December 21, 2020

Hello loves! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! How are Tosha and Polly doing? How are you doing? How’s everything? What are your plans this week?Are you still OK with us crashing at your house on Saturday night? I wish :-). I hope you know how loved and missed you are. It is hard to be apart but so beautiful painful and wonderful at the same time to recognize the source of our blessings and to try to honor and obey with everything we have. He’s asked us to serve missions And we owe him every breath that we take and so it’s such a joy to try to get back. Dad and I have joy in your choices, so very much joy. We are so grateful that you are ours. This has been a super fun week. Spencer Coy, Mooks, Lyd, Annie,Seth and I finished school on Thursday! That means Coy is done with BYU except for one home study class he’s finishing up, but he started his big boy job on Friday. It felt so amazing to be done for all of us. John’s family came up this weekend and we had so much fun. They had a couple of extra cousins from Christy side of the family that were beautiful fun teenage girls so natalie Heidi Katie Jane Rebekah Rachelle Tyler Spencer Seth and I had some super fun playtime over the weekend. We had an awesome lovers Lane in the veggie costumes with two great scares, we print this looked as hard, and made a music video in the church parking lot. Thursday night was super fun we had a party just to celebrate finishing school, it was just Annie Seth Spenny Lizzie mom but we had so much fun. We watched you can’t take it with you and then did karaoke till one in the morning. The Africa project is going amazing. I just am so in love with the human race I want to kiss everyone on the cheek. We are at $13,000 and the food is being distributed into steaks to the poorest of the poor. I’ll put some pics on the family chat. People just have such good hearts. Grandpa Jello did the Christmas project in our ward again this year and got funds for everybody who may be struggling it’s so beautiful. One of the most important things that happen this week is that Mckay and Lydia slept in Annie’s room while she slept on here with all the crazy girls and Mckay put Annie’s Christmas jammies on The next day we dressed up in the red Christmas jammies and sang through the window at a rest home and it was so sweet. Dallin and Scott also came up and so did all our kids! It was SO FUN!! We are excited for Mexico, except that we’re down to passports and so that’s a little bit of a worry but Ramen got there yesterday and he said they’re just waving the cars through. Without checking everybody’s passports. We’re actually down three Rebecca Kaden and I don’t have one they haven’t come back yet. We are developing a little pattern that I really love and Hope it stays forever. When we have dinner and see evening prayers not every day but more often now we ask “ who is your man farthest down? Who are you worried about? “We pray for that person and decide what we can do to help them. We also have your beautiful little wood sign behind the kitchen sink. I think for Grandma Raspberry we’re all going to give her a date night where will bring food and either make it at our house or bring something already made and do something fun like a Bob Ross night with her. You can give her one if you want to! You’ll be home in July and you can take her on a date :-). This weekend I had a lot of fun talking to Tyler. He is so inspirational. I asked him a lot of questions and he talked about why he wants to go into the military. He is just so touched and respectful of anyone who is willing to give their life for another person. He talked about men laying on a grenade to save their friends, and he just feels like that kind of life is the ultimate gift and if he can put his own life in danger to protect the rest of us than that is what he wants to do. He wants to be a Navy seal. He talked about the training and it’s absolutely insane. During Halloween week they only get four hours of sleep total.He said the training is vital though because one man was sent to take somebody out in Afghanistan and he was discovered and 200 men were chasing him he was shot in the back and in the lake and he army crawled on his elbows for 7 miles and got out. Dallin is so fun to talk to he’s listening to tons and tons of business books, real estate books, he’s listening to books on finances and success. He and Spencer are a lot of like they don’t know exactly what they wanna do but they know it’s going to be epic and they want to own her own business of some kind. Dallin is really getting excited about owning tons and tons of rental units. It was really fun to see Scott too. He said medical school is such an incredible spiritual experience. Studying the human body is just amazing. He’s been working with a cadaver and said he held a human heart in his hand that had beat for 80 years. Cuoi just started working at doTERRA Friday but they informed him that he will get a $3000 Christmas bonus. Isn’t that awesome? You probably saw this on the family chat but Rebecca has been asked to teach two classes next semester instead of just one at BYU that’s pretty awesome. Lydia is excited she’s graduating in April. Their Singapore study abroad was canceled so everyone’s pretty disappointed about that. Spenny got another 4.0 that kid is so dedicated. Seth is really motivated on working out and becoming an athlete right now, it’s really fun. So we asked Big Spencer and Tyler to write out work out programs for him. It’s going to be awesome. Did we tell you that dad‘s liver is at 95% function? We haven’t seen those kind of numbers for so many years. I don’t know what kind of Christmas miracle it is but it is amazing. He hast to have hip replacement surgery and that will happen in January. In other news Annie tested on Saturday and placed in GOLD TECHNIQUE FIR BALLROOM!!! Yesterday dad spoke in Sacrament meeting. It was so beautiful he absolutely nailed it. I love his testimony of the saviors tender mercies and tender love. I wish I’d recorded it for you but he told the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writing I heard the bells on Christmas day. I hope he will share his notes with you. I love love love this quite and think of it often... You get to do that every hour of every day! It’s the best work in the world! I LOVE YOU!! Merry Christmas precious boy. You asked us to share our favorite thing about the atonement. It’s so hard to choose, but one aspect of the saviors gifts and love for us that is so deeply touching to me is that the love is not connected to our behavior. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of England with a seven-year-old boy in the hospital with his father. His father was dying. A Christian priest Approached his bedside and said, “can I pray for your father?” Seven-year-old Tony said “I’m sorry sir but I don’t think my father believes in God.” The priest then said, “well that’s OK. God believes in him.” I am so amazed at the saviors unjust, undeserved, unfair and untethered love. God does not play fair. When we mess up he loves us anyway. When we sin he continues to love us. When we turn against him and curse him, he loves us still. It is a love that is so exquisitely beautiful because it is an attached to our behavior untethered by Selfishness, bigotry, gluttony, and ingratitude. We can miss treat him, forget him, trample him under our feet, and his arms are outstretched still, with hands wearing he has engraving us on the palms. It is the most wondrous joyous thing to me that he continues to love us even when we don’t love him, love each other, or love ourselves. Merry CHRISTmas!