Message from Mom, Etc.

Dear Family,

September's here, and we're back to school and the regular grind again. The kids, including McKay, Summer, Matt and Megan, have new teachers and new classes. Jeremy's glad to be out of that routine. The Atwoods have a new home with new schools and exciting new adventures. Attempting to keep my mind off the stress of going back to school, I visited the families of Becca, Martha and Matt down in St. David, Vail and Tucson. It was simply delightful to spend time with them and all the wonderful grandchildren. We swam, picnicked, shopped and just enjoyed each other's company. School still came, nonetheless, but I'm sure I started off much more relaxed. Then for Labor Day weekend, Ken and I headed to Seattle for another break across Lake Washington to Melanie's new home in Clyde's Hill, Bellevue. Their new neighborhood feels like a summer vacation spot with little beaches close by, exotic trees everywhere and blackberries growing wild. With so many changes, life keeps us alert with its exciting surprises. McKay certainly experienced the biggest surprise when his appendix ruptured during his first weeks of school. We're so grateful for the blessings of his recovery. Becca's also recovering. She had an infected cyst rupture on her neck. And in a couple of days, we look forward to Ken's recovery from his imminent shoulder surgery. We miss you, and wish you all the best as the new school year unfolds.

Love & prayers, Mom

Dear Children,

I'm inclined to relate to you something that recently occurred to me. It was easy as a parent to use you, my children, for my own design. That is, have you clean the yard, paint the house, do chores or tasks beyond what it took to learn good work ethics. Worse yet, there were times when I'd show you off: "Look how smart, beautiful, talented, well educated, hard-working, athletic, polite, out-going, well-mannered, ad nauseam." I'd say to myself, "I must be the best parent alive!" So what recently occurred to me? Our children are here for us to help along eternal paths, not for us to use as medals of honor, or live Barbie and Ken dolls, or train as Joe Namaths. Here's a tip if you're interested. When you're wondering if what you're doing is in your or your child's best interest, Ask yourself whether or not what you plan will help Our Heavenly Father find good parents to loan his children to. Or are you doing what is short term popular. Pretty droll, huh? Don't try to read too much into this or take it personally. It's just the reflection of age on raising you all and counseling ten years of students. Nonetheless keep the eternal perspective.

Love you tons, The Old Man.

Chris & Summer

Hello to all,

We haven't written in quite some time, so I am going to do a recap. Our summer kicked off with a trip to Denver. Chris stayed home to work while I took all the kids on a Colorado adventure. We had a blast: we went to the Zoo, Tiny Train Town and Water World. Tisha and I even took all the kids fishing all by ourselves. That meant we had to bait the hooks with worms, and try to get the fish off the line. We caught nine trout. I think this was the highlight of the trip. After ten days we decided we were homesick, so we made our 13-hour drive home. Chris was glad to have his noisy bunch back. We also pulled our fifth wheel up to Brian Head, UT.

July was tons of fun with the awesome trip to Arizona, and Madyson had a great birthday. On the 24th of July, I took the kids up to Utah to see my grandparents. Chris stayed home to work, what a trooper. We spent 5 days in the Ogden area. I thought the weather was wonderful; Sage even took a nap outside on the lawn.

August was HOT and MUGGY. We tried to spend every weekend up the mountain. The kids had fun with hikes and campfires. Bronson can roast a mean marshmallow. Chris and I took a SCUBA diving class. It was over two weekends at Lake Mead. We needed some one-on-one time after two crazy months, so this was perfect. Now we are planning a diving trip to Hawaii in October. I hope we don't drown.

School has started, and I now have two children in school. Hooray for me!! Leslie is in the fourth grade this year. She loves it so far, although it is only the second week. Madyson is looking so grown up. She gets herself up and dressed before anyone else wakes up. Bronson cries every time we go to the bus stop. He wants to ride the school bus and go to school. I am not quite ready for that. This brings me up to date. Sage is starting to talk. She is everybody's favorite; we all love to kiss and hug her every minute. She is so cute, and she knows it. I think we may be in trouble.

I hope everyone is having as much fun as we are!! We miss you all and hope to see you soon.

