Saturday, May 24, 2008

Family News Update

A few things have happened recently that deserve mention. First, Easton H_____, Devery's husband, was able to secure a summer job at Bradbury Stamm, a large local commercial construction contractor. He probably couldn't have found a better job, as it pays well and gives him some good project management experience for his resume. Devery regained her "L" clearance at the end of her first week at Sandia, so she no longer has to be escorted everywhere inside the limited area. Kristy and Chris are now settled in their new home, and we're hoping Chris will have time to do some repairs to some of our cars, especially the 1990 Geo Prizm and the 1994 Dodge Shadow that we've kept for Dorine and Kiley, respectively, to drive. Kristy's twins, Hailee and Maddy, are both doing well, although they still look hardly anything alike. Heidi and Dion drove down to El Paso to pick up a new Nissan truck after Dion's old truck was stolen out of their driveway several weeks ago. Dorine and Kiley, out of school for the summer, will be going to stake girls' camp at Tres Ritos (a boy scout camp in northern New Mexico) in a few weeks. Our stake decided to cancel the youth handcart trek it had previously scheduled for late July and has rescheduled it for next June -- which is a relief to us, since Dorine and I were called to be a "ma and pa" and we weren't sure how the whole thing was going to come off this year. We will be going to the cabin in Colorado in a couple of weeks; I'm hoping Easton and Devery can both get that Friday off, so that we can drive up on Thursday night and spend three nights there. (With gas being as expensive as it is, I consider any trip of less than three nights to be not worth the travel expense.) Kiley is still very excited about having made AYS for next school year, and she almost can't wait for the AYS camp in August (at the Hummingbird Music Camp in the Jemez Mountains), although she has both girls' camp and EFY in SLC to do first. Darren still doesn't say much in the e-mails he sends us on Mondays from Honduras, but I think he'd like to get out of the city and off in the sticks somewhere. I hope he still enjoys the missionary work and is acquiring greater love for the Honduran people. I'm still not sleeping well at night without medication, but I do have an appointment to see the sleep specialist this week -- we'll see if he has any ideas. I'm also not thrilled about certain developments that are taking place on the admin side of the house at Sandia Labs, but since it's all beyond my ability to control, I have no choice but to roll with the punches.