Andie and Layne update

We have had a very busy few weeks. Laynes been travelling around Montana and Idaho giving seminars for Fred Pryor, Loren and Nicole were buried in studying for semester finals (which led to Loren's stress fiiled coments on facebook that caused some concern for a few of his aunts). We celebrated William's 8th birthday Thursday and continued the celebration with a sleepover last night. Talk about unrestrained chaos. i did have some games planned but the evening was intereupted by a call from Loren informing us that his little car was making a horrible sound. The 8 7and 8 year olds were left to their own devices while i arranged a tow truck and another ride to the church activity he was heading for) Williams baptism is being planned for Presidents Day weekend to be held in Utah if everything works out and the weather holds, for those of you who might be interested in attendng.

We are surviving the economic downturn so far. Layne is still working on getting his business up and running. He Loves speaking and His Fred Pryor gigs are only making him better. This really is what he needs to be doing. a job in the interim would be nice but were not holding our breaths right now.

I don't know if this is common knowledge but we have a new dog. Ginger is a Yellow Lab that our friends in the ward couldn't take with them when they moved to Idaho. She is a sweet heart but full of energy. Teneya can only take so much of her and then he hides or asks to go outside.

We're not sure what our summer is going to be like so we're hesitant to make any commitments but so far that last week in June is still OK for us for EFY. we'll let you know when things feel more definite.

Love you all, thanks for keeping track of my kids on facebook. i love that they can stay in contact with their extended family this way.

the Kertamuseses :)

Casey and Andrea update

Hello family...we've had a pretty good month. We celebrated Lydia's birthday last week. She had a "Wow Wow Wubzy" cake...it was really fun to make. She would look at her cake all day and every time she'd scream "It's Wow Wow!" She is growing up so fast and her vocabulary has exploded. What a joy she is to our family. In other news, we are refinancing our house. We locked into a 4.8 % interest rate...can't beat that right? We were a little disappointed in our appraisal though. We lost $40,000 in value since last February. It was very discouraging...nothing is selling here in Springfield so house prices are plummeting. Oh well, we've decided to just stay in our house for the forseeable future so I'm sure the value will go back up. Casey (and his Ward Mission Leader) just started a very aggressive missionary program in our ward. They are calling whole families to serve as missionaries --children included. They meet every Tuesday and fan out to visit every less active member in the Ward. (We have hundreds of them) Last Sunday, the Ward mission Leader presented the new program and I was the "warm up" speaker. I thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the very quiet stand. If you have to speak in church to get a quiet, child-free sacrament meeting, then I think it's worth it! Thanks Aunt Charlotte for wrestling with Lydia for the whole meeting. We've enjoyed getting to "chat" with you all on Facebook! Have a great month.

Happy 2nd Birthday Lydia!

Cool Blog Connections

If you want to check out more about some members of our family, just click on their pictures to the right and it will link you to their blog or website.  Jeremy and Christy's picture will send you to their Labradoodle website, Christy and Niel's will send you to Christy's blog, and Maria and Kelly's will send you to their blog.  Isn't technology amazing!

Let me know if you have a link you want to me add.

Jeremy and Christy update

Hi Family. Yes, we are still here in Klamath Falls. We are in full
swing and up to our ankles with puppies (well, 5 at the moment,
anticipating another 25 or so). Our place is a circus (just with tiny
little circus performers). We are excited about the new year. We are
also well aware of the economic challenges (our hospital has laid off 75
full time positions). Thankfully, people keep getting hurt (can you
believe I said that?) and the Emergency Room is still very busy. The
kids are all doing well. Actually there are 12 kids in our family room
right now. We seem to have become the "hangout house" for the youth of
our ward. They are an amazing bunch of kids. We figure we would rather
them all be here having fun in a safe environment playing "Apples to
Apples" than out there smoking crack (you know, like Mom let Bryce and I
do.) Anyway, multiply all of these kids with 10 dogs and the decibel
level is off the charts. I do have to say, having teenagers is a blast.
I think I have actually reached "cool Dad status" lately. It will expire
soon, so I will enjoy it for the time being. We are absolutely excited
about the family reunion, especially since we missed last years. I hope
that everyone will be there. I have included a couple of pictures of
our family. Aren't you amazed at how much all of the kids (and Christy)
have my face? Well, we love and miss you all. Maria, the Blog looks
fantastic! Take care all,

Jeremy and family

Scary!!!!

Arizona Update-new home

We are now moved into our new old trailer (circa 1970's), have almost everything put away. We are about 65 miles from Page. What a different atmosphere! We have an active branch with an involved Branch President. We had two different members approach us at church Sunday with the names of people they want us to meet and teach. This area is beautiful. We drove to Page where they have a super WalMart to get supplies and groceries. The terrain of mesas, stone pillars and cliffs is amazing. This has been one of those bittersweet experiences for us. We felt we were really making progress and we would be teaching many more people in Cameron whose friendships we were cultivating. We hope the new couple there will be able to pick up where we left off. I will still be using the same email address though I have to access it from on line since I can't access it directly.

