December 23, 2009

Dear Family,

We had such a fun and relaxing time when we dropped in at the John and Jeannena’s home on Monday night to take them their Christmas treat. Of course, we had to wait until after the Westhora annual delivery of the bread Christmas tree before we felt “comfortable” to leave our home! On Sunday at church, Katie had skipped right past any formal salutation when she saw Sister Westhora and just asked, “Have we missed your tree delivery already?” So this year, we knew they were coming; the very next night! And it is already eaten by the way.

We stayed at the Mitchell’s for over three hours and were amazed how the time flew by. We came home loaded with treats. Besides the regular box of grapefruit, we came home with John’s monster chocolate turtles, his huge chocolate chip cookies, frozen Alaskan wild salmon (for Adrianne) and a Kitchen Aid stand mixer (for Katie). He showed Katie his HUGE stand mixers (he now has two) and he just gave her his older one. She is so excited; Christmas came early for her. She is SO lucky. I hope we see the outcome of its use soon. She has a cupcake picked out for Christmas.

After a late night at the Mitchell’s home, the girls and I sleepily drove to Salem for a visit with Scott. Dad had visited him last Friday as I kept Adam busy and thinking that Dad was on work errands (he did do one work errand). He said he had a great visit with Scott. Scott was very excited to report that he had been able to talk with Kyre over one and half hours one day by calling her back three times. It costs him a lot to call Albany since it is a different exchange even though it is closer to Albany than Beaverton is to Salem! As much as we might try to meet his visiting family needs, Scott is most happy when he has good communication with Kyre.

At our visit on Tuesday we mostly reported on the weekend visit with the grandchildren. He also was able to get up to date on Katie and Adrianne’s lives. He asks some very detailed questions since he has the time to read the family news more carefully than most family members! I see everyone playing games and some day I would like to play a game with Scott. I should teach him our way of playing speed scrabble since his children love it so much, especially Alina. I believe I will get her the Bananagram game since it is a version of speed scrabble. I asked her if she gets our packages and it sounds like she gets many of them.

The girls and I have done some last minute shopping and preparing for the meals for Christmas with the boys this week. Nate got tickets through Zappos to the Las Vegas bowl so he took Morty. Dad and I enjoyed watching it in our warm home with the girls; it looked so cold and windy for Las Vegas! I was so glad that we won, no creamed our opponents; we get far too much negative razzing being true blue Cougar fans with some of our friends. And the funniest part is we never even put a thought into the schools from which they graduated. Utah who? Oregon who? Nate did warn Morty that if he was wearing University of Oregon clothing for the bowl game that he would not go with him! Good for Nate; I warned Morty that he was a guest of Nate’s and should respect his requests. I had a last minute Primary work party called to finalize the new teacher binders but announced that I could not come until after the game was over; one must set some priorities you know!

Today is our widow bread and chili day and then the next is Christmas Eve. It is so hard to believe it came so quickly. Nate arrives tomorrow and Morty on Thursday; we are looking forward to them coming and wish Aaron was also going to be here.

The last two weeks have been both busy and fun as we prepared for Christmas with the help of Adam. He is such a WILLING helper and loved crossing things off of the list posted each day on the kitchen door frame. Remember those days? He also was good at working on his own with his homework and reading each day. I just realized that I forgot to finish signing off his reading minutes so I hope he remembers them for Aunt Lynn’s signature; some days there were quite a few minutes.

Dad had a party with his Primary class and they worked on some Faith in God activities so Adam joined in. I started a fresh book for him so I could mark what he had done while here and what he could remember that he had not marked off recently. Dad and Adam worked a bit in his Webelos book also.

We had a very interesting and fun trip to the zoo this time. Dad learned that the keepers were giving Christmas present and treats to the Primates on Thursday morning so we went t watch them open their gifts. It was quite interesting and entertaining. Then we visited the Serengeti visit that opened late this summer. It was fantastic. Plus it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. The picture of the cheetah is real; he is that close to Adam. Adam is sitting in the driver’s seat of a jeep and the glass wall is the windshield (the cheetah is laying on the hood of the jeep engine.

