Mom 'n' Dad

Dear Family,

I'm counting down the days to the end of school: 3 weeks in May and 3 days in June. Summer's just around the corner! It feels so good to wind down for the school year. I only get to celebrate the countdown with Dad about half the time, since he commutes weekly to Ogden. I miss him all week and see him on weekends, but of course, his "weekend" varies from three to five days.

Last month our faithful old Maytag washer died its final death. Paying our last respects to this dearly departed friend made my heart ache, but not nearly as badly as when I tried to replace her. I decided to make do with a used machine from our rental house, but after just one week I couldn't stand it anymore. We took the big leap and ordered a front-loading set. They will arrive just after Mother's Day; I can't wait!

Which reminds me that Mother's Day is tomorrow. Now that we have so many moms in our family, let us take the time to say how much we appreciate you all, and particularly, the magnificent job you do of raising your children. It's simply delightful to gaze around at all our beautiful grandchildren. We know that good children don't happen by chance. They come as the result of dedicated parents, and especially the moms. So do take the time to pat yourselves on the back, all you moms out there. You are part of a divine work that pays you back in blessings more numerous than the stars in the sky! Happy Mother's Day!

love and prayers,

Mom & Dad

Chris 'n' Summer

Mel 'n' Andy

Martha 'n' Jeremy

April

What a pleasant and sunny month! We've enjoyed the spring in Tuscon as much as in Philly. Tucson doesn't have a rainy month like Philly does in the spring. It rained just enough to get wildflowers growing up on every bare patch of dirt. The weather is sunny and breezy. I sit outside a lot of days and watch the kids play with the dirt and rocks, including Lizzy, and just enjoy the breeze. It's just lovely.

Lyle hit a big milestone this month: birthday #5. I remember holding him as a baby and wondering how he would learn to walk. When he started walking, I thought and stressed a little about how he would ever learn to go potty on a toilet. This month he and I went to Kindergarten Round-up. As we walked together on the school grounds, hand in hand, he was so excited he started skipping. I was so nervous for him I started crying.

Another highlight for Lyle was his birthday party. Optimus Prime, the good Transformer leader, left him a letter telling him and his party friends how to find the all-spark to save the citizens of Tucson. It was a lot of fun and Lyle did Transformer moves the entire time.

We went on a field-trip to a miniature horse ranch. The night before we left, Lyle and Rummy came downstairs each wearing a cowboy vest and hat over their clothes. They matter-of-factly informed Jeremy and I that this was what they were wearing to the cowboy ranch. Sure enough, the next day, they came running downstairs in their cowboy clothes. In my eyes, the ranch was a little overrated. It reminded me of Dawn Street's yard! The boys didn't seem to mind too much, probably because they weren't the ones paying, and had a blast. In fact Lizzy had as much fun as the boys. She would have ridden the horses if she was allowed to. They chased and fed chickens, petted the horses and goats, and tried to walk and talk like cowboys. Lyle even pulled some hay out of the haystack and put it in his mouth.

Jeremy spends his Saturdays playing with the kids. They've gone swimming every Saturday. The first Saturday the water was only 56 degrees! It has warmed up to 64 degrees. I really can't tell a difference yet and haven't gone in. Lizzy's not shy though and jumps right in to Jeremy. I guess we have another fish on our hands.

Two months left until we see everyone at the reunion. Three months left until Lyle starts kindergarten. Four months left until our new baby boy comes. I'm wondering where all the time is going! Take care, we'll see you at the end of June!

Love, The Tanners

Becca 'n' Nick

What fun we've been having . . . yet it doesn't seem like there's much to talk about? Lissy is still our little doll and has been combining words into sentences. Her first sentence: "I'a baby." She is going to have some definite adjustments to make next week. I've been trying to convince her that she is not a baby and that she is my little girly. She brings me blankets in which she wants to be wrapped in and then held. She also sucks on her baby doll's bottle.

