September 2017: by Bjorn

Has it been another month already? Well, let’s see, what happened this month? Soccer, soccer, and ummmm more soccer! I think we also occasionally ate dinner, went to school, worked and slept.

Summer flew by way too fast, but its good to be back in school. August was full of cousin visits, soccer tournaments, an anniversary, a pretty cool eclipse, and too many other things to mention more than just a few.

It’s hard to believe Auriana is now a senior in college. She continues to amaze us with her independence and her talents. I can’t believe she’ll officially be an adult on Friday! Happy 21st!

We LOVE getting Isaac’s missionary letters. This month we enjoyed getting a phone call from his mission president’s wife telling us that he had once again separated his shoulder. We were glad it was ONLY his shoulder. She also had many wonderful things to say about him and the good person he is, his positive attitude, and the great work he is doing there. We’re grateful he gets to associate with good people and that he’s having such a great experience and making a difference in many lives – including his own family’s.

Natalie is the other senior in our family, and her high school soccer team is doing really well. They have only lost one game (pre-season), tied one, and won all the others – some by quite a bit. We’re just glad she’s staying relatively healthy and injury free. She was called to be on Seminary Council this past week and we’re excited for the opportunities she’ll have with that. Too bad she doesn’t have anything to keep her busy. Will we ever see her this entire school year? ☺

Enoch is enjoying being a ninth grader – oldest kids in the school. Soccer is going well for him too. You’ll have to ask him about his “Charlie Brown swing-and-miss kick” at the end of his game yesterday. Wow, did he get some air! ☺ Enoch is also taking every opportunity he can to drive. In fact, as I write this letter he is out with Becky putting in some driving time. He will get his permit as soon as he possibly can after turning 15 on the 30th.

Miriam got a hat trick in her soccer game yesterday (scored 3 goals) and is loving her team and that experience. She’s also pretty excited about making the JV tennis team at school and being VP in her choir class. She was just called to be the Beehive class president and seems to make friends and bring happiness wherever she goes.

Ellie is in the choir at school, is continuing with dance, and keeps playing, singing and writing music. We have been having a lot of fun with her city soccer team where she also had a hat trick in a recent game. Its hard to believe that in 2 short months she will be in Young Women. Wow, our youngest is going to be 12 years old? I guess that’s how it goes when you’ve been married 22 years. Congrats to the others who celebrated anniversaries recently!

Becky and I enjoyed a trip to the temple and lunch and dinner out together for our anniversary. At the end of the day, I told her “Thanks for saying YES.” And then I realized that she didn’t actually say “yes.” She said, “I’d love to!”

We sure enjoyed our time up in Logan with Mom and Dad and the sisters’ families. Thank you to Jen and Chad for being flexible with our last-minute decision to come up the night before rather than the morning of. We missed seeing the rest of you, but it’s fun to hear of all the adventures each of you are having.

If anyone is interested, we have One Voice Children’s Choir, Claire Ryann Crosby (the 4 year old of YouTube fame) and James the Mormon performing at the Harvest Moon Hurrah this year (free admission). Its this coming Saturday, September 16 at the park on Main and Center in Spanish Fork. The good stuff starts at around 5:15 pm and goes until about 9:00 pm. No pressure, just though I’d let you know.

With all the crazy natural disasters happening lately, I’ll end my letter the way I end all my letters to Isaac: Hold fast and keep the faith. Onward, ever onward!

We love you!

Bjorn, Becky and family

Enjoying the sunset at Miriam's Soccer game

Baby quilt for Matt & Lissa's baby
made by Miriam

Artwork for Matt & Lissa's baby
by Auriana

Auriana's band at BYU

1st day of school

Favorite pic with Isaac & the Ukelele

August 2017: by Becky

We were with cousins for the entire month of July!  Life seems a little dull now that it's just us. Family is a wonderful thing!  We're grateful for all of you!

Highlights of our month...
Brenna, Katelyn and Ellie had a fun cousin week while the rest of our family was away from home adventuring.  Here is a picture of the girls attempting to 'clean the sink' at Angie's in Logan.

We went back to Idaho a few days after the reunion to find Miriam and Natalie safe and happy, after two weeks of adventures.  They had a great time and the report from everyone there was that Natalie is a steady and reliable leader and that Miriam is an energizer bunny.  We weren't surprised to hear it.

Miriam in front of her cabin.

The 'L Team'

Then we stayed as a family in Victor for a week to attend the family camp that we have grown to love.  In January, we made a long list of everything that we could potentially do this summer, family camp and cousin time is everyone's favorite choice!  I'm really glad!!

