Quick note

Hi Everyone! I just wanted to let you know that BethAnne and I are headed to Cincinnati tomorrow (Wednesday morning). We'll let you know how things go. We appreciate everyone's prayers for us and the doctors. I hope you are all doing well. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you at Thanksgiving. We had a fun halloween (a day early). Mom got a bunch of her neighbors to let us come and trick or treat a day early. (I'll post pictures soon). It was so fun! I'm so grateful for Mom's help with that and with watching Grace while Mark's at work this week. Love you all!

Good times...

So fun to hear about Jon's exciting news and to see Eva's "girl on a cow"!!! I critique kid art on a daily basis, and that is truly incredible work! Isn't it amazing how one minute (or month, or year) things can seem so desperate, and then the next we are blessed way beyond our wildest dreams? Jon, congrats again on getting into the program and getting onto such a prestigous team! Chrissy, you will do a great job teaching. I'm excited for you.
So these pictures are from a few weekends ago. Brian ran in his first race (he was convinced he was going to win until he saw all the "big boys" there.) The rest of the pics are from the Elk Festival (only in Logan, right?). The balloon hats are supposed to look like elk racks. We shot BB-guns, bows, and rode a horse-drawn wagon through elk country. Very fun.
Speaking of fun, we had a great time this weekend with Carl, Steph and Ben. Cute family. Ben (and all the boys for that matter ) had a fun time sliding down a big inflatatle slide, riding a carousel, and climbing through a McDonald's-type play area. That's about all for now...

Snippets from the Bousquets

Just wanted to do a quick post to update you on our lives way out here in Virginia. We're doing great. The weather has been warm (in the 70's) and the leaves are changing. Acorns from the oak trees in our backyard are falling like little bombs all over the place. We'll be sitting in the house and all of a sudden hear clatter, bang, clatter as they hit the neighbors roof or our deck. Squirrels (Jeff counted 6 or 7 the other day) go racing around our backyard and we have a little chipmunk that lives under our deck.
The kids are cute as can be. We went out and bought Halloween costumes the other day and Eva has been so excited about her elephant costume. Aiden is going to be a monkey. They both look darling; I'll have to take pictures and post them soon.
A funny little story from a couple weeks ago. During our family prayers we often ask Heavenly Father to please bless the prophet. During general conference we pointed out the prophet to Eva and tried to explain to her who he is and what he does. I thought I'd done a pretty good job until that night during family prayer when Eva said, "...and please bless the prophet that we are about to eat." Oh well, I guess we have to work on that one a little bit :).
Well, that's about all our news. We love you all tons!

P.S. The picture is a drawing that Eva made of "a girl riding a cow." I was pretty impressed and think that all of you should be too : )

My Awesome Husband...

I just wanted to let you all know that Jon found out today that he made the NAHB competition team this year. Remember how he did the LEED (Green Building) team last year? That was a walk in the park compared to this! This competition is the most prestigious home building competition for CM majors, and thousands of companies come to the national championships to recruit (and BYU has a record for placing nationally). The team only lets 1 or 2 juniors on the team, so this is quite the honor and I am so proud of Jon! It's gonna be a lot of work and I'm taking applications for a roommate for a week in the middle of February, but other than that this is going to be a great experience. :)

School is going pretty good for us and we're almost over the midterm hump--can you believe how fast time flies? Jon passed his midterms with flying colors, and I'm working through a midterm paper about how to teach a research paper. Sounds boring, but I'm loving it! I teach my first lesson tomorrow morning on the Outsiders and I'm super nervous but there's gotta be a first time for everything I guess. The B-Day classes (which is tomorrow) are smaller than the A-day, so that's a plus. So anyways, I'm tired and boring, but I just had to brag about my husband. Hope everyone is doing well! Love you!

I don't have a ton of time (two major tests to take tomorrow). I just wanted to post these pictures of Ben. The first is him playing with his cousin Will (very cute, at least when they are playing nice). the second is us at the Alpine Slides in Park City. He loved it, exept for when I accidentally bonked him in the head with the sled. The third on is when he was playing in the mud with his cousins down in St. George. Boys will be boys... and I guess girls tend to act like boys too.

Mark's job is safe!

I just wanted to let you know that Mark has been told that he is staying with Micron! Wahoo! We are very glad. You don't know how much you like a job until you might lose it. We feel blessed and I'm very proud of Mark. They must like him because they are laying off 1/2 of the department. We would also like to introduce you to the new photographer of the family- BethAnne! She has become very interested in taking pictures and she has become quite good at it. She took the above picture of Grace. My kids are very cute and talented! I hope you are all well. Love, Aubrey

I Love My Children!

Hi everybody! It is SO FUN to read your blogs! What a great idea to stay in touch. This is my first posting cuz I finally figured out how to do my own instead of just comment. (Remember - 50 years ago we barely had black and white TV's and I remember when our phone was on a "party line" and I could listen in to the neighbors conversations.) Annnyway....your dad and I are doing fine - kinda fun to have an empty nest! We love our service in the temple each Thursday - I say to Dad, "Oh goody, it's Thursday! We get to go to that place that is somewhere between heaven and earth." I really do feel that the temple is a place separate from this universe - a place of peace and joy. My school is Fun - except when I don't get my Algebra story problems - and I'm doing pretty good :) We look forward to seeing all you Utah Bakers this weekend! Love to you all - and keep those postings coming - And the pictures are DARLING! I'll have to figure out how to print them out so I can put them on the fridge! Love to you all! Mom

MELMO!!!