Jonathan has been so into fighting and Power Rangers that we looked to the obsession as an opportunity for bribery. He has been four weeks free of sucking his thumb and has collected four Power Ranger action figures from Jungle Fury and the ultimate prize: a green power ranger sword. He makes deals with his sisters to play power rangers with him. Such as, "If you play Power Rangers with me I'll play Polly pocket princesses with you." Fortunately for him, Lissy doesn't require any return favor for playing power rangers and is happy to swing a sword at him. Estelle continues to play dress-up and with her princess dolls every day. It is very hard to resist when she asks me if I'll play princesses with her. Thankfully Elissa is learning to play princesses now and also loves to dress up. She surprised us the other day by writing her name with no previous instruction on writing. She asked me, "What comes next?" When I looked at what she was doing I saw the letters, "Ets," written on a paper. She likes to dress up her capital Es by adding extra horizontal lines between the top and bottom lines.

I'm having fun getting ready for the baby. I've been going through my girl baby storage, cleaning, and getting the crib and cradle ready. I've never put this much thought into baby preparation before. But this is the first time that there hasn't been something major going on. We have no exams, or school projects, or moves, or job changes. We like our doctor, and I feel like I know what to expect . . . We'll see what curve ball we get thrown in the next couple weeks. Surely something unexpected wll come up . . . Nick is still working on his garden and orchard. He transplanted most of his seedlings that he has been growing. They are truly his babies. He checks on them before and after work and gets pretty sad when one of them shrivels up under the sun.

Well, thanks for listening. . . we'll be in touch. You'll hear from us mid-month with baby news. So far we have an induction date for May 15th. We hear it is a good week for having babies, right, Summer?

Love, The Bryces

McKay 'n' Keresa

Keresa now has a picture of Jackson on her desktop background of her computer. Sometimes he'll walk up behind her and when she minimizes a window, he'll say peek-a-boo. So they play computer peek-a-boo now for a while.

This month on EBay we got some special nasty tasting nail polish for curbing nail biting. Our intent was to paint it on Sydney's thumbs so she would stop sucking them at night. It seems better than the traditional entire-thumb paint because this stuff lasts a few days, regardless of whether the kid can hurry and lick it all off, or wash it off by washing their hands, because it is paint, not just some syrup stuff. So we put it on her thumbs. The first night, she came into our room and said, "Eeww mommy I have yucky yucky bubble mouth!" Keresa told her to get a drink. She said that she already had tried that and it was still so yucky.

Sydney and I had a date yesterday evening. We ate pizza, then washed my truck, then played outside for a few hours. When we came in, she told me that we should have dessert. So I suggested Gatorade. She said, no, that’s not dessert. I suggested pancakes. She laughed, "No, Dad, that's just food. I want dessert." So I asked what was her suggestion. She walked over to a drawer and pulled out her cooking apron. As she was tying it on, she said, "I'll make some scones." I told her only Mom knew how to make those, but I would settle for some graham crackers. She agreed. We sat at the table and ate them. I made her a graham cracker sandwich with frosting in the middle. A little of the frosting dripped out onto the side, then onto her hand. She got all paranoid and whiny about it, so I told her to just lick it off. She kind of whined that she couldn't because it was, “…on my thumb with the yucky nail polish!"

Jackson is confused about whether nodding the head means yes, and shaking it back and forth means no. He was walking behind Keresa while she was taking dishes of food from the kitchen to the table saying, "Bite please, Bite please!" So she turned around and asked him if he would like a bite. He responded by shaking his head side to side. On another occasion, she had him in the doctor's office waiting room, and a lady said, "Are you a good boy?" and he shook his head back and forth. We are trying to encourage his English because his sign language is not too reliable.

Keresa is pretty busy making preparations for moving. By the end of law school, I'm sure we will be expert movers! One of her sisters sent Sydney a paper chain that she could tear one link off every day until it was time to go to Las Vegas. I'm not sure who is more excited to count the links and associate that to the number of days left in Grundy: Sydney or Keresa.

MK KGW SRW JGW

Matthias & Megan

The biggest news for this month comes in the form of a sweet job offer, completing our summer plans as the semester comes to a close. A week ago I received a letter from Data Systems and Technology offering me a job as a "full-time temporary Engineer I intern." I'll be working in imagery analysis, as in images taken from satellites and surveillance airplanes, kind of like Google Earth images. This is really exciting for me because it sounds like doing things straight out of my Physical Optics class this past semester. It's incredible to actually see some application of things that I've been doing in the classroom, get some real industry experience in my field to prepare me for graduation, and make money!

