Hi Everyone!
Well, the snow has stopped and the wind is not quite so violent now. It was quite a blizzard until a few hours ago. I see the snow already starting to soak in; nice and wet. That is good for the plant life and also for the roads tomorrow morning! :) We stayed in ALL day and tried to shelter and feed as many little birdies as we could. It was fun to watch them. We have about four varieties that come around now. We were out of power until about 1:30pm and it is interesting how much you take your electricity for granted! We were fine and we do have a gas stove and fireplace so we werent too worried. We went out around noon (Jason on his crutches because I didn’t know the first thing about the generator) to hook up the generator for Jason’s ice water machine as he was really needing it by that point. We had Jason’s dad on the phone, trying to wire into the control panel in the garage and I was about to go out in the snow to turn off the electricity to the house at the outside box when the power flipped back on and we were saved! :) Jason’s dad said we could hire an electrician to come and wire the control panel so all we have to do is flip a breaker and plug the generator in to a different spot. We’ll be doing that first thing next week……. it was a good evaluation of how “NOT” prepared we were even though we had bought the generator and had it sitting in the garage. We will see if we get more snow on Saturday for the Easter weekend.
I sent a text about Jason’s knee surgery but I don’t know how to send it to Japan. In short, Jason had a torn (more like shredded from the pictures) meniscus on his left knee, most likely an injury from years ago that was not diagnosed nor treated properly and has had the arthritis wearing away at it ever since. His arthritis doctor has been telling him for a year that it was just a side effect of his arthritis but he had nagging doubts in the back of his mind. At the beginning of the year he made a resolution to get it looked into and we are so glad that he did. His ortho doctor is amazing! (And his arthritis doctor is too, just a bad mistake.) He was very sad to report that Jason’s knee was in such bad shape for being as young as he is. Removing the meniscus should give him some pain relief for now. His best option, moving forward, is to receive injections in his knee of some synthetic-cartilage substance every few months. This will buy him some time, but we don’t know how much. He is looking at a partial to total knee replacement on that side. His pain was pretty severe yesterday but seems better this afternoon. The kids were happy to have a snow day, of course, but more happy that they got to hang around with their dad. I was a bit too “nazi” about them getting their practicing and chores done but they did need to get done and now they have enjoyed a relaxing afternoon dying Easter eggs and doing as they pleased.
I was able to attend an informational meeting at my friend’s house about “Thrive” freeze-dried food. We were able to sample quite a bit of different products, both dried and prepared and learn more about why it’s a great thing to have in your storage. I ordered some to try and I hope it will be a nice way to store, particularly, fruits and vegetables, cheeses and butter. I want to cook with the cheese and butter and see how it works but seriously…..it would have to be pretty bad to be worse than nothing!!! The food lasts 25-30 years, depending upon the product so I am thinking it’s going to be a nice way to round out all of the grains we already have down in the basement. I’ll let you know what I think as we try using it.
In other news, Jason’s Chinese customer is in some type of probationary period with the U.S. government beginning tomorrow, so Jason’s company and team can continue on with the chip for now. If the Chinese company continues to be compliant, they will be fully reinstated some time this summer. I suppose it is good to get this chip out the door — there has been some much “blood, sweat, tears” and time spent on it by so many. We were really enjoying not having any evening meetings; however…….. ;) The new parent company, Broadcom, seems to be doing well so far. Not too many changes on our end.
I have been enjoying studying my lesson on the Atonement of Jesus Christ this entire month! I have had so many small, but special, experiences that have reminded me of the Savior. Just yesterday I had two: When I was driving home from the surgery center after dropping Jason off (and going back home to get the kids off to school), the sun was coming and just illuminating everything along the country road with it’s soft, yellow light. The long grasses, the trees still barren of leaves, the farm fences, an old barn, all silhouetted in splendor of the breaking dawn that filled the entire sky! It was breathtaking! I was listening to a song from “Lamb of God” about when Mary discovered that the Lord had risen from the dead and the Spirit spoke sweetly to my heart again that it was true. It was beautiful. Then, later that afternoon, I was busily clearing away all of the leaves and debris from the winter around all of my perennial plants. As I cleared each plant, I could see the tender, green growth of the new plant under all of the decay and I was reminded of how everything about Springtime is a symbol of the Savior and the newness of life that is offered to all through His Resurrection and Atonement; both newness of physical life and newness of spiritual life. It was another beautiful moment.
Last week was a great week for everyone; Ashtyn particularly. She participated in a beautiful orchestra concert. They combined with the band for a full symphony, if you will and they sounded really fantastic! She was happy about her performance and also happy that they have one more before the end of the year. She really loves her cello and has had a wonderful experience with instrumental music at her school. Last week Ashtyn also received an award for that essay she wrote (I think I told you) about “What the American flag means to me”. The presenters came in their uniforms and gave a whole speech to her Language Arts class and then read her essay aloud. I was deeply touched; I hadn’t heard it since she first wrote it months ago. She has a wonderful talent to put words together to convey great imagery and meaning. She is so brilliant most of the time that it baffles me when she can’t remember to feed her dogs or turn in her math assignments or that she really is supposed to wash her face every day. I think this is the life of a teenager……from what i hear from other parents. We’re first-timers, you know.