Love, Chris & Summer & family

Melanie & Andy

Martha & Jeremy

September 2007

"Come to this land of sunshine To this land where life is young. Where the wide, wide world is waiting, The songs that will now be sung. Where the golden sun is flaming Into warm, white shining day, And the sons of men are blazing Their priceless right of way." (Official song of the state of Arizona, verse 1)

This is the fifth and hopefully final state song I'll need to learn. Jeremy and I are happy to call Arizona our new home. The kids are equally enthusiastic. It's hot, but a welcome dry heat after living in the steamy city of Philly. Here, when it gets too hot, we jump in the pool. In the humidity in Philly, we sweat enough to fill a pool.

One great benefit of living in the west is that Mom can make a last minute decision to visit and then 8 hours later: poof, there she is! This happened to us our first week of living here. We enjoyed her company and the company of Becca and fam and Matt and Megan. I think the boys equally shared my excitement of so many close family members visiting. I don't think Hyrum sat still the entire weekend. He was on his feet bouncing up and down and giggling most of the time. What fun!

One of my favorite past times here is to sit out on our balcony. We enjoy the cool summer breeze and watch the sun set and lightening shows. The boys favorite past time was to sit out on the balcony and watch the trains drive by. That is until Jeremy caught them doing an acrobat show on top of the balcony edge. Now they watch the nearby trains safely from inside through the window. Another fun part of living here is that we can see a mountain from every window in our home. This is a big deal because in Philly the only "mountain" there, was a small mound of dirt in a park that the boys would run up and down on.

Last Friday night we all went to the local High School football game. Our town, Vail, is still small enough that the football game was the main attraction for the evening. We had to park on the side of the road and walk a little ways to the game. I think it would have been faster if we just walked from our home (we live a few blocks away). As I sat there with my family, I had to fight back the tears of relief and joy of finally being settled and situated. Sure, Jeremy is still two tests away from getting his license and then job, but it feels so good to be done with school.

The week of September 10th - 15th will be a big one. Jeremy has the two exams plus Dad has his barbaric arm-twisting ordeal. My breathing will be more regular after that week.

Take care and enjoy September. Love, The Tanners

P.S. The first week we were here we unfortunately found a mouse in our garage. Do you think he jumped in one of the moving boxes in Philly and waited until we got to our new house to surprise us? We also found a mousey looking thing in our swimming pool. He had a long tail with a puff ball at the end.

Becca & Nick

This month Jonathan started school. For his first show-and-tell he brought his Lightning McQueen racecar. He practiced with me what he would say, "I like this toy because it is a racecar and I like racecars." What we didn't plan was that afterwards he donated it to the classroom store so that his friend could buy it with school money! Then unexpectedly his friend was sick the day they had store. I haven't heard the latest on the Lightning McQueen saga. Elissa has said her first comprehensible English word, "Tickle-tickle." Then she started saying a bright and cheery, "Hi!"

Estelle burst into tears the first time Jonathan got on the school bus. When I asked her what was wrong she managed to say through sobs, "I want Jonathan!" After that I just couldn't help but cry too. So we hugged and said how much we missed Jonathan. Nick has officially left Safeway and is now working for Wal-Mart. We're excited for his new schedule and location.

I had an infected cyst earlier this month and now it has to heal from the inside out. Don't be impressed because I've been a big wimp. So Nick has been repacking the hole in my neck a couple times a day. He pokes gauze the size of a shoelace with a shish kabob stick into the depth of the hole. Doctor says it'll take two to three more weeks until it's healed.

We've had a few family get-togethers this month too. One day at the Tanner's we learned that Jonathan has always known how to swim. He just never wanted to until he saw how much fun his cousins were having. So he took off his life jacket and jumped in and swam to Grandma.

We love ya all!

McKay & Keresa

Sydney always helps me empty all the garbages on Saturday nights, then take it out to the street. She thinks she is in charge of that. She walks around the house with a handful of bags, dropping one at each garbage can. She stands and waits for me like she hasn't got all day or something.

After that, she was reading books with me in Jackson's room. His room is the kid playroom full of toys in the closet, so that is mostly where we play. So I asked her to pick out two books she would like to read, and take them out of his room because I was going to put him to bed, and I would then read to her by herself out in the living room before bed. When I got back, she was nowhere in sight, but the closet doors were closed. So I played and said, "Where's Sydney, oh, Sydney, where are you." And she threw the doors open to get me by surprise.

Jackson's record is 5 steps. I think he will walk some day, but so far, no more than 5 steps in a row. He has started making a lot of faces, including some pretty sarcastic ones. We will try to catch one on photo for you all.