Wendi arrived on Friday morning and went with Dad and Adam to pick up Kyre and the girls. They all returned in enough time to get settled and play a bit before we headed to the ward Christmas party. We had our picture taken with Santa, learned a game with bells and had a great meal. I had to leave for an airport run during the dinner to get Adrianne. She had all of Katie’s luggage, which was bulky storage totes since Katie is moving back here to take her last class online to graduate. Adrianne had to handle it all on this end because Katie accepted the offer to be bumped. That will really help to fund any needed flights with winter.

Katie didn’t get home until after 11:30 after flying through Los Angeles and San Jose to get home. She called from Los Angeles wishing she could stay the night there to run out to Titos Tacos! Adrianne had a Christmas party at the barn that she was trying to get to right after her flight so she did not want to be bumped. Of course, when Katie handed me the voucher she made some remark to Adrianne about being the favorite child to sacrifice her time and I was on the phone with Morty so he carried the moment even farther saying it was too bad that Katie had to go to that length to be the favorite child!

Saturday was full of Mickey waffles, games, making gingerbread houses, games, bike riding, games, jumping on the tramp, games, Zoolights and more games! I could not believe the crowds at Zoolights! We arrived 20 minutes after it opened and the zoo parking lot was full. I guess it was because the rain hadn’t started as forecasted and it was relatively warm for a winter night. But inside the zoo, we didn’t feel crowded; it was very pleasant. They have added lots of lights, which they may have added last year but we skipped going in the deep snow and frigid temperatures of last Christmas holiday!

Sunday morning was our early Christmas celebration with Scott and Kyre’s family. This is what we call our “grandparents weekend” with their family. Really though, as I think about it, what it ends up being is their family Christmas weekend with our home as the setting, as I realize that I get very little time to actually play and interact with my grandchildren as I facilitate their gathering. Plus, since this Christmas had to be more homemade, as children, they probably didn’t appreciate all the time and energy that went into making their gifts since they weren’t toys or gadgets. Oh well, this has caused me to realize and remember the years I used to try and make all my gifts as a young mother and I love that feeling of anticipating someone opening a gift into which I have put so much of myself. I hope to continue that in years to come even if I am not compelled by finances. I LOVE being so excited for someone to open a gift that I have spent hours preparing and hoping they will love. Scott and Kyre’s family were lucky to have Uncle Nate as their sibling in the Christmas family gift rotation. He is a fun uncle and got them some new family games to play when they get together at Kyre’s home. He was especially generous to Wendi since she is many miles away and gave her some kind of electronic device called a Flip (or something like that) that will allow her to upload, very simply, videos of herself to her Facebook so her brother, sisters and mom can all enjoy her college experiences by seeing them quickly on the computer!

I like that we were able to attend church together and have most of the grandchildren in our Primary. All the auxiliaries had a choir that sang in the Christmas program; they were beautiful. I had set my expectations very low as to them being involved with our Primary choir even though we went over the songs and some already knew them. I learned a long time ago that to survive the holidays as a mother you must learn to “expect what you are going to get”. It makes it easier to laugh and allow yourself to feel, but then shrug off the disappointed feelings of your efforts not being appreciated, when a child is in tears because they didn’t get what they wanted or any of the other hurts that can accompany the exhaustion of holiday preparations.

After church we had time to come home and have a wonderful family dinner and even play a couple of games before everyone had to say goodbye. It was a lovely ending to the weekend so that everyone had the opportunity to leave the grandparents house feeling content for the chance to experience the weekend. I didn’t travel down to Keizer, Albany or Sweet Home this time but Dad allowed me to stay home so I could turn my attentions to preparing for the week to come with Nate and Morty’s arrivals. What I really planned to do was download the weekend pictures and write the family news that evening but you can obviously realize that I didn’t get that done. I think I sat down and kept falling asleep!

