Letters to my Children

Hi Michael!

I hope you had a great week. I enjoyed the emails you sent. It sounds like you have been very busy with the move and making new contacts. I’m glad you like your companion and hope you are becoming good friends. Each new companionship will bring challenges and opportunities. You have the ability to be a leader and a peacemaker, and also to learn from your companion’s strengths. Hopefully you are getting some good Chinese conversation so you can continue to learn the language. Keep working hard!

How is the apartment coming along? Whyyyyy didn’t you have heat? Has it been a 10 days without heat? Or did you get it all sorted out? I wonder why they didn’t have you just stay with the Waltham elders until the heat was turned on? Have you been able to get the apartment stocked with essentials? What about window coverings? At very least you could cover the window with the light at night with cardboard or even tinfoil. Haha! What an adventure!

Holy Cow. That Boston Burger looked…intense!

This is what we’ve been up to:

1. It finally snowed this week! Nobody is more excited than Ty for obvious reasons. (He spent all day skiing at Woodward yesterday. First day out he damaged his brand new skis and needs a $100 repair.) We really need the water and clean air, so the rest of us are happy too. Luckily we got the yard cleaned up really well just before the snow came. I bought a new power trimmer and trimmed a bunch of bushes, but your dad went to town on the ones under my bedroom window. He cut them right down to the ground. I think he’s hoping they just die because he’s always hated those bushes. But now we have huge pile of branches that need to be hauled to the dump.

2. Tate is sick again and had to stay home from preschool this week. It’s been a week and he is feeling much better, and I can wait to send him back to school on Tuesday! One day he was so miserable and tired he just fell asleep right on the kitchen floor! He is kinda hard right now. Today I found him covered in grape jelly. I thought he had eaten the whole jar with a spoon, but then I found that he had poured at least half down the vent in the mudroom. Every morning he trashes his room when he wakes up. Toys, clothes, blankets, books all over the floor. If I don’t get him up right away, sometimes he takes his diaper off and pees on the carpet. Argh! It’s just constant. He was so excited about the snow, so of course I put on his boots, gloves, and hat about 900 times in the last 2 days. At least he’s cute!

3. Because Tate was home from school all week, I didn’t really find much time to get out and do errands. So, I mostly stayed home and tried to get things ready for Christmas. Yesterday your Dad helped me put up hooks for our stocking on the mantle, and I put up a small tree in the piano room and another in the front entry. I also got out a new puzzle because obviously I don’t have anything else to be doing right now.

4. Your Dad started feeling sick on Friday night. He felt ok on Saturday and tested negative for Covid, but he really did not feel well this morning and stayed home from his church meetings. He’s sleeping downstairs in your bed so that hopefully I don’t get sick too. We had to cancel dinner with Grandpa and Janet, my parents, and Scott and Chieko, which I was really disappointed about. Hopefully we can find a time when everyone in the house is healthy again so we can have them over another time soon.

5. Covid is still making things weird. The kids are now fully vaccinated (besides Tate) and Ty is scheduled for a booster shot. But, our hospitals have been full for 3 months now. It’s even worse than last year, but nobody is wearing masks, and most people are choosing not to vaccinate their kids. On Sunday we went to Grandma’s house for “Souper Sunday” with the cousins. I don’t think we’ve seen everyone since our family photos in October before you left. It felt like the before times! Dad’s firm held a Christmas party at the Salt Lake Country Club. That was the first time I have dined in at a crowded restaurant setting since before Covid began. It felt so strange to even be there. I was one of very few in the room wearing a mask. And today I let the kids go back to primary. I’m sort of in this in-between phase where I know our family is mostly protected from Covid, but still uncomfortable about large gatherings. Plus, Tate has already been sick 3 times this fall, so there is a lot of sickness still going around. Kinda feel like just hibernating until spring. Speaking of Covid—I saw a report that the wastewater detection in Boston is showing a sharp increase of covid—equal to previous peaks. So please make the effort to go get your booster shot! You do not want to get covid and be quarantined in your apartment---I promise! And also, you would never want to unknowingly pass it to someone else who is vulnerable.

6. The Ferguson’s gave us a whole bag of Living Scripture DVDs, and Jett is so excited to be able to watch a show on Sunday! Tate doesn’t like them because they are too scary.

7. We are having really cool formations of birds flying all over the place.

8. Midterm grades came out. Can you guess who is caught up and who is not?

9. The boys are all busy with their sports. Ethan and Jett are playing basketball, Blake hasn’t started yet. Blake is training at Kongo and workouts are getting harder. Jett doesn’t love indoor soccer, but he does like to play goalie. He is asking to start Karate. Ty is hoping to get his skis fixed for next week. Tate is dreaming of the day he has a team to play with. Jett was the first in his class to pass off his multiplication skills. Today he told me he “just wants to do more math,” so I printed out some worksheets for him. Ha! That was a first!

10. Topping the news this week are concerns about inflation, and the Supreme Court ruling that allows a Texas law banning abortion to remain in place. The issue is much more complex than just a ruling on abortion rights—it damages the power of the Supreme Court itself.

(Conservative) Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "Indeed, 'if the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgment, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.’" Roberts added, "The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.” It’s absolutely fascinating and frightening. Also this week, they struck a deal to raise to debt ceiling (avoiding disaster), and tornados ravaged the mid-west.

I was thinking about your comment about how you felt a little bit thrown into the fire this week with new responsibilities. From my lesson last week I learned that Joseph F Smith had to leave school when he was 15 after a fight with his teacher. So he was sent on a mission. At age 15! He had been orphaned a couple of years prior and had several younger siblings, but off he went. He traveled to California, then had to work to earn passage to the Sandwich Islands and eventually to Hawaii. He did not speak the language, but after 4 (!) years serving he learned and had success. Can you imagine? It’s just amazing to think about what those early saints sacrificed to share the gospel.

Can you let me know if you received the package I sent from Amazon? Also I sent you a Christmas card, but I think it messed up the zip code, so let me know if you didn’t get it, and I will send a new one. I’ll be sending you a few packages from Amazon this week and one through the post office. They are intended for you to open on Christmas, so keep an eye out for them.

I hope you have a great week!

Love you,

Mom