Martha & Jeremy

June 2007

The kids have really out done themselves this month . . .

Two weeks ago I was in the basement when Lyle came running down the stairs and reported to me that Rummy was drinking medicine. I ran upstairs with the "informer" and caught Rummy downing a bottle of children's Tylenol. He had climbed up on top of the counter and unscrewed the children's safety lid to the medicine. According to Lyle he had first pressured him to take a swig. Lyle, true to the law, had said, "no!" and ran to get me. Rummy, following no one's law but his own, began to down the cherry-flavored drug. Then, when he was caught in the act, all he could do was give me his famous smile, cough a little and say, "Mommy I'm sick." I called the doctor and he said to rush Hyrum to the hospital. I couldn't even call Jeremy to come home and help because he was at school getting ready to take the National Boards II exam. I threw the kids in the car, dropped off Lyle at a friend's house and then rushed to the hospital. When I arrived, they were waiting for Rummy and hurried us into a room. I felt like I was in an "ER" TV episode. The doctor, a young resident, ran in and told me Hyrum had 8 hours to live before the Tylenol attacked his liver and would kill him. Of course, since Rummy was now under his care, he (the doctor) could save him. I panicked and then tried to stay strong for Rummy. Then the doctor said he just needed to call and double check with Poison Control and would be right back. What?!?!? He swaggered back 15 minutes later and said that Hyrum would be okay and we could go home if we wanted to or stay for some tests. Meanwhile, Hyrum had made friends with all the nurses and they kept coming in and giving him treats. So far, he hadn't learned one thing from drinking a bottle of medicine except that it gets you a lot of attention and treats. So I opted to stay for the tests. However, by now I wasn't going to just take the doctor's word and had the missionaries come in and give Hyrum a blessing. Four hours and one big shot later, Hyrum had changed his tune on drinking medicine. I don't even feel bad at how big the needle was that stuck him or for how much he cried afterwards. I just wanted to say, "it's payback time, buddy!" I hope he stays away from medicine now.

It's funny how just when you think you can't handle one more thing in life, something else will happen . . .

A few days ago the boys got tired of playing with their toys and decided to do some exploring in the basement. They found some cool-looking knobs on the water heater and turned them all as much as they could. Completely unaware of any foul play, I called the boys up to finish their morning chores. They finished and we left for our morning activities. Meanwhile, Jeremy went to school like any other day, but his patient did not come in. He was prompted to come home instead of staying at school. Later that morning I received a panicked call from Jeremy. He told me the basement was flooded with boiling hot water and to come home right away. I came home and got out of the car. As I walked toward the open basement door I could see steam pouring out of the doorway. I walked in and sure enough the basement was flooded. It turns out, the boys had turned up the temperature to high on the water heater. We all left the house soon after without noticing anything. However, it didn't take long for the water to boil and begin to pour out of the pressure relief valve. The water heater just kept filling up with water, boiling, and then dumping out through the valve. It was a big steamy mess. We tried our best to clean up the mess and have had fans on in the basement for the past two days. Hopefully the musty smell will go away and we can still sell our home in two weeks.

On a brighter note, Elizabeth continues to be the cutest thing around. She just plays and coos all the time. She figured out how to do a personalized version of a crawl/scoot. She moves her hind legs and then dives forward and repeats this process until she gets to the other side of the room. She can make pretty good time.

Looking at our life from the big picture, we're healthy and happy (most of the time). Lately, when I take the kids to the different parks here, I try to soak in the beautiful landscapes of big tall trees swaying in the refreshing breeze. Every Sunday at church now I think, only a few more weeks. Whenever I come into the kitchen in the morning and see new mouse signs, I think, this too will end. I am thankful for our blessings and the time our family has spent in Philly. These past four years have flown by as one big memorable adventure. Who knows if anyone will ever mistakenly call Hyrum, "Tyrone" again.

Good-bye Philly and we will see you all at Matt's wedding.

Love, The Tanners

Becca & Nick

Elissa helped herself to and designed her own three-course meal. She started in the garden with greens. With hands full of green poky weed she filled her mouth. The next course was a grass and dirt pilaf broken into large bite-size pieces. She apparently had no distaste for the manure as she protested when I removed it from her mouth. The third course was a choice protein dish. I sat her down on the floor in the living room for a moment while I hurried off to help Estelle in the bathroom. When I came back she was munching away, a few feet over from where I had left her. I immediately glanced to where the dead inch-long red roach had been. Cockroaches really gross me out, so it took me a little while to be able to reach in her mouth. Fortunately for Elissa, and the sake of another fine course being ruined, I was too late and her mouth was empty. It wasn't two minutes later when she belched and smiled a big open mouth grin, sending a little foul odor in my direction. Elissa has come a long way from playing pretend mealtime with Estelle. Estelle is the family fashion consultant. She knows the style laws. For instance, "If you can't match it, clash it." Jonathan got to ride on Thomas the train this month. He even met Sir Topam Hat. Thomas took us under a bridge, through a tunnel, and over a railroad crossing.

Nick's remodel job in the kitchen is well underway. Our new cabinets should be coming in a couple weeks. Dad came down to help us level the kitchen. Today for the first time the kids colored without the pencils and crayons rolling off the table uncontrollably.

See you all soon!

Love, The Bryces

McKay & Keresa

You can see that in Grundy, Virginia, they got plenty of "thangs" to shop for. Turns out it's call 'app-uh-LAUGH-cha' school of law. I guess we can probably make it through without picking up the accent, but I don't think our kids stand a chance. We found that our branch we will attend will be a 45-minute drive. It has an actual church-owned property with a sign and everything. It's a small branch of about 35 people. They will start up the nursery program when Sydney gets there because she will be the only one. We found a house that will be a good fit for our family. It's within 2 miles of the school. There is enough room for us to have a real guest room, but there is also the town's Comfort Inn within walking distance for those who like a little more privacy when they come to visit.

