OTHERS April 2012

The McKandas: 
We had a very exciting month with Macy celebrating her first birthday! We had an Under the Sea party with lots of fun decorations (McKay is preparing a birthday video to be completed soon!) Macy decided that cake is overrated but ice cream is where it's at.

McKay is beginning his 8th month as a freelancing motion graphics artist/director and is loving the ability to set his own hours and work from home most of the time. He is wrapping up a big project with Nike and Footlocker, and then it's on to a project with Red Box.

Amanda is busy with all that comes with chasing a toddler, as well as a few photography projects here and there. She is planning her first overnight girls trip with a few friends for later this month and looking forward to sleeping in and shopping without a stroller!!

We are looking forward to a fun spring and summer! Lots of traveling and time with family- can't wait!

Lots of love to all,
McKay, Amanda and Macy

Daily Duran 

Clare is working really hard to surpass Bella is everything the two of them do. So far she can eat and drink more, poop more, make bigger messes, and sleep a lot longer. Sometimes Clare will sleep in so long we have to wake her up so she can eat lunch. She really is a ball of energy. She loves to play with bouncy balls and squeals in delight when you roll one to her.

Bella has a great time playing with all her friends and Clare every day. They go to different parks and each other’s houses almost daily. She loves to wear her Cinderella dress that her Grammy Berry helped make for her. Whenever we tell her to get dressed so we can leave she runs and puts it on. She is a good big sister playing and dancing all the time with Clare.

Amy is always busy with the girls, church, and her friends. She got to go to a movie one night with her friends. She had fun being without anyone to take care, but she probably still had a full change of clothes for an army in her purse. She decorated for St. Patrick’s Day for one day then took it all down the next to put up the Easter decorations. She did a lot of work for Thomas designing multiple flyers, name badges, and business cards. She has kept up with running too. She goes a few times a week and will do up to four miles!

Thomas started the month off with an emergency management conference in Oakland. It was a one day there and back not too fun. He has been slowly getting the backyard in shape by putting in a few more fruit trees and prepping the ground for some sod. He spent a lot of time setting up the play set for the girls.


WARD WIDE WEB
TREVOR's sport this season is swimming. He swam in his first few meets last month and did well. He has always been a strong swimmer - a natural fish :) Trevor's Destination Imagination team (The Return of the Super Smart Alakazoo Airhead of Doom) took 3rd place at the Regional competition and then competed at the State Finals last month. They did not win a medal, but had great teamwork and a great experience.

LOGAN's sport this season is volleyball. He got to play on the varsity team even though this is his first season of volleyball ever! He is our natural athlete - good at everything. :) Logan's Destination Imagination team (The Return of the 7 DIwarfs) took FIRST place at the Regional competition and then competed at the State Finals last month. They were SOOO close to getting a medal - 4th place - only 4 points difference from the 3rd place team! They did really well this year.

LIZZIE also got to do Destination Imagination this year. Her team name was The Super Slimey Gummy Bear Luchador Explorers. (Yes, the kids get to make up their own team names - hence the silly quirkiness.) Lizzie's team took 2nd place at the Regional competition and then competed at the State Finals last month. Their entire skit was performed in the dark. They had to create their own light source - it was very cool. Her team did not get a medal either, but had so much fun working together. She can't wait for next year!

JACKSON got to go skiing for the first time this season. He went only twice up to Badger Pass in Yosemite. On his second trip he was skiing down the mountain completely on his own! No assistance required! He worked really well with Jeremy and learned how to control his skis without using any poles. 


JEREMY & JENNIFER are recovering from a super busy month. We coached Logan's DI team - practices on Friday nights (sometimes Thursdays as well) with the competition ALL DAY on Saturday. Throw in Scouts and evening meetings at work for Jeremy, Stake Musical practice and Relief Society meetings for Jennifer, swim meets, volleyball games, carpooling, teaching piano lessons - it was a whirlwind of a month! It was a special treat to have General Conference land at the end of this month. It was a perfect day of rejuvenation - just what we needed. :)

OTHERS March 2012

Motschiedler Madness

We had a fun-filled month!

DESH turned ONE!!!! Wow! So exciting. We had a fun little party for him and he got to eat his first piece of real cake. And of course, he LOVED it. He's a happy little guy! He's starting to walk and getting braver every day. He's now pointing at things when he wants something. He loves pulling and dropping all of his books off of his shelf every chance he gets. He loves driving around remote controls, tupperware, books, blocks and the occasional toy car. He LOVES music and sort of goes into a "bopping" trance anytime he hears it. We are starting weekly swim lessons today in hopes that he will overcome his fear of wet hair.

ALLYSON is busy busy! They always say being a stay at home mom is a lot of work, but I never really knew how much it until now! I'm loving it. When Deshy is happily playing by himself or sleeping, I am creating a website for a friend who represents fashion and jewelry designers in Australia. I am also busy doing the bookkeeping and overseeing the management of our apartment complex. I had so much fun planning and throwing a party for Deshy last month. I went a little crazy. But your first born only turns '1' once, right??? Check out pictures on our blog: madmott.blogspot.com. AND if one blog isn't enough, I've taken on the challenge of a 365 blog for 2012, which is a picture a day. Check that out here: mottproject365.blogspot.com. 

