Our 2024 Family Newsletter
Happy Christmas and New Year.
Newsletter
Another year is almost over, never to be retrieved, and as it concludes we enjoy sending this newsletter as a way to keep the connections we’ve made during our journey through life alive. Thank you for loving, supporting, helping and welcoming us as we’ve come and gone and our paths have crossed. We hope this Christmas will be the best yet. But we know that each of you will have experienced stressful, uncertain and disheartening moments throughout the year. Our hope is that this season, however our years have unfolded, we all will find time to be still, experience peace, and find joy; things that can too often feel elusive.
Now depending on when you are reading this; Cassandra earned her bachelors degree this December, a goal she’s had for many years. It is a great accomplishment that has been earned through many long nights, personal and family sacrifice and even a little suffering.
Our small cotton candy business has been able to provide the flexibility and just enough income to support ourselves whilst juggling school, family and homeschooling. The new year is likely to bring adjustments and redirection for our family, which provides equal proportions of excitement and uncertainty.
This past April we drove through the night to Idaho, a 30+hr endeavor, to attend the funeral of Cassandra’s grandma Connie. We took in the eclipse on the way, and detoured via Minnesota for a very brief stop to see Beth’s family on our way home.
Our children, like always, are growing far too quickly. Winston is an avid reader and conversationalist whose interest and inquisitiveness is enjoyable to watch. Elisabeth was baptized by her Grandfather this August and possesses enough confidence, agility, and determination to tackle most anything. She is becoming quite the rollerblader at the skate park and gymnast on the trampoline. Olivia continues to be sweet and helpful, even when she broke her leg playing ‘Big Fat Booty Jump’ on the trampoline this spring with her siblings. She’s made leaps leaps and bounds with her reading this year. (As a side note, having been teaching her, I have been reminded how difficult and ever ridiculous our language is to learn). Thomas wears an almost permanent egg upon his head. He’s a funny kid with so much flare and is following in Elisabeth’s example of adventure, but he sure does bump his head a lot. Even as I write this he has one he acquired whilst running in the library this past week. Theodore still hasn’t had his first hair cut, it’s hard to see those cute golden curls disappear. He’s also been having speech therapy to help with his delayed desire to talk, but he too has made great strides in his ability to communicate.
Our children are a lot of fun, but amid all the excitement we also have our fair share of chaos and fighting. Our family prayers are rarely reverent and I am guilty of failing to always enjoy and cherish these moments.
This summer our good friends... okay best friends... Scott and Rachel came to visit from Wales. Saying goodbye to them was sad and left me feeling a longing for my homeland, a feeling that doesn’t arise often, but they are the type of friends you hope your children grow up to find.
My parents also visited for what always feels too brief, but we were able to take them to the Kirtland historic sites before they started a humanitarian mission in the Philippines. Of all the gifts they could have given our family this Christmas, this is by far the best.
As we look toward 2025, I will probably file my application for naturalization, Winston will receive the Aaronic Priesthood, Elisabeth might possibly get braces, Cassandra may start a masters, we will celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary, and we hope to do some pretty extensive interior design and remodeling on our home... along with all the other twists and turns that life will no doubt have for us.
This Christmas as we seek to enjoy the season, we know that for some your faith in Jesus Christ may be faltering or has already completely failed, or you are suffering from mental, emotional or physical ailments. Maybe your marriage is struggling, or your family falling apart. Financial strain might be at the forefront of your mind as gifts are being given. Some of you may be feeling hopeless, lost, abandoned, or forgotten. For all the fun, joy and memories we’ve had this year, we hope you know that hardship has been no stranger in our home this year either. Life it would seem is just hard.
But wherever you are this Christmas, no matter how long it has been since we last met or spoke, as always we want to conclude our newsletter by sharing with you our continued faith and love for Jesus Christ. We love Him! We continue to follow Him, albeit haphazardly much of the time, and whilst we love all the holiday traditions, the lights and delicious foods, most of all we love Christmas because it helps us to refocus and redirect our lives toward Him. He is the light of the world, the remedy, the solution, the great physician.
From our home in Almost Heaven, we hope you have a very Happy Christmas. xo
Quote.
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find you have excluded life itself.
- C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain, p.25)