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 
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 6th 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
We had a fun time in 
kes). 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
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 wi
th 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
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 o
ur 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 
t 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
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 ca
rds 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
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 i
n 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
On campus we had fun taking Grandma to see where Katie works and Adrianne works. Grandm
a 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 
on 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
We woke up to snow the morning that Katie was going to take us to the airport. Unfortunately, sh
e 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 presi
dency 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
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