My favorite moments of the holiday season are times when we have just finished a meal and the work is done so we can sit and relax and just talk. I LOVE doing nothing and relaxing with my children! I look forward to more meaningful holiday moments yet to come this season. I love you all and have a Merry Christmas to those who cannot join us. I will enjoy hearing your voices on Christmas when you call

Love, Mom

December 8, 2009

Dear Children,

As much as I enjoy traveling, it is always very nice to fall into my own bed at night (especially after being gone so long). I woke up refreshed after the first night in my bed; maybe it is a sign of getting older that I need my own bed! And maybe it is because we actually went to bed before midnight for the first time in several weeks. I was trying so hard to finish some Christmas projects before leaving for Thanksgiving that there were not enough hours in the day. I was happy that I met my goal but the hours were killing me. One night I was trying to get my California gifts done before Grandma Maldonado flew there early the next morning. Dad was picking her up at 6:00 am so I stayed up all night and finished one of the quilts at about 5:50; just in time! I never thought I would be working all night; it is always a surprise to me how I underestimate the time to finish something. I was very happy to finish several Christmas tree quilts and even happier to be able to see Heidi open her quilt and hang it as an early gift. I learned a lot while sewing them. I am really enjoying sewing and learning some new techniques.

When I am gone for more than a week, which isn’t very often, I feel like I have been away for so long and it is hard to get back into the swing of things. Especially for the fact hat it is the holidays and I came home on December 6^th to a home, “refrigerator warm”, as Dad put it, which was decorated for Thanksgiving. I always have my tree and Christmas up by then. I have restrained myself from getting any decorations out until Adam gets here so he can be part of our decorating. Once we have Adam here, I will go gang busters. Dad and I have also talked about buying our tree at a Christmas tree lot! I know; that is a shock to all of you and to my own “value system” almost. We are figuring that it is cheaper, easier and with getting it up so late, it doesn’t need to be as fresh.

Dad and I were surprised when we traveled on the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving and the Portland airport was surprisingly quiet. We had used travel vouchers to fly on that evening and chose an earlier flight in hopes that we could get bumped to the later flight to help pay for any other travel in the next months. Oh well, when you plan for it, it doesn’t usually happen. That is just as well; it was great to get there when we did. Other the other hand, Las Vegas airport was surprisingly busy. Who goes to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving???

We had a fun time in Las Vegas. Shawn and Aubrey drove in shortly after we arrived and then Adrianne and Wendi drove in Wednesday afternoon. Katie was the last to arrive on Wednesday evening and she came with a bang. She had sent a text to everyone asking if they wanted to order Dog House Grill sandwiches from Fresno (her favorite thing besides Sprinkles brand cupcakes). She picked them up, with their famous BBQ sauce and all and brought almost a dozen tri-tip sandwiches on the plane with her! I missed getting a picture of that!

Aubrey is funny. She just can’t wait to give out her presents and open presents of course. We did an early Christmas with their family. I am glad that we saw the boys open their gift. Aubrey opened one of hers but Shawn is more of a purest and wanted to wait for Christmas Day. She had us open our gifts and also my birthday gift since they were leaving to head back to California after we left for Utah. I am going to love using my BYU tablecloth! I would have used it for game day in Orem but my birthday decorations took precedence.

On Thanksgiving I put the turkey in the oven and most of us drove to Red Rock for a hike while it cooked. The boys had done a great job of doing most of the shopping beforehand to stock their kitchen with all the special ingredients to make our family favorites. At Red Rock, Aubrey and Adrianne decided to make it a run so they went about 6 miles of rough mountain trails while we hike the trails and rocks. Gregory was fun on the trail just chattering the whole way (until I got the video camera out to capture it of course). He is a little mountain goat scampering up the rocks. Red Rocks is a very pretty area; it is nice to see that side of Las Vegas. Lots of people in Las Vegas had the same idea so there were lots of hikers.

Ideally, it would have been nice to duplicate last year’s Las Vegas Thanksgiving when Aaron took all the single siblings to Nine Steakhouse for their big family Thanksgiving buffet about which they have raved and raved, but Aaron felt it was too large of a group. It was nice though to fix most of the family favorites and have a good time at home. I think we even played some games; although, games were on the three TVs in the family room continually that day and the next!

On the evening of Thanksgiving we worked off our dinner by walking a big portion of the strip. All I cared about was to make sure I saw the fountains at the Bellagio. Wendi had never been on the strip so we hiked through several casinos until we realized how late it was getting. We couldn’t neglect the fact that the biggest shopping day of the year was about to begin! At midnight several of us girls did a Wal-Mart run since we heard from Heidi that they will honor most Friday specials (just not their door busters). Even though we were up very late with our preliminary run to Wal-Mart, Katie and I still got up fairly early to catch some early bird sales. We had a little shopping success but I didn’t have so much to buy this year since I am trying to make a lot of my gifts. It killed me to have to pay a sales tax though.

