August 29, 2010

From the Editor's Desk

This has been a wonderful week. Andy has returned home from Iraq. What an answer to our many prayers. This week was Shannon's wedding. I will include an email I received from Patsy below:

Dearest Robert:

Thank you so much for sending the letter to Shannan, I have delivered it to her- the wedding was spectacular and we missed you and Kellie and Steven and Dona since we have no other family on my family that could come. Grace and Russ from Steven's side came and they were our only family there, but everything turned out so beautiful. The weather was beautiful, the ceremony at the Draper Temple was beautiful. Shannan was the only bride and those little women at the temple just pampered her. The reception was all I hoped it would be and the food was plentiful and lovely. How blessed are we to have all three of our daughters married in the temple to wonderful young men who love and respect them and a wonderful son. I haven't had a lot of money in this life, but that means nothing to me, in spiritual matters, I am blessed beyond measure. I love you very, very much and grateful for two good brothers and a brother I pray for everyday - love Patsy


The Wisconsin Haws Family

Well I am in New York City at Steve and Dona's home. I came to New York City on Friday. I am a meeting for the International Pediatric Nephrology Meetings. I attended the Saturday meetings and will return to the meetings again tomorrow. I was able to enjoy church with Steve and Dona and they have treated me to a delicious meal. I tried to attend the Manhatten temple to get some of the work down but unfortunately the temple was closed for renovations. Foiled!

Back in Wisconsin Logan is starting school tomorrow. He will be attending Columbus Catholic School. The students and parents have been very welcoming to Logan. Logan has been attending soccer practice every morning at 6:30 AM. The biggest news from Logan is that his chicken coop is now fully commissioned and christened. It was not painted when I left but they are planning on painting it red. We will besure and send some pictures. With the Salmonella outbreak we are hoping that Logan's chickens start earning their keep very soon!

Emily has had fun with friends this last week prior to starting school. She has continued working on Chips. She has been rereading the Fablehaven book series.

Lanette's school is beginning this week but with mom trying to do mom and dad duties she has elected not to take Lanette down to school this week. Lanette did have the opportunity to spend some time with my former medical assistant, April, and her family.

Grant has continued to work quite a bit. He was gracious enough to help me move the chicken coop. Unfortunately when we lifted up the coop the wheel was set down on his foot. You have to understand that our chicken coop weighs about 500 or 600 pounds. Thankfully he was willing to keep helping me. We got the chicken coop in position, a fence set up and things basically set up before I ran in a took a quick shower before driving to the airport.

Mom has been working hard trying to cover all the family duties. In addition to the regular duties mom is constantly doing she put up more than 20 jars of spagetti sauce. Needless to say she does not want to see another tomato for at least one year. Mom will be working in one of the local schools with a blind girl as a teacher's assistant. I know that she will do a wonderful job.

News from Newport News

This week has been wonderful. First of all ANDY IS HOME! He was suppose to arrive home on Wednesday night but they had a sandstorm and therefore was not able to fly out until the next day. On Thursday afternoon was the long awaited arrival! They received a police and POW/MIA biker escort from the airport which was well deserved. All of us was full of excitement. Haley and Kayla of course are very attached to him and are both very much daddy's girls. I am loving having my best friend home again.

News from the Lanes

I have not been able to reach Julie and Jeff for the last couple of days. I do know that they are looking forward to their upcoming move to a new apartments. We are delighted to know that Julie and Jeff along with Stacie and Kevin will be coming to Wisconsin for Christmas. Thankfully are basement has made such progress that we will be able to enjoy that extra space.

That actually brings me to a thought that Mom and I have discussed. We really need to update our family picture but there is no way we are going to bring everyone together soon. We are going to look into working with a photographer that could potentially merge each of your family pictures into a composite family picture. When we were visiting my cousin in Janesville they had done such photograph. It was really good. I will give you more details in the future.

The Jacksons of Albaquerque

Last Sunday Stacie was called to serve in the ward Young Women's organization. Stacie and Kevin spent dinner and another couple's home, the Hardmans. They are grateful to be gaining more friends in their area. They have been especially thankful for their neighbor, Cesar, who has helped them repeatedly with their car troubles including the car troubles they had last Tuesday. On Tuesday they discovered, after a lot of looking, that a hose broke off of their engine causing the car to overheat and shut down frequently. Thankfully the car was fixed quickly and with the help of Cesar and Stacie's visiting teacher, they were able to fix their problems and get around.


Tuesday also marked the first day of graduate school for Kevin. He is currently taking a medieval studies course and a introduction to professional research course. So far he is enjoying is courses and looks forward to being able to take more courses in the future. On Friday Stacie and Kevin assisted with their monthly Cub Pack Meeting, where they held a "Raingutter Ragatta." Kevin did a great job stepping up as cubmaster and the boys really enjoyed creating and racing their tin foil boats.


On Saturday Stacie looked forward to spending some time with some new friends from work, but had to take a rain check due to a cold. With the help of a lot of orange juice and a nice husband, she is recovering from her sickness. She also was excited to receive a candle that she won from a blog site. She has sent a picture of the candle, which looks pretty cool and should smell great (once her sinuses have cleared up enough to try it out).


Today Stacie and Kevin look forward to spending dinner with another family in their wards and, hopefully, developing more friends.

The International Haws

Generally we had a very normal week.



Some fun occurances were:



To our luck last week the Packers game was on tv down here. Surprised to see it I told the kids to leave it on for a bit. While watching Renata bursted out “I’ve heard of that player before.” Not quite understanding I asked what she meant I requested explanation. She insisted that she had heard the name of one of the players, his name was Quarterback and since she had heard of him before he must be famous. Being in a jolly mood I played along with a “Yeah, I watched him play when I was young” and “I can’t believe that you have heard of him.” Finally I had to break down and tell her that quarterback was a position and not the name of a player, but it was quite enjoyable.

A fun story with Lucas (though I may have mentioned this before). Lucas has been playing hide-and-seek in the neighborhood lately. Complaints have come in that the game is not fun anymore. Dallin dalmation ruins it. Apparently Dallin likes to follow Lucas so when he hides there is either a tail flapping around or barks or any number of other give-aways for where Lucas is located. It is fun to watch. In the end I think that Dallin suffers an identity complex thinking that he is one of the kids and not the dog.


My birthday is this week and Renata spent some time trying to determine what would be a good present. I think that she found the best possible present. She bought a nice, comfortable chair for me to use when I work. Unfortunately for Renata this has brought undesired side effects, namely now I feel so much better sitting in my chair that it is even harder to pull me away from work. If the thing had just a couple more inches height in the back and a little more tilt I think that I could sleep in the thing. Renata, Steven and I are both very grateful.



As that takes up all of the interesting stories I confess that everything else was pretty much the same game of work and school.


Jeff