Alyssa is also a brilliant girl and I wish I could get her to read something other than Harry Potter for the hundredth time!!! The Easter Bunny will be bringing her something in her basket, I hope and Ashtyn just found “Goose Girl” in the bottom of her locker (see above paragraph, she thought it was lost forever) so that Alyssa can start that series too. Alyssa is my very best babysitter; especially for Jarrett. Too bad she has to go to school…… Alyssa attended a really nice birthday party with some of her friends on Friday night. She had a wonderful time and I enjoyed meeting the mom and her daughter. Turns out that the girl’s dad is also an engineer named Jason and he was currently traveling to China! How funny; we got a kick out of that. Alyssa also attended an all-day Babysitter Boot Camp with five of her friends on Saturday. They had a really great time! It was taught by a couple in our ward who have their own local business that is similar to the Red Cross. She’s all ready and waiting to be twelve now……in November! She said she’ll still babysit for me, though, even when other people ask her. :)
Jantzen practiced his piano so well that he passed off all of his songs at his lesson last week and I think he felt really great about that. He also earned three belt loops at the Cub Scout Pack Meeting and was REALLY excited to show them to all of us and get them on his belt. I know pretty much nothing about Scouts but I’m trying to tune in and support him. He has a couple of great leaders; one who isn’t even a member of our church but she agreed to co-lead the den and she is amazing! We finally got him onto a book series that he loves and he has read two whole books in the past week!!! I am really excited to see HIM excited about reading so much. He was, in fact, so excited about reading that he was trying to download the next book from Amazon (without asking first) to the iPad and he didn’t know what to click and ended up ordering three copies of the paper book and having them shipped to our house! They arrived two days ago, much to my surprise, and we had a nice chat about how only Mom and Dad order things on Amazon.com. Better for him (and us) to learn now when all he wants to order is a book, right? Jantzen had a really special day with Jason last Friday. Jason took him out of school for the day and they went skiing up at Eldora for one last hurrah! (Did I already tell that story). It was snowing so it was a bit long getting up there (Jason praised having a truck all evening long), but they had such a wonderful day together. Jantzen was skiing so well that Jason took him up to the top for the last few runs. He’s not skiing black diamonds like Celina (we didn’t make that comparison to him, either, if you know what i mean) but he was definitely feeling a great sense of accomplishment. Jason was feeling a great sense of pain in his knee, which lasted until his surgery. He knew that he would, though, and he says he was glad for the day with his boy. It was VERY funny that he ran into his ortho surgeon at Costco on the way home. Dr. Hartman didn’t blame him for taking one last run and he kind of chuckled a bit at him, in fact. Good guy.
Aubrey is writing a lot more at school and we are getting new books at her reading level at the library more often. That is one of my big things to help her with from now until she starts first grade and is gone all day…..well, probably still after that too. She loves to get up and move around and be silly and active more than my other two girls. It is good to remember that kids are not the same. They don’t learn the same way, they don’t have strengths in the same areas, and they don’t even like the same things; even coming from the same family. I am trying to discover more about Aubrey as an individual person and highlight her talents and interests to her. She loves music and dancing so maybe I’ll look for a dance camp she can attend one week this summer. She got very high marks on her report card for being a great citizen in her class, helping others, following directions, being fair and working hard. Aubrey is starting to attend a farm school that some friend’s of ours are running each Tuesday morning. This past week they planted a fairy garden in addition to collecting eggs from the chickens and playing in some other areas of the farm. I think she will really love it this Spring and Jarrett too. He can tag along even if he can’t participate in all of the activities.
Jarrett has been a little possessive of Mom lately. He also hasn’t been eating too much, just wanting a lot of milk. Maybe he’s getting some new teeth or something. He has really started to love sitting and reading books on my lap with his blanket and a bottle of milk. He doesn’t make many more new sounds, but I know that he is developing his vocabulary in his mind. I bought him a couple of new, big Tonka trucks for playing outside this summer. I told the other kids, when I came home with the trucks, that I am an “old mom” and not so imaginative and energetic as I once was so sometimes I need new toys to keep me in tune with playing with Jarrett. I’m not sure if they bought it but Jarrett REALLY loved the trucks and we played with them all afternoon yesterday and remembered to bring them inside before the big snow.
We had a really great Stake Conference this week, both Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Topics of focus were: Sabbath Day observance, temple attendance and family history work, and living happily through adversity. All of these things are intertwined. It was a very inspiring conference. We were glad that Ashtyn and Alyssa could babysit for us on Saturday night. OH, wait, it was mostly Alyssa…..so I paid her on the sly and not her sister, but don’t tell! ;)
Have a great week and Easter celebration!
Love,
Amy and All
P.S. Jarrett just said (screamed) a new word. Guess what it was? Mine! I am not extremely thrilled…….:0
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