Message from Mom, Etc.

Dear Family,

I...looked at the window and what did I see... So I was sitting tranquilly in the front room with my visiting teachers when I happened to glance up out of the corner of my eye at the side window . Something made me think, "Hmmm," so I took a second look. This time I just couldn't help blurting out, "Oh my gosh, look at my wall!" The first time I thought I noticed a new crack to the left of the window where some of the wedding pictures hang. The second time I realized the wall bulged out at least six inches into the front room creating a cross-shaped crack extending about two feet from the center in all four directions. Lindi Omer observed that I reacted with remarkable calm, but I think she was just being polite. It turns out that when Ken replaced the main beam at the front of the carport last weekend, the beam didn't quite line up inside the wall like it was supposed to. Instead of fitting snugly into the space above the post where optimum support would be maintained, the beam caught on the edge of the post. This forced the post into the front room through the wall. The beam ended up being supported by the siding where it barely hung on by the skin of its teeth. It turns out the unsightly wound to the wall was nothing compared to the potential damage that could have ensued if a strong wind had nudged that beam out of its unstable resting place. The whole carport might have come down totaling our cars and possibly even taking the kitchen with it. After considering what might have been, we have to conclude that we are indeed thankful for small blessings.

Apart from that, it's been a calm month. Looks like we lost the lime tree in that hard freeze, but now the weather's finally warming up to the seventies. Sorry about all that snow in Tucson and bitter cold in Philadelphia, but for right now Nevada's the place to be. Have a happy February, which means happy Valentine's Day and Black History Month, depending on your point of view.

Love & prayers, Mom

Martha & Jeremy

Philly is fun--especially with the end of our time in sight! Our days fly by and seem like they keep getting shorter. Our new, and very cute, baby girl is growing so fast. The boys keep getting taller and saying more far out things. They could not be much more active and sure not any cuter. It's a lot of fun right now. I still have to take a lot of time-outs and haven't gotten back into the habit of answering our phone every time it rings. But we're having fun playing it up.

The past 2 1/2 months have reaffirmed our decision to move back to the west. December and January had very mild weather. We were opening our windows at night way into January. The weather was in the 70's and we were loving it. Then in the past two weeks the weather has not risen above 20 degrees. Jeremy and I prefer the much milder weather to the "freeze the snot in your nose" weather. Hopefully we'll be able to narrow our destination spot more in the next month.

The days go by so fast by that by the evening I sit down and try to think about where the day went. Here's what happened this morning: I've been trying to get all three kids together at the same time for a Valentine's picture. One of them has had a mini-crisis each time. I knew I couldn't wait much longer if they'd be ready in time for V-day, so today I dressed them up and took them outside in the single digit weather to try and get them to smile. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but of course it didn't work. I gave up when Rummy's cries of being cold started to reach panic level and my fingers wrapped around the camera began to turn numb; our snot had long since froze. I put their jackets back on, warmed up their bright pink faces and fingers and packed them into the car. We went to the grocery store for a quick supply run, if you could call packing three kids with you to the grocery store quick at all. There are train tracks next to the grocery store and we were lucky enough to see two Amtracks go by. We stopped to watch each one, and then Rummy and Lyle did a complete train impersonation before we could continue our trek just to get inside the store. Luckily the grocery shopping part was pretty uneventful. There were no meltdowns, I didn't lose my purse, no one wet their pants and I didn't even lock my keys in the car. We made such good time at the store I told the boys we could go to story hour at the library. We got to the library before it began. When we entered the children's section, the children there were quietly sitting/playing on the floor. The atmosphere changed dramatically as Lyle and Hyrum bounded into the room. They bounced around like two kernels popping in a bag of popcorn. They picked out books, said random "Hi's" to the children, and also ran around in circles. The children there just stared at them in a dazed look and the librarian looked at me and asked, "Are there really only two?" To give them some credit, they did sit down for the actual story part, except for the time Rummy went up to the librarian while she was reading a story out loud and tried to get her to switch books to a train story he had in his hand. As soon as the librarian put down the last book they were up in the air again. At the end of the play time, after all the children left, I tried my luck with the camera one more time and sat all three down on a couch in the library and snapped a few shots. Success! No one cried or fell over or "accidentally" jumped up. And to think all of this happened between 9:00am to 12noon . . . Have a great month!