We crammed a lot into a little space of time in Las Vegas and that is with a lot of relaxing time in front of all the sports that they watch! With Greg and Bryson the only little ones there amongst all the single aunts and uncles, they were on stage most of the weekend. Greg got lots of encouragement from mostly Morty to unleash his showmanship. We did a lot of laughing! We had a ton of fun. The boys are great hostesses; we all had a comfortable bed except Aaron one night, who volunteered to sleep on the bean bag chair . . . ouch!

While together in Las Vegas, Aubrey got me to start thinking about the money making end of my new card business. She had a friend that wanted her to watch a program on the computer about another business and as we talked about that, I realized that I should look more seriously at my business since they say it has a great compensation plan. I just love the card service so much that I had never paid attention to the fact that it could be our answer to the lack of work in the construction field.

Dad has worked so hard all these years to build a good income and I have been a saver and then investor with our savings. We both felt very good about our “in house” pension plan that we were so careful to build. I don’t even look at our investment numbers anymore since they have become so low and with no work in sight in the near future, the future is a bit unsettling. Thank goodness for our three month emergency fund.

So, I have tried to learn more about the business side of my SendOutCards venture and it looks like a great possibility of which I should take advantage. I am trying to learn more right now but I know, come January, I will have more time. I received my first check of $120.00 for signing up my first distributor, Carol Stanger, so that was pretty good. I wasn’t even trying to sign her up but she said when she saw my belief in the service as we talked over lunch one day, she trusted my judgment and looked more seriously. That is a lot of pressure but I am confident that people will love the product. I know how much I do! If you do want to see about what I am speaking, you can go on my website at:

SendOutCards.com/cardsbylori

If you click on “Click here to send a free card” you will be led through a tutorial to enable a gift account from me that will allow you to try the system to send out a few greeting cards yourself. The easiest thing to do is send one of their stock greeting cards (they have over 15,000!) but be sure to add a personal message (that’s the most important part) by typing it into the computer. But, even more fun is to add a digital picture to the card (You might need help from me over the phone to do that the first time). You can add pictures both on the cover and inside the card. After you put in the address of the person, the company prints the card (a very high quality card), addresses it and stamps it with a regular postage stamp (not bulk mail stamps) and sends it in the regular mail! The system I bought has an entire data base that I store all my addresses with even a reminder system when someone’s birthday is close. The other day I received email notification that is was Aunt Carolyn’s anniversary so I sent them a card. Now, that will surprise our Bitter family card sender!

The frugal person that I am, the cards are also less expensive than most cards these days. I pay only .61 for most of my cards! So, besides all the benefits and ease of the system, it is a great value. The least expensive way to buy the program is to be a customer through a new product called the SOCBox which only costs only $49.00. Even with that price though, you get 10 cards free (and on that system cards are all $2.00 postage included) so in essence, the program is only $29.00 to use with any number of cards you wish to buy later!

Let me know if you want to know more about what I am doing and remember I am just learning. I know it has a lot of potential and I am both excited to use the system but also for its possibilities of a business now. We are starting to use the system to send out cards to Dad’s clients for various reasons to remind them that we are still in business. This week we will be sending them a card telling them tips on winter concrete care.

Aaron lent his car for the BYU weekend so we had two cars to all drive from Las Vegas to Utah. That saved a lot of airline dollars for all of us. Katie, Nate, Morty and I drove up early Saturday morning arriving just in time for all the birthday festivities that Heidi had organized. Everyone had a part so that was nice. We partied we a soup and chili lunch before the BYU-UofU game. Grandma Bitter gave Dad and I her seats on the 50 yard line. She spoils her number one son! Any time during the game when the Cougars looked like they might not win, I secretly made my birthday wish that their win would add to my perfect birthday celebration. They won in the overtime; pretty exciting!

