Home Sweet Home!

It has been quite the whirlwind adventure this week for me (Derek)! I just got home from a busy week of traveling for my company.

After a little over 5,400 miles traveled, 3 different hotels stayed at, 3 different presentations, 6 different takeoffs and landings and visiting the Atlanta airport 3 times...I am glad to be home!

It was a good trip and very productive for the company, it was neat to see some cities I have never been to before also.

On Monday we flew to Nashville, TN (by way of Atlanta) and had a good presentation there on Monday night. We drove to Asheville, NC on Tuesday morning and everyone was warning us of an ice storm that may be coming in to Nashville...no such storm materialized and it was quite a nice drive to Asheville. We spent Tuesday in Asheville and had another good meeting. Wednesday morning we got up really early and flew to Tampa, FL (by way of Atlanta again). It was 77 degrees in Tampa and we stayed at this beautiful hotel on the bayfront in St Petersburg, FL. It was fun being in Tampa-St Petersburg because of all of the Superbowl hoopla.

We went to the bayfront area after our meeting last night and there was a big Superbowl party taking place there, so we weren't allowed in...I guess they don't know who we are :)

Anyway, it was a good trip and I am quite worn out. We were up at 4 am eastern time this morning and flew from Tampa back to Salt Lake City (by way of Atlanta again)!

Good times!

Catch up post -- December Holidays, etc.

We haven't been very fantastic about updates lately, so it is always hard to play catch up. December was an eventful month with all of us fighting and overcoming several bouts of stomach flu, colds, etc.

It was also a great month with Derek getting his new job, spending lots of time together with family and parties for the holidays, etc.

Christmas was fun and most of the pictures on this post were from Christmas morning.

Ryan had a great first Christmas, he hasn't quite gotten the hang of the whole ripping paper off of boxes, but he still had fun exploring his new toys.

He has had fun with his new inflatable school bus and so has Grace. They watched a movie from it on Christmas while we waited out the blizzard. Then we went and saw Bedtime Stories as a family, it was fun!
Grace loves 'Fancy Nancy', she got a bunch of books and this dress and other cool 'Fancy Nancy' stuff thanks to grandma and grandpa.

It was a great Christmas and we really enjoyed the time together and the fun presents, we particularly enjoyed the magic of the season and the true essence of celebrating important things together!

Family Update...where has the time gone!!!

I can't believe we are already half way through January. It has been a crazy and good month (it looks like our last post was close to a month ago...wow)!

There is so much we can report on, but probably don't have the space. We feel so blessed and had such a great holiday season together as a family. Ryan hits the big first birthday on Sunday. We are so grateful for him, he took his first steps on January 5th. He is funny about it though because he can take a good 3 or 4 steps and just stand there for a while and then gets back down and crawls. He is getting more confident though and is, of course, climbing on to everything and getting stronger and more coordinated.

Sorry this picture above is a little out of focus, I really wish it had turned out better. This was a trip we took to the Tabernacle on Temple Square together as a family not too long ago.

Grace is so happy to be back in school and is such a good big sister. She loves to try to tell jokes and is so creative. She made her own iPod the other day with paper, markers, scissors, etc.

Kind of an odd post, but we just wanted to give a quick update. Derek has been so busy since the beginning of the new year with the great new job, still working at odd hours on his removal job for the mortuary, and busy being on the High Council. He has really been thrown into the fire with his new job and has been preparing a lot of presentations and will be visiting some cities soon to train resellers, etc. We miss having him around as much as we were used to, but are very happy when we do get him and we are all very happy that things are going well!

Melinda is excited to go to Arizona not to far down the road now to spend time with the family as they are now settled in Queen Creek in their new house. She has also received a new calling as the Secretary in the Primary and that has been keeping her busy too as she has been spending a lot of time getting lists updated, making a lot of visits, etc.

Grace and Ryan are so much joy and we love them. We will be excited to see how Ryan digs into his traditional 1 year birthday cake and make a real mess. It is crazy to think that a year ago at this time we were preparing for his arrival.

We love you all and promise to send more pictures and updates soon! We feel very blessed and appreciate our associations with all of you. Hope you are all doing well.