Love, the Tanners

Becca & Nick

Estelle is more and more independent each week. She wants to put her shoes on all-by-herself. Sometimes when I help her get dressed she gets mad at me, gets undressed, and then does it by herself. She even wants to wipe her own bottom when I change her diaper. And yes, she likes to do her own hair. Jonathan just keeps talking and acting bigger. The other day I told Jonathan and Estelle that they couldn't play until they put their clean clothes away.

So Jonathan put his away and then looked at Estelle's pile. Estelle wasn't too interested but Jonathan really wanted to play with her. So he said, "Ah, Ill just help Estelle and put her clothes away for her." And what do you know? He actually did. I'm daily impressed at how well he takes care of his little sisters and truly enjoys their company. He also loves to play with Elissa, whom he calls "his sweetheart." Out of everyone in the house he makes her laugh and smile by far the most. Lissy just gets excited when she sees him coming.

Lissy on the other hand, gets the look of fear when she sees her big sister coming. Estelle doesn't have to do much to set her off into tears. Of course Estelle is innocent and just wants to play. Hopefully they'll get along better in the future.

I've been putting my spare time into stalking Martha. Poor girl, I send her letters, emails, and phone calls to tell her all the reasons why her family would want to live in Southern Arizona. I have to agree with myself though. . .  Anyone else want a stalker?

Nick has been having fun wandering around the property, checking on cows, irrigating fields, collecting firewood, and spreading manure in preparation for a spring garden. I just think he's so cute in his cowboy hat and work boots. Jonathan and Stelli like to follow him around in their boots and hats as well. They are such big helpers. Now if only there wasn't so much drama at his work! I think there are just too many women in the work place. Any little comment or look starts a flare-up and in the last month they've chased away the other two men that work at the pharmacy. Poor Nick has to fend for himself now. I think he'll be transferring out of the drama location as soon as he gets the chance. Lucky for him, he only works at that particular pharmacy twice a week.

Take care and we love and miss you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, the Bryces

McKay & Keresa

Sydney was watching Keresa paint her toe nails like she always does. After they were all put away Keresa sat in her chair and did her hair like she always does. In the meantime, Sydney went unnoticed for a period. Then before long she returned. She typically sits behind Keresa and plays with toys, or something like that. When Keresa finished blow drying, Sydney said, "Mom- Paint Nails!!" And Keresa turned around to see Sydney all set up with a bottle of nail polish, her feet on a towel on the carpet, and silver shiny paint all over her feet. Keresa quickly bathed the babe in nail polish remover and told her this was a task that required Mommy's help.

Sydney's second birthday was Saturday. She got an Elmo cake, made and decorated by her mother. We celebrated twice- once at a cabin in Mt. Charleston during the day, then one with her Grandma Gifford in the evening. We learned that the digestive system of a two-year-old cannot handle two parties worth of birthday treats in one day. The next morning we had quite a mess to clean up.

While washing Jackson in the bath, I was trying to wash out his neck rolls because he is chubby, and sometimes throw up gets stuck in there. When I reached my fingers in there, he started giggling. So I called for Keresa, and he did it a few more times. Since then though, he has not laughed anymore. No matter how we try, we cannot get him to do more than a huge smile. I'm glad she was able to quickly come in the bathroom and see before he quit.

We went to a trip in Park City, UT last weekend. It was a lot of fun, and very cold. We saw -17F temperatures. Cold.

We went to Disney on Ice, The Incredibles. It was a lot of fun. Poor Sydney got bored during the intermission, then she couldn't really get back into it, and fell asleep before the finale. We tried to wake her for the fireworks, lights, and all the excitement, but she was just completely asleep. We shook her a little, stood her up, and it just did not do any good.

