We are out at the coast in the city of Seaside staying at one of our Thousand Trails Preserves.  It is our first trip to this one, most often we go to the one at Pacific City.  It was our anniversary on the 23rd and we decided to get away for a few days.  We were going to come out on Thursday, but Collen (Hirschi) Widmer called us from Hawaii earlier in the week and told us that they were going to flying from Hawaii to Phoenix on Friday and have an overnight lay-over in Portland wanted a "warm" place to stay for the evening.  They had been in Hawaii for nearly three weeks.  They have been gone from up here since mid-December.  When they left this time they turned off their water and down their heat, so they did not want to have to undo all of that only to do it all back up the next morning.  They had mentioned they might want a place to stay before they left last month, so when we heard they were coming we were happy to make the adjustment to our schedule.  We get to see them so infrequently, so it is always good to spend time with them.  So we picked them up at the airport fairly late on Friday night, enjoyed their visit, and then dropped them off at the airport on our way out to the coast on Saturday.

We haven't done much, just enjoyed relaxing, reading, watching some DVD movies.  We plan to stay until Thursday and will enjoy every minute of it.

I thought that I would post some pictures just for fun.

January, 2010

Dear Family,

Well, it is the 10^th of the month and Brent is expecting my input to the family letter, so I had better get cracking.  However, I am a little shy of things to write about since I have put just everything that we had been doing either in our Family Christmas Letter or in my blog updates.  We are now in to this new year and not much exciting has happened so far.  I guess we are just trying to put things back to “normal”, whatever that is.

Yesterday was Leslie’s birthday, so Friday evening we got together as a family and had a small get-together for her with just family.  Todd, Teri Lynn, (and of course Leslie) and their families came over and we ate pizza for dinner and then had brownies and ice cream for desert.  It is easy to remember on what day Leslie was born because it was 1-9-76 (1976… da ya get it?).  On my blog I will post a baby picture of her and also a recent picture for all to see.  We are very proud of Leslie and her little family and love it that she lives close and makes an effort for us to see her and “the boys” several times a day, of course having a sister that is married to a brother-in-law living with us is certainly an attraction.  I guess when Heather, Jay, and Gwen move out we will have to see how often we see them to know the attraction for sure, but until then we will believe that it is so “the boys” can see their grandma and grandpa.  Anyway, Happy Birthday to our Leslie.

Leslie and then Leslie and her Grandpa Alder 6-days old

 

Left:  Leslie 6 Months

Right: Leslie, nearly one year old with Aaron, Teri Lynn and Todd

 

Leslie, One year Old

 

Leslie, nearly 3 years old

Leslie, 6 years old

 

Leslie at Heather's BD Party.

(Ask Todd about her black eye)

   

Leslie, Easter of 1985

 

Les with sibs in 2005

LTR:  Heather, Jacki, Shauna, Leslie, Teri Lynn, Jenn

Josh, Sawyer, Finn and Leslie on Christmas morning.

Again, Happy Birthday Leslie

Yesterday (Saturday) morning, Randy, Chase, Cort and I went out gathering up Christmas Trees as a money-making project for the ward scouts.  They have been doing this for several years and do very well.  The fellow who has it organized has a bunch of apartment complexes that need to get rid of their tenant’s Christmas trees, and we contract to come and pick them up and take them to a place where they can be recycled (a big selling point these days).  I drove the Denali and pulled Josh and Jay’s dad’s trailer.  Our route was all over the place, but I just took my GPS and it took us right to the places and then Chase and Cort were good to help throw the trees into the trailer and Randy with his LONG legs was able to get on top and tramp and squish them.  We picked up 17 trees and at $5 per tree that was pretty good.  Many of the routes picked up lots more trees, ours was a long route and went all over the place and we did not have large complexes, so we did not get many trees.  Anyway, it was good to spend time with Randy and two of the boys and work with them.  This will help Chase and Cort with their summer camps.

Tomorrow I am going to take our Phaeton motorhome out to the dealer and have the last of the warranty work done.  We have a blind that needs to be fixed and the TV in the bedroom is acting up and I need to get that taken care of before our next trip… which is coming right up.  We have decided to go out to he coast for our anniversary.  We plan to leave on the Thursday before our anniversary (Saturday the 23^rd) and stay through the weekend and on into the next week.  We will go out to the coast and stay in one of the Thousand Trails Resorts that we belong to.  We usually go to the one at Pacific City, but are thinking about trying a different one since we don’t have kids that go with us that want to play on the sand dune there any more.  That is coming right up and I will blog about it either during or when we get back (depending on whether we have Internet).

Well, I guess this one will be short and sweet.  There is not much else going on to write about, so I will quit for now.  Judy Lynn and I  want everyone to know that we hope that everyone had a great time with your families over the Christmas holidays and we also want to wish all of you the very best for this new year.  May it be the B E S T year ever!

Love to you all,

Judy Lynn and Roger

 

 

I thought I would take a moment and post some of the pictures that we took on Christmas Day.  As in a lot of families. we trade off having as many of the family that can be here between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This year we had Thanksgiving and I posted about that.  This Christmas we at least have half of our family with us because they live close.  Things were a little discombobulated from our traditional "schedule", but it worked out great.  In the past the Rickers have got up and opened their gifts at 5:30 AM, so Les and Heather were finished before Judy Lynn and I even thought about getting up.  This year, they changed the time to a more civilized time of 7:00.  So the Rickers all got together at that time, and then after, Les and Josh went back to their home for Santa's gifts for Sawyer and Finn.  Teri, Randy and the boys get together with the extended Crawford family and open their family exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, so the gifts that are left for Christmas morning are those from each other and Santa.  Todd told us that he and Jacki were up early and so excited to have Quinn wake up and see her gifts, but Quinn took that morning to "sleep in".  I guess Todd about went crazy.  So because of all those activities that took place before the came to our place,  Judy Lynn and I got up at our usual times and just sat around waiting for the family to show up.  We set the time for noon, but Les and Josh did not come until nearly 1:00, so we did not even start opening until after 1:00 PM because we/they had to snack from all the goodies first.
 

For those of you that have known us for a while you will remember that for some time after Judy Lynn and I were married we were afraid that we were going to end up childless.  We went for what seemed like ages with all our friends having kids and we were unable to find the combination.  In November of 1971 we adopted Aaron John and became proud parents.  Just about a year later, the same lawyer, Clarance Potts, that arranged for our adoption of Aaron John called and asked us if we would like a second child.  Of course we said we would and began our wait.  We know that Teri Lynn... well at least a baby was coming... we did not know whether "it" would be a girl or a boy.  The "baby" was due about mid December and when it got that time Judy Lynn and I began our wait, somewhat like the wait when you are waiting for a "natural" birth of a child.  We waited and waited and on the 21st of December, we got a call from our lawyer telling us the baby was here and that she was a girl.  Since we had been through "the drill" just the year before, we were a little more prepared this time.

We were hoping that we could get Teri Lynn home for Christmas, but after she was born she got yellow jaundice and for a while it looked like Teri Lynn would be in the hospital over Christmas.  Christmas was on Monday and while at church, our lawyer (who was also LDS) called the church and asked for me and told me that we could go to the hospital and pick up our new little baby.  We did not even stay for church, but went right to the hospital.  Judy Lynn's parents were up for Christmas, so they were there when we brought Teri Lynn home.

Christmas decorations are mostly done.  As I told you in an earlier blog, I was able to get the outside lights up Thanksgiving weekend.  I have added a few more lights that has helped the small bushes, but may add some more because they are still pretty dim compared to the other lighting around the house.