Sunday November 22, 2015

Dear Cassidy -

Hello! How are you today? Are you still recovering from driving in Berlin? That, my dear, sounds like something I'd not want to do! I'm impressed that you survived! However, driving on the Autobahn sounds fun. Even though you have to go slow is it fun to watch cars go fast? Your meeting with Elder Ballard sounded fantastic! I'm happy for you that you had that experience! Is it fun to spend the night with other sisters?

Where is Sister Bills from? Are you getting along ok with her? How are your people that you're working with this week?

As for things here...

Monday I skipped the gym to go do a little Christmas shopping with Grammy. We had a great time shopping around Target, looking at everything and picking out things like wrapping paper and decorations. Hadlie had a theory lesson that afternoon, which she hates to go to, which you can relate to I'm sure. But she went and even played a song there. River taught us a great FHE lesson on faith/prayer to pass off one of the value experiences. She's liking working on that so far! Oh ya, and we got a few inches of snow this day.

Tuesday I got up at 4:45am to take Colten, Logan and Kolby Smith (Kale's bro) to the airport for their trip to DC. They were all of course, very excited. It sure has been weird having him gone this week too. Having only 2 kids home is WEIRD. Colten has proved what I thought to be true. He's a horrible communicator. He's hardly texted us at all the whole week! Even when I've asked him to! Rude. I will send you the couple of pictures he's sent us. I'd ask him what he liked seeing or what's been his favorite and his reply is always, "everything." Rude.

Wednesday I went to the gym where I had to be in charge of renewing our memberships. Last year they had a black Friday event that was a great deal. They're not doing that again this year of course. After the gym I had a naet appt. and then went to lunch with Liz. She has about 100 free meal cards to Chick-Fil-A. She was telling me about her nephew Wyatt in Texas. It sounds like he's doing really well. Hadlie and River did baptisms for the dead with the yw/ym Wed afternoon. They were pretty quick which was good because Hadlie had her choir concert that night. All the grandparents came so that was nice. The choir sounded great. Hadlie's not loving the teacher that took over for Mr. Tuckett but they really sounded good.

Thursday Hadlie woke up not feeling good. She had some bad diarrhea throughout the day.  I spent a lot of the with the horses. The stalls were pretty bad so it took me two full hours in the morning. After that I came home for an hour or so and then it was time to go bring them back in. I made Hadlie come with me to do that because it's so much easier with 2 people. That was pretty much it for that day.

Friday the girls went to school and I took Brownie in for a haircut. I then took my camera in to get the sensors cleaned and did a bunch of other errands. I got home right before the girls did from school. After school Dad came home and we delivered the girls to their outings.

River went with Ella to Time out for Girls. I'm sure she'll tell you about it. Ella's mom attended Time out for Women in another part of the building. They did a program Friday night then they spent the night at Ella's grandma's apartment in SLC. Then they attended classes/concerts on Saturday. She got home around 6 on Sat. I think she had a really good time. She was pretty ornery in preparing to go. She didn't want anyone to tell her what to bring, etc. I think she was really nervous about spending the night away from home.

Hadlie went with a new friend Katelyn and her mom, sisters and other girls to Mockingjay Part 2 that just came out. They also went to PF Changs for dinner and shopping at the mall. She obviously had a great time. She didn't get home til 1:30am because the movie was at 10:15pm.

So since Dad and I were all alone we went on a date. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner, got some Mrs. Field's cookies, did some Christmas shopping at Ikea and then we had one last stop at Cabela's. We went in and it looked a little extra crowded for later on a Friday night. We started looking for what we were there for (secret) and dad finally asked a worker if it was always like this on the weekends or if there was some sale or something. The guy said, "Oh are you not here for the black/gold card event?" Apparently the whole store was "closed" for people who have Cabela's Visa cards and have spent $10,000 or $25,000 in the year! The place was packed and we were obviously there with the wrong crowd. LOTS of money being spent! So there you go, a typical St. John unusual experience! It was quite funny.

Yesterday Hadlie, Dad and I did our work at the horses. It wasn't too bad and we got done quickly. After we showered and got ready Hadlie and I ran some errands to get what we needed for Thanksgiving and Hadlie wanted to get Christmas pretzel/chocolate molds so we went to JoAnns for those. Then she came home and made some of those. Dad and I watched a lot of football and that's about it.

What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Do they celebrate Thanksgiving there? Probably not. We'll be traveling to Vegas this year for Thanksgiving. Tyler doesn't have vacation days because he's been working with Kacee's brother Garrett on some housing sales on top of his regular Phizer job. And Brittney didn't want to travel up so they recruited us to come down there. We'll be staying at Jen's of course. It should be a good week. We will miss you though. I miss you every week and always think - if Cassidy were here she'd come with me to do this, etc. But you're really missed when we're all together as a family for holiday stuff. Really missed. 

I hope you have a great week - even if you don't have Thanksgiving. I love you so much!

Love - Mom