Bjorn and I hiked to the rocky peak just the two of us, we also enjoyed learning some new skills like painting, leatherwork, and how to make cinnamon rolls, fortune cookies, and sushi.  We made a bunch of new friends and enjoyed getting back to the basics.

We hurried home to get Enoch to the Timberline leadership camp where he was on the kitchen staff. He cooked, taught lessons, and even carried one sick boy down the mountain so he could get to the hospital.  He had a great (and dirty) time.  We picked him up after one week and drove him straight back to Idaho for 2 weeks at the boys ranch.  Mom and Dad got to see him at the end of that experience, so mom's letter gave a really great report of his time there.  He did some biking and metal work so he was happy!

Timberline 2017
Enoch is the tall one

While Enoch was gone we had one big, long cousin party!  It was fun to have Alan and Konnie come for a quick visit.  We were so glad to have Enoch come back home, he's been doing magic tricks for us every since.  We were able to visit the MTC open house, the new buildings are beautiful, but my favorite part of the tour was going through the old part where we got to walk through the lunch room and the gym and see the missionaries going about their normal routine.  They probably felt like they were in a zoo, but I thought it was really cool.  It's an amazing place.

OKAY

FLOATING in the Great Salt Lake

The Grotto Falls in Payson Canyon

Visiting the MTC open house

Nate Hanson (Isaac's buddy) leaves this week
on his mission to Chili

June 2017: by Bjorn

Well the summer of having no kids begins soon. Natalie will be gone for 3 weeks, Miriam nearly 3, and Enoch will be away from home for 5 straight weeks – though one and a half of those will be with the rest of the family at the family reunion and the family camp we go to each year in Victor, Idaho. Ellie will enjoy a few cousin outings as well. It will be nice for each of them to get a break from sports and mostly be out in nature.

Auriana had a wonderful 3-week tour to Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam playing the mandolin in the band that accompanies the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble. She got to ride an elephant, make many new friends, perform for a princess and many other dignitaries, and even got to do a little missionary work with one of their tour guides.

It was kind of weird for us to pray for Auriana in Vietnam and Isaac in Russia. My how the world has changed! Isaac continues to experience challenges and growth and wonderful experiences in Samara. He’s learning some good things about leadership as a zone leader. Since I assume most of you read his letters at least some of the time, I won’t expound too much on that. We love his positive attitude and his dedication to the work, and we LOVED seeing him and talking to him on Mother’s Day! He sent a package a while back that finally arrived and we thoroughly enjoyed the treats and ties and cool Russian stuff he sent.

Ellie performed with her dance class in a Wizard of Oz dance production that was pretty impressive. She did a wonderful job in both a ballet number and a jazz number. Natalie and Enoch just returned from youth conference down at Snow College. Miriam and Ellie have been babysitting for two days a week from 7:30 am to 2:30 pm and the kids love them so much that sometimes when the mom comes home the kids cry because they want their mom to stay out longer. The dad told me today that earlier in the week the older boy was so excited for them to come the following day that he said, “I’m just going to go to bed now so that when I wake up in the morning the girls will just already be here.”

Miriam and Ellie are also enjoying tennis lessons and Enoch is a mountain biking maniac. He bought his own bike and has gotten good quite quickly. He’s happy to drag along anyone that will go with him.

I guess that’s all for now. Becky and I just continue to get older and wiser and there’s nothing we can do about it. ☺

May 2017: by Becky

Auriana is off traveling the world and having a wonderful time!! She was in Thailand and is now in Cambodia. We are going to attempt to FaceTime her during our Skype session with Isaac on Mother's Day morning!  They are both about 13 hours ahead of us right now, crazy!  Having a missionary is a great blessing in our family and we LOVE getting Isaac's letters every week!

The rest of this is going to be a sports report, because I'm not sure if there is anything else to talk about in our family right now.  I'm so sun fried!  We had 5 soccer games and 5 track meets this week! The weather has been absolutely perfect, but we all got a bit too much sun!  All four kids competed in the 100 meter this week, they are all so speedy!
Ellie 14:53 seconds
Miriam 14:10 seconds
Enoch 12.59 seconds
Natalie 13:13 seconds

Ellie won the 100m AGAIN for the third year in a row against all the girls her age in Spanish Fork. She did great in the 200m, the standing long jump, and the 4x100 relay as well.  She had been sick for the three days before the meet, so she didn't have her usual energy and was exhausted by the end, but she was a trooper!

Miriam's great accomplishment this year was learning to do the hurdles.  She ended up as the only 7th grader in the final 100m hurdle race at the district Jr. high meet.  She very excitedly took 5th place! She also qualified to compete in the district meet in the long jump, 100m, and 4x100 relay.  Her soccer team is currently in 1st place and she has become the #2 scorer in her division with 9 goals this season!

