Our 2008 family newsletter

Happy New Year! I can unabashedly tell you that I did not even plan to send a “Christmas” letter, but planned on a New Year's letter all along. Really!
It's true! 2008 concludes a pretty good year for our family, especially compared to the 3 or 4 previous years from H-E-double-hockey sticks. Since I know it's hard to keep up with all our comings and goings without a road map of some kind, here's said road map: At home, today, we have the Dad - 47, me, the mom - 44, our resident blacksmith - 21, Mikey - 19, dd#2 -18, Ashay - 16, Joshie – 14, Hal – 13, Kadey – 12, Romie – 12, Nonee – 12, Betty – 11, Carrot – 10, Tommy – 8, Becca – 8, Hammie – 8, Luisa – 7, Taiza – 4 and Angel – 1. Away from home we have dd#1 – 20, living in Salt Lake, B – 16, living in a residential treatment center, and Faith, Hope and Charity, all age 1 and all still stuck by our own government's refusal to issue visas.

January: Lots of cold, lots of snow. Starfish Mama returned to the Utah legislature again as a “citizen lobbyist” (that means on my own dime) and was surprised to have to fight ANOTHER bill restricting midwifery practice down to basically nothing. She swears it is the last time she'll be surprised. Tommy turned 8 and was baptized shortly afterwards, Luisa turned 7, Hope turned 1 and dd #2 turned 18. We seriously discuss moving all of us overseas to live with our girls for two years (different visa process if you do that). We are serious enough about it that we get EVERYONE a US passport – ka-ching, ka-ching!

February: Lots of cold, lots of snow. Becca turns 8 and is baptized on March 1. I spend tons of time on “the Hill” and even drive to Idaho to testify about midwives in front of their legislature. We eat pink mashed potatoes, pink Jell-O and pink rolls on Valentine's Day. DD#2 moves out to go live with friends and “be free” from rules. You know, rules like don't drink, don't hang out with drug dealers, those kinds of onerous ones.

March: Starfish Daddy and I fly half-way around the world to visit the girls. It was a short trip with some good stuff and some frustrating stuff. It becomes obvious, however, that moving there for 2 years would be more problematic than we had hoped. Finish up our trip away by spending 5 days in Washington DC. We should get away together more often. Our kidlets at home were taken care of by some good friends of ours who said it was “fun” and that they'd “love to do it again”. Crazy people. (Takes one to know one – ha!) Faith and Charity turn 1. Starfish Mama makes sure she gets back in time for her neighborhood caucus and gets re-elected chair of her voting precinct. She loves all that crazy political stuff. :-) It's also a sad time when her grandfather – newly moved to Utah – passes away. More snow. We get sick of shoveling global warming off our driveway.

April: Yes, there is more snow. Our cat has kittens. Mikey graduates from UVU with his Associate's degree and gets 2 scholarships to finish the rest. Yes, he's 18. Woohoo! Starfish Daddy and Starfish Mama celebrate 22 years of married life, Betty turns 11, Taiza turns 4, Carrot turns 10 and our blacksmith turns 21 off on his mission in England. The three fifth-graders participate in a big “Hope of America” program. Mama goes to the Utah County Republican party convention and helps get her state rep re-elected.

May: Kadey turns 12 and leaves Primary. She wakes up to snow on the ground on her birthday. That makes 9 straight months with snow – enough already!! Starfish Mama gets all fired up about a candidate running for Congress – Jason Chaffetz. She wears his shirt at the state convention, where he almost gets 60% of the vote, which would have meant no primary. Instead, he is forced into a primary with a 12-yr incumbent and i get (very) involved with my first campaign ever. I hook the family into helping as well and everyone gets a good dose of politics. Mama also spends a couple of days driving round-trip to Logan (110 miles one way) to take a master food preserver refresher course. We also have a new homestudy done and re-apply with USCIS to get new “pre-approvals” to get the girls. We start our garden after a cold, wet spring.

June: Our family's life is dominated by campaigning. We walk in parades, put up signs (EVERYWHERE!), hand out and hang up door-hanger thingies, make phone calls, be part of an online response team – you name it, we probably did it. The kids thought it was very cool to meet Jason's kids (our kids' ages – not hard to do with a family our size). Michael heads to his first (and last) EFY. Angel turns 1, her adoption is finalized and her neurosurgeon is delighted with her progress. Romie turned 12 and left Primary, Hammie turns 8, but waits until big brother gets off his mission to get baptized. The funnest day of the month was day of the Republican primary when “our guy” won with almost 60% of the vote. We were all down at the poll-watching party, with plenty of nerves, excitement and a good dose of rowdiness mixed in. We all claim him, now. Nonee was fairly outraged that none of the other kids in her fifth grade class even knew who was running.


