Monday Memories

I forgot I was going to do this and something spurred my memory today and I decided to start again. Hopefully, I will remember.

From October 1994:

Dear Family,

Well, we are certainly glad that we can all start keeping in touch again. We are excited about being able to do the newsletter. It gives us a chance to put our computer to good use.

We are doing fantastic. The Lord has blessed us so much recently. We truly know that we made the right decision moving here to Oregon. We are able to live on our own and in a small house close to my grandparents. We have both gotten jobs that are truly wonderful. Chris is working for United Grocer's Insurance as a claims representative. He is making good money and has excellent benefits. I am working for a Real Estate office as an Office Coordinator. We work about one mile apart on the same street, at the same time and with the same lunch hour. It is really convenient. We have lunch together all the time. It is also only six miles from our house. We were truly blessed because we didn't know how we were going to work out the car situation because we only have one car. Now we can carpool together. The biggest bonus is that we really enjoy our jobs an the people we work with.

Speaking of cars, we were having a lot of trouble with ours before we got here and shortly thereafter. But again, the Lord blessed us and it is now running better than ever.

Since we have been here we have been able to do and see a lot of things. We were able to see Pam and her kids, Kenny and Kelly and their kids, Dad and Natasha Olenik. We thoroughly enjoyed being with family. We have also done a little bit of traveling. We were able to go to the Pendleton Round-Up this last month and really enjoyed that. We love Country music and are so excited about having such an abundance of Country stations here. We also were able to go the the Coast, over to Seaside, Tillamook and up to Astoria. We got to see the school where Kindergarten Cop was filmed. We were also able to go down to Bend which took us through Mt. Hood and through the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. We have enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the countryside as we drive. We try not to sleep along the way as to not miss any of its beauty.

Well the Bishop didn't waste any time giving us callings. Chris was called to be the Varsity Scout Committee Chairman. He already has his calendar packed with meetings and Court of Honors. I was called to be the ward YW's Sports Director. I am in charge of coaching the Young Women in Volleyball, Basketball, Indoor Soccer and Softball. So far it is going well. We have a good bunch of girls. We also were assigned home teaching and visiting teaching routes. It is good though, it gives us a change to get to know everyone and to get involved. We are both rather shy and try to hide in the back row.

Chris and I have made a goal to attend the temple every Saturday. So far we have been doing it. (We started two weeks ago) Last Saturday as we were sitting in the chapel waiting for our session to begin, we were pleasantly surprised to see Dennis and Diana Cluff walk in. They drive up in their RV once a month from Ashland to do temple work. It was a fun session. So we visited a while. Speaking of temple work, if anyone has names that need to have work done, please let us know. We would like to be selfish for a while and do our own family's work.

The weather is starting to get cold, really fast. We sort of missed Fall and jumped head first into Winter. The nights were really bad so we had to buy thermal garments and an electric blanket. We are enjoying it though. We have had to scrape ice off the windows of our car in the morning. The other day we went out to a pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkins. It was rather cold out and they were serving hot apple cider. It was so neat to be picking our own pumpkins. We bought 150 pounds (which was about 10 pumpkins) for nine dollars. We thought we were so cool. It was a lot of fun. Needless to say we are enjoying ourselves here immensely.

We do hope you are all doing fine and that all is well with all of you. We love you and miss you all. Hopefullly we can all get together this next summer for a family reunion. Take care and have a happy Halloween.

Note: We had just moved to Oregon from Hawaii and everything was so new and exciting, like different seasons, pumpkins and apparently country music! :0)