Back from Illinois!!  Boy, was it cold!!  got down to minus 15 sometimes, without the windchill.  If not for borrowing Susan's gloves and knit hat I would have truly been miserable.  But they made all the difference.  My face was still freezing, but the rest of me was okay.  The good thing for Erin is that that was very unusual weather, they said.  The week before it was sweater time.  Now she knows that it won't be that cold every winter and can still be happy to be there. 

And she is happy to be there!  It's good to see her so happy.  Her house is delightful and bright and just the right size for her.  She has to buy some things and put away everything but she will get to it as she can.  She has her bed and the kitchen is mostly put away so she can live just fine till she finds everything else.

She wanted her office painted yellow so it would be happy and comfortable to be in and Dad volunteered to paint it for her.  When he was done it was truly wonderful and warm.  The rest of the house is painted gray inside and she likes that.  When we went shopping for her bathroom supplies and bed linens she decided to go with turquoise/aqua which was in abundance in Target where we went.  It looks great all together. 

It was funny that when everyone heard who had owned the house before she bought it, the family was one whose son was in Alice's grade in school!  What a surprise.  So the guest room where Dad and I stayed was blue (the only room with different paint from the gray) and had celestial decals in one corner and we guessed it was the room of the boy Alice knew.  She felt a little funny, but was happy to take down the decals.  

Robert and James were enthralled with her floor heater vents.  They are melting some slushies here over one of the vents.  They ran through the whole house counting them.  They discovered a wonderful secret door too.  It was the entrance into the crawl space beneath the house in the closet floor in the guest room.  They had exciting speculations about what it could be until they learned its real purpose.  

This is the living room with all these wonderful windows.  You see that there is no one that can look into her house and the windows in the dining room are the same.  Nice and big and they look out onto the back yard.  So she can pretty much keep them all uncovered and still maintain privacy.  The whole house has hardwood floors that the kids loved skiing and scooting and swimming across.  It's smooth and just perfect for kids. 

When she got there Erin had no bed so that was one of the first things she got.  It was delivered the next day and everyone had to try it out.  Just the mattress and bunky board, but that was all she needed for now.  She will get a bed from online.  She knows what she wants and will take her time.  Evanses had already bought her the pillows and the snuggly soft blanket.  She says it was very comfortable.  

The next thing she needed was internet so she can work from home and also have TV.  When she called the person said they would be out that afternoon!!  What a joy!  She had a slumber party arranged for the kids that night and wanted to have internet to show them a movie.  The men came and got it set up and so all was well.  

The slumber party was great for the first few hours.  All the kids were there.  They had pizza and brownies and a 12 pack of Sprite.  They watched two movies and went to bed and two kids threw up.  Bobby came and got them all a little after midnight.  But there will be many more sleepovers in the future with maybe a little more caution to keep it happy all night.  They were all devastated to have to go home.  

Susan had arranged for us to go one afternoon to the Pottery place and paint some tree decorations.  

On New Year's Eve they put some gingerbread house kits together.  Robert had his and James and Matthew had one.  Alice helped the little boys since she had already put one together another day. 

They had fun getting them together but the best part for the kids was eating the icing.  

 
 

Then after the gingerbread houses we had a delicious dinner.  After dinner they got to eat the gingerbread houses.  Then we had a New Year's Eve Party!!  Bobby got the London New Year's Eve on the computer and we cheered and were happy with them at 6 pm and then everyone danced.  

Erin had brought some lights and a disco light kind of thing and James also had a star projector.  Both were set up and played along with some music that Erin had put together for dancing.  They danced and danced and danced.  

                                                        Erin dancing with Matthew

                                                                  Susan and James

Susan and Robert

Erin and Robert

                                      Erin with the lights around her head, assisted by Robert

Bobby danced with Alice and all had a lot of fun.  The music Erin chose was really fun with the chipmunks and lots of 50's silly music.  

With celebrating the new year at 6 pm and partying about an hour the kids went to bed at their usual time and we adults played Phase 10.  We had a great time talking and laughing and being sad for not getting the hands we wanted.  When the game was over we went back to Erin's about 10 and went to bed.  Just the kind of New Year's celebration we liked.  

The next morning we said good bye to Erin, took the twin beds over to Evanses, one for Matthew and one for their guest room, said good bye to them all, shopped a little for our trip and took off for home.  Had an uneventful trip, got home in good time and were happy to have gone and were happy to be back.  It was so cold most of the trip when we got to Texas and had temperatures around 35 we felt like we were in Springtime.  

It was good to be back.  We walked into the house and Sasha greeted us like long lost family.  She was happy to get to be on GP's lap again.  

I am very happy with my gift from Erin.  I had always told her if she ever got tired of this one picture I would be happy to take it.  And surely, she did give it to me!!  I was so happy.  We brought it home and put it up and I love it.  She has decided to go more modern, with fewer decorations.  It will be fun to see what she puts together.  

Today we had our interviews with the bishop and he said he didn't have the medical papers as we had thought so Dad will check on that tomorrow.  Bishop says we can go get them and bring them to him in a sealed envelope, so we will try to do that if they are sitting at the dr's office and not lost in the mail.

Life here goes on as usual.  I am teaching 7 year olds in Primary instead of 5 year olds, but Dad and Heather are doing the same things.  Heather is still very happy at work.  

Our objective now is to get the missionary papers finished and have that final interview with the stake president and see if we are really going to go.   What if we don't?  I wondered that this morning.  We will have to find some other interesting thing to do.  We have volunteered to help in this home mission, but the president hasn't found anything for us to do.  Maybe we could volunteer to help out in the Crosby ward, visiting the 500 inactive there as we would get to do in Phoenix.  We will wait and see.  

We love you our wonderful children.  We love you with all our hearts.  Thank you for being all that you are and contributing a marvelous richness to our lives with your love and example.