July: We spent the Fourth of July with the same friends that watched our kids in March. (They have 7 kids at home, by the way). We started early in the morning with watching the hot air balloons, then we went to the American Fork Rec Center and hung out at the pool all day. We have a barbecue and head down to watch the fireworks outside the “Stadium of Fire”. We get home late, late at night. Fun! B turns 16. Our big event of the month is our blacksmith coming home from his mission! We are all super-excited, of course, and have fun getting signs ready, tying yellow ribbons in all our trees and making a treat gift bag. At the airport, we wait for what felt like forever and finally see some missionaries start trickling out. Nope, not that one – too short. Not that one, not that one, not that one. Finally, this really tall, really skinny missionary comes through the door and his mom has to READ HIS NAMETAG to know it was him!!! Talk about changes . . . We are so proud of him. (That was the last time he shaved or cut his hair this year, by the way . . . )Mikey gets a job at Macey's grocery store to earn money for his mission. At the end of the month, Mama and kids (minus Mikey) go to Missouri to do some campaigning for a state candidate out there. We walk unfamiliar neighborhoods and listen to “The Work and the Glory” on Cd – three books, around 900 pages each. That's about 45 CDs. We get notified that our homestudy is “insufficient” to prove that we are adequate parents.


August: The Missouri primaries are held and sadly, our person did not win. I hope she'll run again. Starfish Daddy flies out and meets us in St. Louis, then we drive to Nauvoo. The kids who are 12 and older do baptisms in the Nauvoo temple. We watch the Nauvoo pageant – my favorite church pageant ever and do some fun things around town. The next day, we drive back into Missouri and go and stay with our friends. We set up tents by their pond and camp out. It is lovely as the hot, hot weather finally changed and nights are cool and comfortable. We look at land while we are out there, but nothing “speaks” to us. Nonee turns 12 and also leaves Primary. That's 3 baptisms and three Primary advancements in one year. After we get back home, we have a fun (but short) visit with an online friend of Mama's – also mom to a large adoptive family – that we enjoy meeting “in real life” for the first time. Then we gather a bunch of stuff together and enter it into the Utah County fair. All of the canned goods we enter win blue ribbons, as do Nonee's snickerdoodles and most of our garden produce. It was fun! The garden goes gang-busters and we start canning. Gotta love what loads of manure does for a garden. Joshie turns 14. Kids go back to school. Our cat has ANOTHER litter of kittens. We file our response with USCIS – 150 additional pages. Think that will be adequate?


September: Mikey submits his mission papers, approximately 95 days before his 19th birthday. Two weeks later, he gets his call to the Mozambique Maputo mission (that's in Africa, speaking Portuguese). Starfish Mama cans and cans and cans like a crazy woman. Some of the new things she tries this year are: Black Forest Preserves (chocolate-cherry jam), carrot cake jam, pear mincemeat, blushing peach jam (with bananas in it – yum!), summer salsa and plum sauce. She does all the regulars as well. She, Starfish Daddy and a handful of kids fit in a quick trip to Washington and Oregon and come back with about 3600 pounds of apples and about 2000 pounds of potatoes. Phew! Hal turns 13. We all go to a special Family Home Evening at the Family History Center. Mama tells Starfish Daddy's boss's boss that we want to move to Missouri. Shortly thereafter, the economy tanks, decimating the 401K. So much for that idea. Romie breaks his arm after skidding on his bike and hitting the ground.

October: The LDS church announces a temple in Clay county, Missouri – wowzers! Starfish Mama cries and cries 'cause they're not out there yet. She has a much-needed surgery. She also sews about a dozen Halloween costumes and does some more canning. Ashay turns 16 (wow!) Campaigning picks up before the general election. DD#2 announces that Mama and Daddy will become grandparents in the early summer. No, you did not miss a wedding announcement. Our family hosts a Halloween party and attend a couple more. Mama starts an online BYU class, trying to finish the last 30 credits she needs to have a Bachelor's. Mikey takes out his endowments.

November: Starfish Daddy turns 47. That's pushing 50. Unbelievable. “Our guy”, Jason Chaffetz, wins his election with some 72% of the vote. Angel is sealed to the family. We pass Lizzie's 20th birthday. She celebrates in heaven and we remember her here. Our friends with 13 kids come for Thanksgiving dinner, along with my brother's family. We feed 35, no problem. Mama, our blacksmith, Nonee, Romie and DD#2 hit the Black Friday sale at Jo-Ann's fabric and buy some 45 BOLTS of flannel. If you get cold, come here. We'll fix you up with warm jammies. And food from our overflowing food storage room. We have enough and to share. :-) I did it for you . . . Starfish mama's parents move to Missouri – they beat her there. How did that happen?!

December: The elves come fill the stockings on time – a miracle! (Our advent calendar is a set of 24 little stockings that the elves fill Nov 30, with one piece of candy per child per day, up til Christmas Eve.) Starfish mama sews. And sews. And sews some more. Final tally: 23 pairs of pajama pants, 13 pj tops, with 3 more partially assembled, 2 nightgowns and 6 very cute Christmas skirts. Mikey turns 19 and gets mission presents. He gets more mission stuff for Christmas. Lucky him! Mama turns 44 and spends her birthday doing all the temple work for her deceased daughter, Elizabeth. She cries. A lot. Christmas comes. It's smaller than previous years, but everyone is happy and no one cries. Four months pass since we submit our “response” to USCIS. Still no word. Mama thinks about putting a ticker on her blog, just for fun. She figures out how to put one on her Facebook page. We're at 7 months, 3 weeks.

We end the year with new friends, new knowledge, stronger testimonies and increased faith. Here's to 2009!