Enoch decided to try throwing the shot put and discus while recovering from surgery.  He added the events 100m and high jump a few weeks ago.  He did amazing and qualified for districts in all four events and he even set a school record of 35 feet 8 inches in the shot put.  Someone beat his throw later in the season, but he held the record for a few weeks. :-)  Enoch bought himself a mountain bike last week and he has spent every spare second on the mountain trying it out.  He REALLY loves it and so far he only has a few (hundred) scrapes and bruises.

Natalie got her speed back  - it's been a long 2 and half years of effort since surgery, but I think she did it this week!  She qualified to run in the final 100m race in the region track meet which was a huge milestone for her!   She has her sights set on qualifying for state in that event next year, although she does get to compete at state this year with her relay team. Her club soccer team finished in 1st place this season which puts them as a Premier 1 team next year, that's pretty cool that they made it into the very top division for her senior year!  Natalie is currently at THE PROM while I write this!  She is speaking in sacrament meeting for Mother's Day and she is doing singing time in Primary so the women can go to Relief Society.  I think she has a busy morning of preparation ahead of her.

April 2017: by Bjorn

Conference was pretty amazing, eh? It always goes by way too fast. We enjoyed having Sarah, Melissa, Adam, Rachel, Matt & Lissa join us. Our kids look up to each of them. It was tough to see President Monson’s health deteriorating, but inspiring to hear his powerful messages despite his physical condition. Amazing to think that he was called as an apostle in 1963 and the next most senior apostle (President Nelson) was called in 1984.

It has been a wonderful fast Sunday – such a powerful spirit in our sacrament meeting. Several members in our ward are going through very difficult physical challenges (cancer, etc.) and it has been pretty tough on their families, but I am seeing how it is binding us closer together as a ward family as we fast and pray for these individuals.

Congrats again to Chad on becoming a tenured professor! Always wonderful to hear great news like that. It was also neat to hear about Mom’s family history dream. Sounds like the Spirit of Elijah is in full effect in that household.

We enjoyed a fun trip down to Arches National Park for Spring break this past week. It was fun to see the kids go from wondering if it was going to be fun to exclaiming at the end of our trip, “This place is so cool—I could spend a week here and not get sick of it!” It was neat to see their eyes fill with wonder and see the spirit of adventure take over as they enjoyed the hikes and exploring the different rock formations and all the cool places that I have enjoyed as I’ve gone there in the past. I’m sure Becky will include some fun photos of our trip.

We also enjoyed going to the Monticello temple to do baptisms. That was the smallest temple I’ve ever been in. I’m proud of Natalie and Miriam for making it to every temple in Utah within a year. Miriam started on her birthday last year, and barely made it with 1 day to spare. Just one more example of how my kids inspire me to be a better person.

Speaking of Miriam… thanks for all your kind birthday wishes to our newest teenager. Somehow I find it hard to believe that she’ll ever throw some teenager attitude at me. Has there ever been a happier person in the world? Maybe Brenda, but that’s it. ☺

Enoch is out in the garage right now, putting the finishing touches on a disc (frisbee) golf goal that he built himself. He had the idea and wanted to pay for it all himself and so we took a trip to Home Depot last night, got home at 9:45 and he stayed up late building it. He’s so good with his hands and he loves building stuff. So I guess from now on we’ll just be getting him tools for his birthdays. Soon I’ll be asking him if I can borrow his tools.

Everyone else is deep into soccer season. Enoch’s knee should be healed enough that he can start playing in games in about 2 weeks. Auriana is done with winter semester soon and then she leaves May 1 to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam for Folk Dance tour. Great opportunities come from developing and sharing your talents.

March 2017

Photos from Becky & Bjorn

Ellie was Martha Jefferson for her 5th grade presidents wax museum.  She learned a lot about Thomas Jefferson.  From her speech... "Thomas Jefferson was a well educated man and spoke 6 languages.  He was also an architect, lawyer, musician, and inventor.  Thomas Jefferson was my husband.  My name is Martha Jefferson.  I didn't live to see my husband get elected third president of the United States of America.  My daughters Patsy and Polly took on the duties of hostesses of the white house when I passed away." 

Ellie at the Treehouse Museum in Ogden

Miriam and Ellie's team both took 2nd place in St. George
We didn't get the warm weather we were hoping for, but we had a great time! 

Valentines Day 2017
from our boys

The girls cooked dinner for Enoch and Bjorn

Natalie at her choir concert

Auriana on tour in San Francisco