Our house has been in escrow for half of May and is scheduled to close on June 15. We will hang out here in Las Vegas until the reunion at Matt's wedding in 4th of July, then we will move to Virginia for our 3-year-long vacation. That's what it will be like right? ...

Sydney blew lots of bubbles this month. She scored a bubble blowing toy when we took a vacation to San Diego for Cinco de Mayo. We saw the SD sights and spent a lot of time hangin' out like beach bums. It was a great vacation destination. We highly recommend it for all.

Jackson had a haircut, so he looks like a boy instead of a baby now. He only ever crawls 2 steps or so, then he pretends to have numb legs and he just pulls himself along with his arms. He gets around pretty fast.

Keresa is trying to pack a box here and there so when it's time to go we will be ready. She has packed nearly everything except what we use in the kitchen and our clothes, and it's only 8 boxes. She thinks on the day before we leave we will fill another 8 or 10, but that's all the more stuff we have besides furniture.

We are excited to see you all at Matt's wedding.

MK KGW SRW JGW

Matthias

Querida Familia,

Quick outline of May to help my head:

--Formal Dance

--Exams, end of semester

--Invitations

--Megan's sister Graduation

--Moving, new apartment

--Megan's new job

--Matthias's summer school

Okay, so I guess I don't have a whole lot to say about that formal dance, but there are some neat pictures I'll attach. The semester ended without a hitch! Well, except that everyone we know seems to be getting engaged and married. Including us! Exams were pretty stressful, but went for the most part well except for a little bit of mess up in my Optics class. One of the questions was unlike anything I'd ever seen. It talked about if the blur tolerance in a digital camera system was so much, how flat did the CCD chip have to be. How flat? What are the units of flatness? What does that mean? So I answered "Flat as a pancake" which actually got me 1 out of 10 points on the problem. I ended up with an 86% on the exam and a B in the class. But just for the record, it was the highest B in the class! I'll attach my report card so you can see the rest of my grades...

After exams, Megan and I had two weeks of down time so we really didn't have any more excuses for not taking care of wedding plans. Megan took me through the process of registering at Target, although I still don't understand why we just can't write on the invitation, "Please make checks payable to..." Megan's mom came to Tucson to go shopping with her about half a dozen times it seemed like, and we took care of all of the wedding invitations. What a job! I never would have imagined so much to do. Even just gathering up the addresses (maybe even especially gathering up the addresses) was tons of work. And prices on invitations are outrageously outrageous! We were starting to get pretty disgusted at how much we were going to have to spend, when we found the perfect "print your own" invitation at a fabric and craft store on total clearance: 50 invitations for about $3! We cleaned them out! Though last time I called and talked to Martha she said she was just surprised that I didn't print the invitations on the back of some scratch paper covered in math equations or something. But the invitations turned out beautifully and Megan and I had a great time printing, stamping, embossing, folding, picturing, and enveloping (wish I could do some eloping myself). Invitations went out on Saturday and will be coming to a mailbox near you this week, complete with 41 cent stamp!

We went to Megan's sister's graduation a few weeks ago. It was a huge event for the town of Sierra Vista. Megan tells me that the town has two events every year where the whole town gets excited and involved: graduation at Buena High School (that means "Good" High School for non-Spanish speakers), and 4th of July fireworks. Apparently even folks from Tucson make the trek down to see the yearly fireworks show, including a curious "ground display" of fireworks. It must be a pretty good presentation. I'm excited and anyone and everyone is also invited to come and see them, if you wanted to come to the wedding early and stay at Rebecca's house. Or we could hook it up with some friendly folk from Sierra Vista.

I'm moved into my new apartment finally! We ended the lease on our old apartment in good old faithful Mt. Plaza apartments (affectionately known as Mormon Plaza) on May 12, the Saturday after exams. The new apartment where I am staying and Megan will be staying post-wedding became available May 26, a week ago Saturday. "But wait!" you ask. "That leaves two weeks of not having an apartment!" Good observation. A problem I didn't really overlook, just kind of ignored hoping that it would solve itself. So the few days before moving, I slowly transferred a few big things like bookshelves, speakers, entertainment center, TV, etc to a shed at Megan's apartment. The day I moved out, I put all my stuff in another apartment in Mt. Plaza where one of my buddies lives. It was just so convenient that that very day, everyone in that apartment was leaving for the summer and no-one seemed to mind that all my stuff would be there (including my person) while they were not. It felt like kind of a mission transfer. Ya know, packing up everything I own into bags and boxes, not really wanting to unpack it because I knew I'll be transferred again in a short time. Luckily, it was a short time, and my apartment is now beginning to look like an apartment! And I live there!

And now this past week has been something new for both Megan and me. She has a cool internship at a high tech engineering firm called M3 Engineering and Technology, not to be confused with 3M scotch tape. Well, internship is kind of a rough term. She's in the copy room right now. But she has some knowledge of computer-aided drawing and one of the company owners personally told her to expect training for a more technical position soon. My latest is a few summer classes at the Community College here. I'm making up a freshman level chemistry class I never got around to taking and a gen-ed over the internet. Last Thursday, we got our first take home test from the chemistry class, complete with the answers printed on the back. What? So that's what community college is all about. If I'd have known that earlier... Well, maybe there will be some more difficult tests later.

So we're still on schedule for July 6th. I love you all and can't wait for it!

Con Amor, Matthias and Megan