Christmas 2008

Lane successfully negotiated the stringent and rigorous interview process posed by her Bishop/Dad and was baptized in July. After years of competing against the two big girls for bandwidth in the household, she is now enjoying a fairly empty nest. She misses her sisters. But, seems to enjoy our undivided attention and also seems to demand less of it. When it comes to bikes, our kids are slow learners. But, Lane learned to ride a bike this year after putting her mind to it for a couple of days. She is looking forward to growing big enough to go on serious rides on the tandem with daddy. If she had her way she would spend all of her free time watching the Spongebob channel.

Jensen successfully completed 4 years of High School and 2 years of Junior College in the last 3 years. So we gave her a semester off for a huge Lollapolooza. Now she has her nose at the BYU grindstone. We were proud of her when she graduated from High School. Unfortunately, the biggest attraction at the event was David Archuleta in the audience. Each of us has at one time or another had trouble negotiating the entrance to the garage with the sideview mirrors on the car. Jensen is the latest to score a casualty in this game and as a result received a nice new OEM Ford Explorer mirror as a Christmas present this year.

While finishing up a 3 year plus stint working at Laser Quest and also teaching Kung Fu at a local private school, Ailsa successfully completed her Bachelor's degree at the University of Utah in English and launched into the LDS Mission life. She entered the MTC early in January and is going to study Spanish for two months and then share the Gospel in the Houston, Texas Mission. She is excited to be going to some place warm and that features yummy Tex/Mex food. Todd had a good number of vacation days to use at the end of the year (after Ailsa finished College and before she began her mission.) So, we spent A LOT of time together as a family STAYcationing at Christmas time, eating, watching movies, enjoying one another, taking a long drink before crossing the desert. We truly miss Ailsa. But, know she is doing a great thing. She has suspended writing for the interim. But, has several books completed waiting for an adoring audience. We recently learned that her uncle Wade met Stephanie Meyer a couple of years ago at some book show thingy in Arizona. He looked at her Twilight offering and soundly pronounced that it would never go anywhere. We are hoping he will make a similar pronouncement about one of Ailsa's works.

Lenore loves to troll the “Interwebs” and pick fights with and educate the unsuspecting liberals or anti LDS she runs into. She has taken Elder Ballard's admonition to "spread the Gospel" via the internet a little too much to heart. We seriously think she wanted another voting fiasco in Florida to provide hours of political entertainment just like in 2000. She has exhausted the local library's supply of books on polygamy and is working on putting together a “Women of Colorado City” calendar to bring in some additional income. She and Ailsa went to a Glenn Beck show a year ago and managed to get Ailsa a couple of dates with the son of a local Talk Radio personality. She loves to venture into foreign culture and is trying to figure out the difference between the hookah and the haka.

Todd participated in two cycling “races” this year and really enjoyed them. He placed fifth out of 715 people in one. He also finally met a cycling goal he has had for some time, completing a “century” ride at a 20 mph pace or better. He also compiled 1000 miles cycling during the month of July 2007. At this point we figure Todd has spent 54% of his married life serving in Bishoprics. This year at the beach, rather than have some kid call Todd an old man (as happened in the recent past), he was resting on the sand down near the water and overheard someone ask if he was alive.

Family Vacations over the last two years included a couple of trips to California and to Las Vegas for niece and nephew weddings and a nice Thanksgiving stay at the Colorado River. One of the California jaunts included a wedding Todd was able to perform for a niece. We also had our normal Beach romps in San Clemente where we concentrated on taking the big girls surfing just about every day. We had a really good rainy day at Disneyland when the park was very uncrowded. We seriously spent more time in line at a Churro cart than we did on average for the rides. We ate lunch at the Blue Bayou restaurant, something Todd and Lenore have wanted to do since time immemoriam. Laney had a loose tooth that was paining her in the restaurant, so Todd pulled it out right there. Later he thought it would have been fun to make a wish on it and throw it into Davey Jones locker. But, we probably would have gotten caught by Disneyland security and tasered on the spot.

Ruby the cat died and we got another cat from some friends. We named him Digory and he's got a great fluffy coat. So, he mostly gets called Puff Diggy and sometimes Snoop Diggy Dogg or Snoopy Dogg Dogg. The other cat, Tommy, loves to go out during the day to rid the neighborhood of any feline rabble. Seriously he has lost several collars in daytime tussles. We imagine a nice stash of them somewhere nearby where his most formidable cat opponent hangs out. It is not uncommon for him to return home with some nasty scratches and scars. Meanwhile Diggy looks at him like Rodney King saying "can't we all just get along."

When we are not studying up on the latest hypermiling techniques or learning ways to fend off attacks by Somali sea pirates, or viewing the first few seasons of Ugly Betty that we missed, We often think of you, all of our friends and family and wish we could spend more time with you.