At some point before she fell asleep, I had her on my lap while I was eating the cotton candy. After a few mouthfuls I realized it wasn't continually melting in my mouth. I looked down to see that somehow I had gotten her pigtail full of hair into my mouth. It was nasty. She said, "No dad!"

MK KGW SRW JGW

Matthias

Querida Familia,

January has been good so far, well, I guess today is the 31st so now I can just say that it has been good. My school schedule is still rigorous but manageable. So far homeworks have been under control and I haven't failed any midterms yet...because my first midterm isn't until tomorrow! So I guess the real test will be if I can say the same thing tomorrow after my math test. Then I've got another midterm in my physics class Monday, but I think I'll make it. Also school has been kind of exciting lately because my Optics professor is so much better organized in teaching and in his homework. I'm pretty happy to say that Optics went from one of my least favorite classes from last semester to probably my favorite class so far this semester. I say so far because he said in a few weeks we'll start getting into the "hard stuff."

January surprised Tucsonans with a little un-Arizona weather a week ago with a bit of a blizzard! There was even enough snow to have a mild snowball fight. I've got some pictures on my web-album. It's at http://picasaweb.google.com/matthiaswhitney/ I'm working on putting on more of my photos.

My stake's theme and focus for this year is Temple work and family history. The institute is sponsoring a DNA day for making links to family history in February for those that have a four generation chart. So I got a little bit of fire underneath me to start looking at Family History. I called up Becca a few weeks ago to help me get started on PAF, and she suggested that Megan and I come down on a Saturday evening so she could show me the stuff on her computer, then we could baby-sit her kids so she and Nick could go out! So we went and had a good time with Jonathon, Stelli, and Elissa.

Also last night we went to go see Chinese Acrobats for one of my friends birthday. This is the same group of where the little Chinese guy off Ocean's 11 performs. Anyway I guess that was pretty exciting to see them do impossible feats like tumbling in every direction through hoops on the stage or stand up on a see saw like plank then flip a dish up off the plank so that it landed perfectly on his head. Or one girl balanced a large candlestick on her head while doing all kinds of contortion maneuvers atop ladder. I just looked at these acrobatics and thought to myself, "Now those are impossible feats! That's absolutely amazing that anyone could ever learn to do those things." Just as I thought these things in my mind, the acrobats only raised the stakes by jumping and tumbling through several hoops 2x, 3x, then 4x as high! The man balancing on the see saw who perfectly flipped a dish from his feet onto his head continued by repeating the trick with two dishes at a time, three at a time, four and a time, and then a cup and a spoon! The contortionist girl went from an impossible balancing/contortion act to an even more impossible one by moving the candlestick from her head to a wand she held with her mouth, and adding an additional candle stick to each of her feet and hands while lying on her stomach and stretching herself up like a great bright spider!

I reflect on these thoughts because my year in college before my mission was incredibly difficult. I thought it was near impossible. Looking back on the classes I took now, they seem measly in comparison to last semester and this semester. And even looking at problems that were impossible from my optics and math classes at the beginning of last semester, though they were still challenging by the time I took the finals, I could rip right through them having learned the techniques and concepts. And how gratifying that is to be able to see my growth and development! I'm sure when Mom and Dad had Chris, the change of going from a two person family to three was a huge challenge, maybe even sometimes it felt impossible. But luckily for me, they not only did that impossible task, but did that x7! So the amount of work to complete an impossible task might be an infinite amount of force and effort. So how much is it to complete an impossible x7 task? Yikes. Lucky for us the Savior completed an infinite atonement for each of us so that our impossible tasks can become light and, by completing our own tasks with his help of infinite force proportioned to exactly how much we need, we can grow and learn each day. And then looking back, we'll say, "Ah! That was easy!"

I didn't intend to write all that attached to a story about Chinese Acrobats, but it seems to work. Have a great month!

Con Amor, Matthias