The main downside of this job offer is that I'll be working in Sierra Vista. Megan still has her position at M3 Engineering here in Tucson, and they're looking forward to her working full-time this summer, which would put us apart. Our current plan is for me to work four ten hour days Monday through Thursday in Sierra Vista while staying with Megan's parents, then return to Tucson for a three-day weekend with Megan. She only works until 11 am on Fridays. People ask us how in the world we're going to survive, but after this grueling semester, I feel like I could survive anything. Really, even though we won't be together four days out of the week, we'll still get to spend a net more time together than during this semester. This semester, our schedules have been do homework all the time everyday, play racquetball together Friday night, do homework all day Saturday, then do something Saturday night, and then have all Sunday together. So though we'll be apart during the week, we'll have a whole homework-free long weekend together! Hooray!

As the semester winds downs and projects and exams mount up, Megan and I found ourselves getting even busier, but burning out. To distract ourselves from so much that we've had to do in the last month, we've picked up a few new hobbies. Megan's new hobby is digital scrap booking. Many websites sell (and also have freebies) many digital scrap booking supplies. It's just like normal scrap booking with goofy prints, flowery background papers, buttons, ribbons, pins, and everything else, only in a photo shop type program instead of on your table. Some of the bonuses that Megan has cited over normal scrap booking are: 1) Inexpensive: what would be maybe a $20-25 scrap booking kit at a craft store is downloadable in a $2-4 dollar kit which you can reuse infinitely. 2) No mess as everything is on your computer with a quick clean-up. 3) One fancy design can be altered by changing effects and colors. 4) It's just like working with AutoCAD engineering software, only fun because it doesn't have to do with school or work! The only disadvantage Megan finds with her new hobby is the high resolution photos and scrap booking supplies take a long time to process on a four-year-old laptop. But with summer employment and two birthdays around the corner, we just may see about some upgrades. If you want the skinny on digital scrap booking, feel free to give Megan a call or email her, and she'll gladly give you the skinny on it, how to get started, and where to find the best freebies.

My new hobby is kind of a revamping of an old hobby that I just haven't had time to do lately. Before my mission, I was in a barbershop quartet. It was tons of fun, but pretty demanding to meet everyday and sing for an hour to try and get our voices to blend and match while learning tricky chords. Matching up schedules with four busy college kids is pretty tricky and not usually possible. Recently, after seeing a high school production of The Music Man, I was searching Youtube.com for a certain barbershop song, when I fell upon something that seemed to be a solution to my barbershop problems. Many people had recorded themselves singing barbershop, only with themselves singing every single part, multitracked! They even have the video overlain with each part in a different window. I quickly set to work finding my barbershop music and my headset microphone so that I might try recording myself singing a few of my barbershop favorites. While my barbershop voice is quite out of practice, therein lies a great opportunity for how I can spend some additional time this summer. I haven't figured out the video yet, but I have recorded the audio of myself singing 4-part harmonies, and they're not half bad. But if you want to see some amazing videos of multitrack barbershop, search it up on Youtube.com.

Some other things worthy of note that Megan and I have spent our time on this month include attending a Tucson Sidewinders minor league baseball game at M3's company baseball day, complete with bratwurst and BBQ pork supper. We raided the candy aisle for half-off Easter candy (picture of us eating Whopper's Robin Eggs included). We enjoyed many free food events on campus such as free pizza colloquium speakers in the optics building, undergraduate appreciation hot dog day also at the optics building, and several other random BBQs. We also attended (as I made reference to before) a high school production of The Music Man. A high school Megan passes every time on her way to work advertised it, so we went and had a good time. It was a fun show, although it was definitely a high school production, not nearly up to the level of an MVHS performance, I think. I'd like to think that my memory of the near-professional quality productions of which I took part is accurate.

With only 3 days of classes left and a week and a half of exams, this semester will soon be in the books, and then we'll close those books and throw them away. Well, maybe we'll keep them for reference. We'll see.

Con Amor,

Megan and Matthias