I am recovering well from the emergency C-section I had, or maybe it was an A-section, for appendix. Keresa knows a lot of stuff about how I feel, how I should rehab, and what things I cannot do thanks to her C-sections. She coaches me well. Luckily we got our health insurance all set up and prepared first thing when we got here. Otherwise this appendix ordeal would have cost as much as schooling . . .

Thanks everyone for your love and prayers.

MK KGW SRW JGW

Matthias & Megan

I write to you from inside a luxury home on a hill that overlooks the Tucson Valley from the north. Megan and I currently home-sit for a couple we kind of met in a round about way. One of my old roommate's mom's forwarded me an email from her family's piano teacher that mentioned one of her piano students needed a house sitter. So I called her and she gave me the phone number to Cherie and Roberto, a very nice couple in a very nice house that needed someone to live in it for 10 days and keep their pets and plants and refrigerator company. She also left us the keys to her old Ford Bronco with the instructions, "Just please don't take it to Phoenix if you can help it." So here we are until next Saturday! It makes our schedules a little bit different since we have to drive a little bit to get to the University now. But not a huge deal, and it's been like a second honeymoon for me and Megan.

Ooh! So I suppose I should tell you about our first honeymoon while we're on the subject. After my second session of summer classes got out but before fall semester began, Megan and I had a week and a half with no school, so we'd kind of halfway planned to make it a honeymoon. The only thing was money was looking really tight and the car was acting up a little. We also had to worry a little bit about Megan's tuition to pay because she lost her scholarship. I still had mine, but that only covered my tuition and not even my couple hundred dollars in random school fees that come up every school year. I also had a hefty looking book list for the semester. But we prayed about it, made sure and kept up our tithing on all the wedding money we got (which amazingly still keeps coming in the mail) and the way was made clear! Randomly, Megan got a $750 dollar summer bonus from her work just because she's a good worker and everyone there loves her. That paid for the car and then some. Fafsa told us that BOTH Megan and I were eligible for grant money which well covered everything we needed there. The only thing left was finding a place to stay. It just so happens that Megan's grandma in Redlands, California, was out of town, but gave us permission to use her hide-a-key to stay as long as we liked! We also heard that a few of our friends were going to Magic Mountain, and could get us reduced ticket prices on the internet as part of their group. So what could stop us? We went!

Saturday, August 11, we left in the morning to California. We arrived first in San Diego to visit the temple there as I (to my memory) had never been and Megan had never been through. We did a session and admired how amazing it was. Then we drove to Redlands and spent Sunday with Megan's aunt and uncle's family. Then during our visit they asked us, "Do you have any plans tomorrow? Would you like to go to Disneyland? We know someone who could get you in for free!" So Megan's aunt called up her brother's ex-wife who works at Disneyland. She said if we went during her lunch break, she could get us into California Adventure Park, the new half of Disneyland. So we went!

After California park, we went to Newport Beach where we simply walked across the beach barefoot looking off into the night horizon. It was pretty sandy, and just pretty too. We found a quaint Italian ristorante a block up from the beach where we got the treatment royal for being on our honeymoon and also a free cookie! Tuesday, we went back to Newport, but this time we first went to the beautiful Newport Beach Temple for a session. Then back to the beach for some serious boogie boarding with the boards Megan's uncle lent us. Wednesday was our Magic Mountain day. Then Thursday it was time to say goodbye to California, but not before visiting the Redlands Temple located about two minutes from Megan's grandma's house. That one is also amazing. I guess all the temples must just be pretty amazing.

Back in AZ, we went straight to Phoenix as Megan's brother was getting married the next morning. It was almost like crazy deja vu to the night before Megan and I got married, only this time, I got to share the hotel room with Megan instead of Mom and Dad. The wedding was beautiful, they were beautiful, and the Mesa Temple was still awesome, only this time, we were in different chairs in the sealing room. I didn't want to end the vacation and go back to Tucson only to start school and be back to all the stress of everything again, but here we are in the middle of it all.

We're currently three weeks into the semester (only 13 left!) and I've already had one exam with another coming up this week. School is hard, but Heavenly Father still blesses us tons and, just like everything opened up for our vacation, the path in front of us just keeps clearing as we keep working hard and doing what's right (insert Sunday School answers here).

Con Amor, Matthias and Megan