This is Ben's Elmo (MELMO) costume for Halloween. He never wants to take it off. That's about all I have to say about that. Love you!

Happy Sunday!

Hello family! I felt like I should jump on the bandwagon and post an update like the rest of the sisters, but the problem is, we're kinda boring and we don't have cute pictures of kids to post. School's still going good for us, but it's getting busier as the semester wears on. I met my coordinating teacher who I'll be student teaching with next semester and she's really nice. I'll be teaching 7 classes of seventh graders at Oak Canyon Junior High in Lindon, with nearly 250 students in all of my classes. Wish me luck memorizing all their names! Three of those classes are part of a cross-curriculum program called PUSH where English, History and Science coordinate their curriculums to be talking about the same things and they go on a bunch of fieldtrips, so that will be fun. The History and Science teachers will have student teachers next semester too, so there'll be six of us planning lessons for the PUSH team--exciting! I'm nervous to teach, but my teacher (Mrs. Jones) is so supportive and is going to give me as much freedom or as much structure as I want. Jon is loving his new job as a CAD drafter for a local home builder and right now is working on plans for a huge house near the point of the mountain. So anyways, that's about it for the Hastings. It's so fun to hear from all of you and look at your adorable pictures! Have a great week!

Rogers Family Update

Hi all! It's so fun to read your updates! Things here are going well. BethAnne started preschool and she really likes it most of the time. We decorated our pumpkins with Mr Potato head decorating kits. We were going to paint them, but we couldn't figure out how to do that and keep Grace happy. The other pictures show pretty BethAnne and Grace in lovely new outfits from Nana.

BethAnne and I are going to Cincinnati for a couple of days on the 17th. She's having some tests to determine how extensive her surgery needs to be. Depending on the difficulty of the surgery, it will be in December or January. We could be there for up to a month for that. We're praying that she will not require an extensive surgery. We appreciate your prayers in behalf of BethAnne and her doctors. This short trip on the 17th shouldn't be difficult, it may be even a fun s outing. We hope to see the aquarium and maybe have dinner on a river boat.

Mark will probably find out next week if he will be affected by the upcoming layoffs at Micron. We also found out that Mark will soon have to go back to commuting to the main site or to Nampa if he has a job to commute to :) To save money, Micron is not renewing the lease on their location close to us. We have hope that everything will be fine, no matter what that looks like. We have been blessed so much and Mark has a good education and good skills. We welcome your prayers on that front also.

Grace has been sick and fussy and teething on and off for a couple weeks, but she's doing better today. BethAnne is doing well. She can now swallow pills, which allows her to have an extended release form of her medicine which means she doesn't have to have that medicine three times a day. She's such a big ! Mark's sister Lisa is coming tomorrow to visit for a couple of days, so we're looking forward to that. I'm trying to keep up on housework, though it's been a losing battle lately :) I'm grateful for all our blessings and for a wonderful family. Love you all! Have a great week!

Hey there...

Not much new here - just checking in for the week. My kids have been angels the last few days (compared to usual). Brian hasn't thrown a fit for a week, and Cameron has been happy and sweet (as opposed to the disgruntled and mean phase he's been going through the past few months). I'm glad he's back to his normal self. I wish you could see the gleam in his eye when he tries to say a word -- priceless. Now if we could just get Tyler back to his sweet, happy self...
We've been thinking about Holiday plans. We're staying put for Thanksgiving and Christmas Day for sure (as always, anyone is welcome to join us -- Christmas at the Llewellyn's is a riot). We'll travel to Boise and/or Orem around New Year's. We've got plenty of time to think about all of that, though.
Love you all!

Aiden's First Haircut

Okay, so you all probably don't really care that I forgot to include the pictures of Aiden's first haircut in my last post, but I think they're darling, so here they are...before, during, and after the haircut.

Hi, From the Bousquet Clan!

Hi Everyone!

We're all busy and happy as usual. We have a million projects going on around the house. I'm getting to know my way around Home Depot pretty well by now; sometimes I don't even have to ask directions to find what I'm looking for! : ) My biggest focus for the house right now is finding couches to replace the ratty ones we've had for 10 years. I'm way too picky and I'm having trouble finding just the right set. Does anyone have suggestions for where to look...how to get a good deal, etc.?

I wanted to post some pictures of our latest happenings. They include Eva's first day at preschool (she still loves it!); Aiden engaged in one of his favorite activities, banging on pots and pans; Aiden's first haircut, which was last week (he's getting so big, he didn't even cry!); Eva and Aiden playing in the backyard; and an eagle that was perched on our swingset a few weeks ago. We love you all!

P.S. Sorry about the picture layout. I'm new to this stuff : )