Casey and Andrea

Hello family. Hope your March went well! Spring is bursting here in Springfield. (hard to believe for those of you still in snow). The daffodils are up, the lawns are green and lush, and the plum trees are covered in pink flowers. It's a great time to be in Oregon. Unfortunately, the majority of our Spring Break was rainy. We did manage to do a few fun things though. Our family and the Booren family went up to Salem to play at the AC Gilbert Discovery House. (I attached a few pictures) Afterwards, we rode the carousel and went to Dairy Queen for dinner. It was a lot of fun. In other news, our garage has been completely transformed. We have gotten on the food storage kick and when my dad was in town, he built wall to wall shelves in our garage while my mom and I blew $2000 on food storage. (We'd been saving up for this project for a while) We loaded the shelves and the freezer with food storage. We have a long ways to go to get our years supply but it feels so wonderful to walk out to the garage and see so much food. With the economy being as shaky as it is, we've decided to postpone any major changes to our home and just save our money. We have enough money saved so that Casey could be out of work for a year and we'd be able to pay our bills. It's a good feeling...we hope we never have to use it! We are so grateful for our many blessings. There are a lot of folks struggling here in Oregon. Monaco Coach, Country Coach and I think Marathon Coach have all gone out of business. A lot of members of our Stake lost their jobs in the last month because of it. Casey is trying to throw work at as many people as he can, but our business is down significantly as well. I guess people don't want to throw big corporate picnics and parties in a recession.. Who could blame them? To sum up, despite the economic worries, we are all happy and healthy! We count our blessings every day and are so grateful to be members of such a wonderful and hopeful church. We also love all of you and can't wait to see you in August.