Most of us were able to spend Sunday at the Brady’s home. Don’t you just love this toothless smile of Rebekah. She is posing by the sparkly magenta curtains that I made for her room. We went to their church since Bill was speaking. He did a great job; the entire sacrament meeting was excellent. The sister before him had a message about gratitude and said that remembrance is the seed of gratitude as we remember what the Lord has done for us. Bill added a layer to that talking a bit about tithing and how tithing is recognition of our gratitude and the knowledge that everything comes from the Lord. After church Heidi had made a great Crockpot meal that was perfect for the cold temperatures. It was fun to be there and especially to watch them be excited about the Christmas gift hat I made for them. Although, it was maybe even more fun to see how excited Rebekah and Jenna were to play with the large gift bag. They climbed in it and just made us laugh. I love being around my grandchildren and their innocence of enjoying even the little things in life.

Our biggest project of the week was making chocolates. Grandma Bitter devoted many days to our Christmas chocolate dipping project. Dad and I loved working alongside the master and she was so thrilled to have learned for Natalie how to melt her chocolate in her microwave! We brought home much more than anticipated as she would not allow us to leave any there for her to give away. It is a relief now that I am home and won’t have so much to do to make neighbor gifts. Now that Adam is here we will add a few different kind of cookies to the gift and we will be done; well, except for delivering them!

We stayed in Utah an extra week almost to go to several concerts on campus. It was great. The first one we saw was Kari’s orchestra; they are great. And, it was fun to see her walk on stage to applause as the concert mistress. She has a lot of poise. We also went to the BYU symphonic orchestra concert and the Folk Dancers performances. They were both wonderful.

On campus we had fun taking Grandma to see where Katie works and Adrianne works. Grandma enjoyed seeing Adrianne’s lab and asked her if she remembers to wash her hands after seeing all those specimens!!! We took a wheelchair to help Grandma get across campus but Adrianne thought she needed a turn! Grandma thought that Katie’s studio was quite interesting and then on Thursday, Katie called to alert us that she was going to be on the news so we watched it on Grandma’s TV. That was so much fun to watch her report on the Nutty Putty Caves closure. And she did it with a very sore mouth. She had to have two root canals in one week since her dentist didn’t do it correctly; she was in a ton of pain! The link to watch it is:

http://universe.byu.edu/node/4612

Last Friday Adrianne went up to BYU-Idaho for the David Archuleta Christmas concert with her roommates. It sounded like they had a great time. OK, here is a story that I hope I tell correctly. You know that Weight Watcher recipe that I have where you mix a spice cake mix with a can of pumpkin to make muffins? Well, Adrianne, and many of you (I personally don’t mix my chocolate with pumpkin), make cookies with that same recipe and add chocolate chips. She has made them at Kenna’s home while visiting there. Kenna’s mother’s friend tasted Adrianne’s cookies but she actually lives in Tennessee and knows one of the musicians that David records with. On one of his trips to Tennessee for recording, he stayed at that friend’s home and she made him the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. He likes then so the girls made a batch to deliver to him. They hoped that the connection would get him a back stage pass but it didn’t. They were able to meet up with the Tennessee musician person at the concert and delivered the cookies through that person. Isn’t that kind of a random story?

We woke up to snow the morning that Katie was going to take us to the airport. Unfortunately, she was bringing us more of her things to send home but she couldn’t make it to us so TJ was willing to take us. He has four wheel drive or something and TONS of icy road experience. Yes, Katie is coming home this next term to save money and hopefully start looking for a job. She only has one class left to graduate and she will do that online!

Since being home we have been playing catch up with emails and mail and church work. The stake center had no power on the evening of the First Presidency Christmas Broadcast so we invited the Blacks to come over to our home to watch it. That made it nice to have company. The setting and the music was beautiful and it was great to hear from each member of the presidency about the real joy of the season and the acts of love and kindness that we can do. I want to try and remember to unclutter my heart to allow Christmas in as we were taught!

I decided to ditch the RS Christmas dinner and go with Dad to watch Adam’s school music program and have a belated birthday celebration for Kyre. It was very good; Adam had a speaking part plus his songs. We picked up Klaire and Kyre so they could watch the program and then we ended the evening with cupcakes and a birthday present at Kyre’s home before we drove home with Adam.

Well, that is it for the last couple of weeks. I love you! Mom