It always surprises me that Christmas actually comes…I guess just because we talk about it so far in advance! As always, our family had a really nice Christmas. Actually every year we have 2 Christmas Days…one with Alan’s parents the Saturday before and then of course Christmas Day at our house.
This year I particularly enjoyed having our house decorated. It seemed especially cozy…I think we had the fire burning morning and night (pretty easy when all you have to do is flip the switch!)
Madeleine, who is majoring in Print Journalism at BYU, is now a writer for their school newspaper, The Daily Universe. Her article is featured on the front page of this semester’s first edition.
She also has an article about Idle Free Awareness Month on the front page of this week’s edition. The name on the byline is her editor’s (even though she wrote the article) and she wants everyone to know that she didn’t write the headline (“Inanimate objects can’t urge drivers to do something”). Her story is at the bottom of the front page:
After struggling for over a year with constant congestion, Madeleine decided to have the things that were too small enlarged, and the things that were enlarged, reduced. Hopefully now when she gets a cold, she will just get better like everyone else and not have to take antibiotics for 3 weeks and choose between breathing and eating 🙂
As of today, Madeleine is the proud owner of her first car — a Ford Focus. After crunching numbers and thinking long and hard about it, she decided she needs a car to be able to take the jobs she wants. She spent the previous week doing research and making phone calls and then today she came up and spent the day with her Dad test driving, buying and financing the car. Needless to say, she is super excited!
Madeleine is no longer a teenager! She hit the big 20 this year! You know your kids are grown up when they ask for things like a voice recorder and the Chicago Manual of Style for their birthday and actually get super excited when they get them!
As we often do, we celebrated Madeleine’s and Alan’s birthdays together — this time on Madeleine’s actual birthday. But I did make Alan halusky (his favorite dinner) closer to his birthday — which by the way started out with four inches of snow on the ground!
All the Provo students are doing well. They are studying hard and working hard to earn and save money. Our married kids, Loren and Anne, are doing well and often have their siblings over for meals and movies. It’s crazy having half of our family down there – but so fun for them to all be there at the same time.