Bryce and Laura

Hey family. sorry this is late but I will try to be better. We are glad to start a new year with new challenges. We had a nice quiet Christmas with laura's family. We then went to Logan to go snowmobiling in the mountains with my brother in law. Me and Jordan had a blast doing hill climbing (not in an avalanche area). We enjoyed getting out of Salt lake for a couple of days. We are excited for this year. We are remodeling our house quite a bit, especially our kitchen. It will be a nice change. We hope you all had great Christmas's. We all Love and miss you and can't wait to see you in the summer.
Love the Westover's of slc

Charlotte and Jared

Hello family,
A round of applause please for the cool blog we are all now a part of. Christmas and New Year were a lot of fun. We went up to Portland to hang with Jared's family, and as soon as we hit Salem, there was a foot of snow on the sides of the road, and when we hit Woodburn we were forced to drive in some very icy ruts in the road at snails pace, and when we took our exit we were feeling very grateful for Jareds snow tires because I don't think they plow in Portland. There was so much snow on all of the roads to his parents house. I did not think we were going to make it there, but we miraculously had no issues at all -- that is until we turned into the driveway. Then we were stuck, stuck, stuck. A very convenient place to get stuck, though. We did a bit of sledding on the neighbors very steep back yard. If we could have, we would have stayed out there all day long. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I had ever truly gone sledding (a hosed down driveway in the middle of the winter doesn't really count...) Three of the pictures attached are from that, the one with the dog is from a week earlier when it iced over here and we created a makeshift sled out of a laundry basket. The dog is Casey and Andreas. We were training for the Iditerod.
Christmas morning was fun; I think Joel was more excited than Drew (who woke up at six, and actually fell back to sleep after asking if Santa came...) Joel was determined to head up to see what Santa brought. New Years was very quiet. We were in bed by 11, Jared was asleep by 11:30 and then startled awake at Midnight when all the neighbors set off fireworks -- very funny, because, by the look on his face, you'd think we were under attack. At the moment, I am home as usual, but with two sickly children who both caught the same cold bug floating around, and at 11:30 am they both decided to take naps... So I am enjoying some rare quiet, alone time in the middle of the day, hence the reason I am so long winded while writing this -- there are no children climbing up on my lap repeatedly asking if they can play the computer. Jared is in Bend tonight, and then off to San Diego for three days of training next week.
We miss you all!

Maria and Kelly

It was great to sleep in all break and wake up when we wanted to. It is nice that our kids like to sleep in as well! This will be difficult, but it was worth it. We had fun with Stephanie, Kelly's youngest sister, here. She got to go to the gym with me a few times. We also went sledding two times. The first time the hill was a sheet of ice and was soooo scary, but fun. The second time it had snowed and slowed us down a bit, but it made it much easier to climb the hill. We will add the pictures to our blog so you can check it out (www.thestottsseven.blogspot.com or click on our family picture on the right), but here is a teaser.

On the 31st we took Stephanie ice skating in downtown St. Paul. It was only about 6 degrees outside on the rink. David did pretty well, but got cold early so I HAD to stay with him in the warming house. Kelly and the other kids got pretty good and Stephanie can now say that she has been ice skating and didn't kill herself. Stephanie, Megan and the younger kids hung out here for New Year's Eve while Kelly and I chaperoned the regional youth dance that Amber and her friends attended. We had a great time dancing and spying on Amber. Once, Amber even brought her dance partner over while we were swing dancing and asked us to teach them. Kelly danced with Amber and I danced with the guy and then switched back after a short lesson. Stephanie got off okay on Thursday and we prepared for a New Year's celebration that night (since we were gone the night before). We had about 40 people here and lots of yummy food. We played some fun games and visited with friends. The rest of the week was pretty calm and relaxing. Amber decided to get sick Saturday night and threw up. Luckily, she kept it to herself. She slept most of the day and is feeling better now. I was released as primary music leader and called as a valiant 10/11 teacher. It is nice to have a new challenge, but I will miss leading the music. We had a choir potluck at our home Sunday. It was great to have so many people from our ward socializing and singing. We had a good group of youth, as well. We are getting back into our busy schedule of music lessons, church activities, and school. We hope you have a great new year!

Transferred!!

We have surprising and unexpected news. We were informed this morning at our Zone Interviews that we are being transferred to a place even smaller and more remote than Cameron. It is called Inscription House and is about 50 miles NE of us. It is a bittersweet situation because we were finally making headway with our efforts here in Cameron....but we are excited for a new area and new opportunities. We were told it is a beautiful location. We now know what we are doing and it won't take so long to settle in. There haven't been any missionaries in this new area for several months. Pres. Beck wants us to be moved by Jan. 13th, next Tuesday! We have a few appointments this week and tomorrow I am giving a haircut and permanent. On Saturday the Sorensen's, our replacements, will be coming from Tuba City for us to orient them and show them around so they can step right in to continue with those we are teaching and those we were preparing for teaching by fellow shipping.
We don't have an address yet but we always have e-mail.
Another change that is coinciding with this change is that the Grand Canyon Branch is being taken out of the mission and attaching it to the Flagstaff stake. The trailer was going to have to be moved anyway but was to old to qualify for the permanent trailer park. The church didn't want to invest in a new trailer. They will call someone from the stake to do what we did, who have their own travel trailer. The park will provide an appropriate location I guess. We will go up Sunday to remove what few things we have up there. I will miss that beautiful canyon!

