August 24, 2020

Joseph Ross I’m so excited to talk to you today! How are you? How is everything? How was your week? What is going on? So excited to hear everything. Today’s the first day of school for your cute little siblings. Annie is off to her junior year and she’s just hoping she can pull it all off and get everything done a little worried about all of that, Jenny spent a lot of time with her yesterday and whenever her schedule and suggested some changes that I think you’re going to be really positive so we’re going to try to get those through today so that the year is not quite so intense. She wasn’t taking anything fun at all and trying to take all these hard hard classes in there really isn’t a great reason for that. Anyway hoping to make some changes there but man that girl is cute she’s going to be awesome. Your cute little savvy was out of the bus stop at 7:01 for the best that was supposed to come at 7:08 and never did.Dad is taking him to school now. He is so so so excited. He’s hardly been able to stand it. I think we’ve been down at his school four or five times. Did he tell you he signed up for dance? We’ll see how that goes today. I suspect he’ll be the only boy. A little Danny Brown in the middle of the dancers. He is so excited he’s also on student government and in the Alps program and taking journalism for one of his electives. I hope Annie has time to talk to you about her schedule today but she might take yoga instead of physics just to try to settle things down a little bit. One funny thing that happened this week and Seth started little league football. And he absolutely loves it. He’s a pretty big kid and he’s big on his team I think there’s only one kid that’s bigger than him and they put him out there to see what he could do for one play and he ended up being front and center on the front line almost the rest of the game. When we were watching a practice he never lost a tackle so we just want to thank you for all of the hours of wrestling :-). I think it’s gonna be really positive because dad is super into it and he’s excited. We’ve been talking a lot of about a lot of fun things around hereI talked to Sethie and Annie about starting a children’s theater company a legit one that they could work as well and be one of the teachers and they could pay off their missions. Spenny!! and I found a glorious spot for a greenhouse just above where the Saratoga springs temples going to be on the mountain. It is so spectacular you can see the entire valley Mountain Ridge and Utah Lake and the temple and we think it’s BLM land that can be rented so we’re checking on that because if we can rent it for agricultural purposes they probably let us put a greenhouse up there and then we just rent the greenhouse for wedding receptions and also grow our plants there. Anyway lots of fun plans and ideas going on around here. Last night We had the Roberts and Hunt over and Wesley and his girlfriend. Wesley is staying with us for the weekend before he moves to Provo today to start a new life there. He’s gonna work two jobs until January when he’ll start school. It’s pretty awesome. I I want to tell you one of the sweetest miracles of the week. It is so precious. When Coy and Rebekah got home on Tuesday from their honeymoon in Boston, they told us that her family had purchased 25 wedding gifts from the registry on their wedding day. 25! That just gives me so much hope that they love her and they’re gonna keep trying and that things will work out. And they weren’t just small things they were significant gifts and the note just said love mom dad and the minions which is what they call all of her little siblings. Mom is also starting school this morning. I need to go down and sort that out get on my computer. Every school class has gone online except one so I will only be driving down on Wednesday afternoons which is great super fun. I’m glad to be home where I can be around and throw in a load of laundry and help help the family in anyway that I can. Even though I love people and I do love going to school. Annie tried to metal up in ballroom and did not pass. She’ll be taking silver classes instead of gold for the next year. She didn’t really expect to get to gold this time when it’s her first time doing metal exams that doesn’t usually happen people do it an average of 3 to 5 times before they metal up but she was disappointed feeling like she had let her partner down. I don’t know how that girl did it but Saturday night there were seven boys here and Annie. Sam brought three friends and then Easton and Miles came over and then Seth so they were literally seven boys just here to hang out with Annie so we had to think of something really fun and spectacular pretty dang quick so we loaded up all the mannequin heads and went and prank the Slichta ‘s. They were climbing all over her house up on her roof putting mannequin heads everywhere wrapping caution tapeAnd making Minecraft bodies out of empty boxes they took and they took a baby squash and all this weird stuff anyway oh they also took a can of Spam and smeared it all over a car that they found out wasn’t theirs did not belong to the Slichta’s so they had they got caught and had to wash all the spam off and then because they caught them they just stay there and play some night games with Emilee. Miles lost his keys in the fray so everybody had to go up and search for the keys and then they came back and played psychiatrist and heard one of Sam’s friends love stories until 12:30 in the morning. I think it all worked out it was pretty fun. I don’t know how the girl managers at bat seven boys and her for a Saturday night fun. And making Minecraft bodies out of empty boxes they took and they took a baby squash and all this weird stuff anyway oh they also took a can of Spam and smeared it all over a car that they found out wasn’t theirs did not belong to the Slichta‘s so they had they got caught and had to wash all the spam off and then because they caught them they just stay there and play some night games with Emmy. Miles lost his keys in the fray so everybody had to go up and search for the keys and then they came back and played psychiatrist and heard one of Sam‘s friends love stories until 12:30 in the morning. I think it all worked out it was pretty fun. I don’t know how the girl manages it but seven boys and her for a Saturday night fun. Marsheee was here last night and she said she thought there was an earthquake in the middle of the night. She got up and looked out the window and try to figure out what was making this noise on her roof and realized that all the heads everybody had put up there were rolling off. Seth and I are going to try to memorize scripture every day and the deal we’ve made is will work on it at breakfast and then take a picture of it and that’ll be your screensaver for the day so every time we open our phone we will repeat it and hopefully have it by the end of the night. We’re going to invite anyone as family who wants to participate. Seth has decided he wants to go to law school and memorizing scriptures has promises regarding your memory that he wants to claim. I heard a sweet testimony of the book of Mormon yesterday. Vilate said she’d heard another man testify that whenever he has a problem he can’t resolve her a question he needs an answer to her situation he can’t seem to fix that he reads the book of Mormon in 30 days. And he testified that by the end of that he always at least knows what to do if the problem hasn’t gone away but most of the time the problem has been resolved. She tried it with something that she’s been really deeply worried about and just testified to me yesterday of the miracle things she never even thought would or could happen or happening with this problem that she’s facing and anyway I just love that solution and that testimony. She said she’s in the middle of it right now and she just doesn’t look at Facebook and doesn’t watch TV every time she sits down she just reads The book of Mormon and she said the spirit is so much stronger in her life and it’s just been miraculous and she loves the peace that she’s feeling not spending time on Facebook because especially right now it is so divisive and contentious. Spenny spent the week in Lake Powell! I love you so very much! Can’t wait to hear all of your news! Love, Mom!