting including many Midwestern states in which they heard from President Monson, Elder Oakes, Elder Snow and others. She joined the Underwood family for her Easter dinner. Adrianne was invited to Heidi and Bill’s for Easter dinner. This weekend Bill worked on a design for us to print our first yard sign so we can advertize our business while dad is working at a customer’s home. Bill says that he has other ideas to show us about which we are very excited to learn.

Also in Utah this weekend was Nate who planned to travel up there so he could train on Mt. Timpanogas with his friend Adam (a previous roommate from Portland) for a hike challenge that he wants to enter from his work. Their vendor, Jansport, sponsors an 8000 meter 24 hour challenge for all of their retailers. It is held in California on three separate peaks on the first Thursday of September. It is suppose to resemble the 40 mile hike up Mt. Everest. He plans to accomplish this goal and then get on a plane for Texas to be at BYU’s opening game against Oklahoma at the new Dallas Cowboy’s stadium. Morty asked us to go along to the BYU game. We would absolutely love to but, with business as slow as it has been, it would be irresponsible to add that extra to the already family travel commitments we have made. Unfortunately, if we feel more secure as it gets closer, it may be prohibitive to get tickets and a place to stay! Nate learned that it was not wise to hike Timp since the snow was so low for this time of year and the avalanche danger was relatively high. I appreciated knowing that he wasn’t going to hike it after all. He will have to do most of his training in Las Vegas.

It was fun to have Morty here. He helped me with my idea to Google the addresses onto a map of the single adults we are trying to visit. I hope I can remember what he showed me. He also helped me out with my iPod that I could have probably figured out by reading my “iPod for Dummies” book that Katie sent us for our anniversary. On Friday we had tamale pie at Grandma’s and then he went to the Blazer Laker game and loved all the action. He said it was VERY loud and crazy. On Saturday he searched the town for a Blazer playoff game shirt for Katie with no results. Now that G I Joe’s (Joe’s most recently) has been forced to liquidate, there is not a reliable local place to pick up Blazer merchandise except at the game. We had our Easter dinner and Morty went home with Grandma to hang out with her all evening and watch the Blazer game on a high definition TV. Dad and I went to the concert to which I have been looking forward since last fall, Ten Grands. It was the tickets that I gave Dad for Christmas. It was ten grand pianos on the same stage at the Schnitzer Concert Hall. It was SO good! Dad and I were so glad that we went.

Last Monday looked like our best chance to ski this week; we are trying to go once a week now. It was a typical spring ski day: lots of sun, skiing in sunglasses with just the shell coat layer unzipped and avoiding certain runs that the sun is hitting (as much as possible) so the snow was as firm as possible. The snow became very wet by mid afternoon since it was so unusually warm on the mountain. My skis felt VERY long that day as I tried to control them in the slush! Dad said the snow would make good snow cones. It was fun but also a lot of work.

Katie had a brush with snow the same day when she sat freezing at the opening day of the Cardinals baseball season in Busch Stadium. But it was worth every shiver to her to be there on opening day. Is there anyone in the entire city of St. Louis that loves the Cardinals more than Oregon-grown Katie? She is doubting how she ever stood living in a city without a major league baseball team!

Speaking of transplants, we had a nice visit with my cousin, Janice Maldonado and her daughter Taylor on Tuesday. They were in Portland and Eugene to check out the University of Oregon. Taylor is a senior at Head Royce private school in Oakland (where my high school friend, Mary Rodrigo Fahey teaches) and she is looking for a college. She wants to go into medicine so she liked the U of O biology department. I learned that even Jeff Concannon was one of Taylor’s basketball coaches at Head Royce. The thing I remember about Jeff was that he could peal an orange in one piece. Do you remember that Denise? The silly things that a high school boy does to impress the girls! The silly things that impressed us!!!

This week Dad is sharing his notes from the priesthood session of conference with me. I like the message from President Packer as he spoke specifically to the young men. He said, “A life of fun and games and expensive toys has come to an abrupt end. We move from a generation of ease and entertainment to a generation of hard work and responsibility. . . It will not hurt you to want something and not have it. There is a maturing and disciplining that will be good for you . . . Learn to work and to support.”

In my institute class we concentrated on messages about the Atonement and Easter, Elder Holland’s recent conference address being our focus. It was such an excellent talk; this was the perfect week to review it. Discussing Christ’s solitary journey to the Atonement, for OUR salvation, where He had to experience even divine withdrawal so He could know how we feel when we lose the Spirit, I realized that truly divine compassion is NEVER absent. We do not ever have to walk alone.

As we talked about the last week of Christ’s life and specially the betrayal by Judas to sell Christ for 30 pieces of silver, our teacher posed this question also, “Who will betray the Savior and His teachings for money?

On the way to pick up Morty on Thursday night, Dad and I attended another preparedness meeting. There was a great presentation on “old fashioned” preparedness ideas. It was quite a change from our other meetings. The presenter reminded us to have our out of state phone contact, which has always been Grandma in California. Although I realized that our out of state contact person moved to our state! I guess now that we are spread between four different states, we need to collectively decide on one out of state phone contact so we are all checking in with the same person. Let’s put our heads together. Too bad Morty doesn’t still have that easy phone number!

Dad and I hope that you all have a great holiday weekend and good luck with the week ahead. I love you. Love, Mom

Remember that Scott’s birthday is on April 21; he would love to hear from each one of you! So would Aaron on April 27 and Katie on April 30!!!!