Elder and Sister Walburger

Casey and Andrea

Hello family...well, with heavy hearts, we set off tomorrow to meet Aunt Christy at Willamette pass to give her our beloved dog so that she can have her second litter of pups.  The girls are very sad and are already planning the trip to Klamath Falls to pick her back up in March.  In happier news, we survived Christmas!  It was so quiet compared to last Christmas.  No one came into to town so it was just the seven of us.  We spent the day in our pajamas, ate leftovers and played with toys and video games.  Due to the economy, we scaled back our Christmas quite a bit and we met the challenge of staying within a pretty tight budget.  It felt so good to finish Christmas knowing that we hadn't spent a fortune on stuff that probably would only be used a few times.  We did all the traditional stuff- the Santa letter (written by a very talented Santa), jammies on Christmas Eve and a big Christmas Eve dinner with our friends, the Farleys.  (We sure missed the Boorens this year)  I'm including a few pictures of our fun holiday.  The kids are now back in school, the house is getting put back in order, and I can get back into a normal routine.  That's it for us... Have a great month.

Grandma and Grandpa Westover Update

Well hello family. Because the end of the month comes too soon, I am writing this on the 24th of December. Mel and I are still alive and well. We have been incredibly busy these last few months. Mel and I are still doing ACN. We are doing very well. Mel has about 450 representatiaves and about 3000 customer points in his organization. We both go to work during the day and have ACN meeting several times a week at night. We have met the most wonderful people. We went to a convention in Detroit in September and we just got back from one in Los Angeles at the beginning of December. Our next one is in San Diego at the end of February. We are hoping that Mel will be promoted to team coordinator at that convention. Mel and I are going to an ACN leadership training in Palm Springs January 2. Only certain leaders are invited to attend, so we are very honored to be asked.

My class this year is much easier than last year's class. Either that, or I am more used to the second grade child. Our Christmas program was great. I usually pick out the music and then lead all the second grade classes. This year we sang "Where are you Christmas, and Welcome Christmas" from the Grinch. Bryce records the music for me on a C.D. and then we play it as the children sing. It was OUTSTANDING. No other second grade teacher is interested in music, so it is pretty much me. Right now I am looking for next years music.

Cassie is spending Christmas with us. She is flying in tonight and we will pick her up at the airport and then start having a lot of fun. We are also looking forward to seeing Adam, Erica and the girls in January. We are hoping to stop by San Diego on our way to Palm Springs to see Aaron and Family.

Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Year. We love you all!!

Arizona Connection

         Now that the Holidays are over we can get back onto a regular schedule again.  On Tuesday I cut the hair and gave a permanent to one of the elderly ladies in the branch that we are teaching and preparing for the temple.  This Tuesday I will do the same for another sister.  Tomorrow is "Interviews" in Polacca, about 1 1/2 hour drive.  We will leave here about 6:45 to carpool with other Srs. in Tuba City.  Pres. Beck will be there interviewing all the young elders and any Srs. who want an interview.  Afterward when we get back to Tuba City we will pick up an older sister from Cameron staying with a niece, take her grocery shopping then take her home to Cameron.  Her home is six miles into the desert on a dirt road.  The local tribal council has been trying to convince her to move into town with no luck.  We are joining the battle.  We are trying to help her see that she is totally at the good will of friends to get into town and see to her needs because she has no phone or transportation.  She has to hope someone will decide to visit.  We hope she is starting to realize her situation is not at all good.         

Our Christmas was spent with Matt and Kristin in Flagstaff.  It was a very white Christmas.  We left shortly after dinner because it was snowing and was to continue all night.  We are enjoying the books and pictures we received.  Thank you kids!!  All of the books are wonderful and useful both personally and with mission helps.           

When we were in the Philippines we bought a carved nativity to bring home.  We decided we should have one from the Navajo's as a remembrance of our Christmas here.  They had the perfect one down at the Cameron Trading Post and on sale.  I have attached pictures.  The artist is not Navajo but she makes nativities representing many cultures and studies the clothing and traditions.  It is ceramic and then painted.  The figures are approx. 3" tall.  The "Holy Family and Shepherd are in Navajo dress and the wise men are dressed to represent other tribes bringing their gifts from afar.  On the blankets are typical household items and turquoise jewelry.  Can you find the rabbit and tortoise?  Baby Jesus is laying on his side.  It has been fun to look at.  (I am easily entertained!)       

          We woke up to snow this morning but by the time church started it was about gone.  That means flagstaff and the Canyon got a new blanket.        

          One project for the new year is to start a parenting class and opening it to those in the community who want to attend.  It is one of the programs we can offer through the LDS Social Services.  They really need it here.  Another one is ARP, Addiction Recovery Program.  We don't feel quite so qualified for that but we are told everything is in the manual.  We are just "guides".  We will see about that one.  They really need it here also.  We have less than 5 months left and want to make our time full and effective.