KEN is busy working and playing with Deshy. He took us to the Cat Haven up in Dunlap last weekend and we got to see lions and tigers and...cheetahs! They had leopards and jaguars and some other pretty amazing kitties. We were standing about 5 feet away from the tiger when he decided he didn't want the tour guide talking to him and he jumped up on his hind legs and let out a loud scary roar! I jumped behind Ken and Deshy broke into tears. It was so cool! If you haven't been, you need to check it out. Ken is also busy overseeing the work being done at our apartment complex. We are improving its beauty in hopes of enticing new tenants! We are also ready for another project and Ken is meeting with our broker to stat the search all over again for another complex. Can you say....double the work? Yowzers.

I think that about covers it. See you in April!

 

 

 

Timpsons, not Simpsons

 (Nick, Caralee, Lucas and Violet)

This month was AWESOME!  We got married and that's all that really needs to be said!  :)

 

 

 

 

Hello Everyone!  This message is from the Boggs/Loveland clan.  Mathias is a busy high school senior.  He is still taking college credit classes and working hard.  He plays football whenever he gets the chance, snow or not.  He recently was award the Sterling Scholar Foreign Language for his school and he is taking a cooking class (at least he will know how to cook a few things).  He has started working on his mission papers and we are excited.

 

DeeAnn (mom) is working and beginning to look for more work as hours have been cut for everyone at the grocery store where she works.  She is also trying to figure out if she can manage to go to school some more and finish a degree!  She is still learning and also enjoying the grand-children (five now).  THey are so cute!  Any ideas out there of work DeeAnn could do from home???  Sure do love you all and enjoy hearing news about your lives, sorry to be so bad at writing myself.

OTHERS February 2012

WADDS

Well...  Caralee and Nick are engaged!  It's been over a month since our engagement and we are very happy and planning planning planning!  Life is busy here in Sacramento, but its great to actually see each other every day Finally! Caralee is in school full time, the kids are happy with play groups and parks near by and Nick, our newest addition, is assimilating nicely into the swing of life with us.  (super run on sentence just there).   We see Samuel here and there and hope you all come up for short visits in the future too!  Happy February everyone!

COLORADO PETERS NEWS

Scott, Marcy, and Dylan Peters are very excited to announce the birth of Macy Leann Peters on January 25th. Macy was 6 .1 lbs, and 19 1/2 inches. Macy is perfect, and being spoiled already! Look us up on Facebook. 

WARD WIDE WEB

Jeremy got to go on a two day ski adventure with his best buddy/his brother as one of his Christmas gifts. They went to Mammoth, skied hard for 2 days, and came back sore sore sore after all that fun!

Jennifer planned and carried out another Relief Society meeting in January. These events are like planning a party for 100 people every month or so. Flyers, mailers, announcements, organizing program, music, food, decor, babysitting, etc. It's a lot of work! It is satisfying when the event goes well - like this one did - and so many women come to enjoy the evening.

Trevor prayed all month for rain - rain for one specific purpose... skiing! It has been a long dry winter here in the valley, but finally his prayers were answered! Trevor got to go skiing in January for the first time this season with his boy scout troop.

Logan ran in the Break the Barriers 5K race. He trained the 2 days before the race - running 2 miles one day and 3 the next. That training helped him take 2nd place! Logan crossed the finish line without even breaking a sweat. We love cheering on our running boy.

Lizzie hit a huge milestone last month - she turned 8 years old! She celebrated several times with friends and family, but was most excited about getting baptized. She looked beautiful on her big day and was so ready to take this most important step in her life. She is also looking forward to joining the Activity Day girls on Tuesday nights :)

Jackson is doing well in kindergarten. He is working hard at passing off his sight words and gets a cool certificate every time he does! We have quite a stack of successes piling up on our pantry door. Yay Jackson!

OTHERS January 2012

Wadds

We have uprooted and now have planted ourselves in Sacramento.  Lucas misses school, Violet misses Nicole and Caralee misses knowing her way around town...  And Caralee misses her family a whole lot too!! It's a good thing that Samuel is here to play with us or we'd be miserable!  Everyone come up and visit please :)


The Westbroeks (if you don't know who we are... keep reading!)

Well, Tiana and John have just passed their 4 months of marriage mark, and started another semester of college at BYU~Idaho!  It is Tiana's last semester -- woo-hoo!  She is set to graduate (as a Child Development major) in April! And then she just has her internship! Right now she is also on the hunt for a job. John is taking a full load of online classes, and working 40+ hours a week.  He works as a transcriber on campus - in other words he types up classes for deaf and hard of hearing students- so he is their ears!

Other than that, we are busy reading the Eragon series, playing with our new sewing machine - making a quilt, and working on a 1000 piece, ridiculous grayscale puzzle (John bought it- and brought it home excitedly telling me he got me a puzzle of horses! Then I saw the picture on the box...)  We had a great Christmas in Utah, bouncing between both of our parents houses, and enjoyed spending time with our family!  Well, that's about it! We hope that all of you are doing well!

Love,
John and Tiana

OTHERS December 2011

Motschiedler Madness

We are getting ready for Christmas at our house and are excited for Deshy's first Holiday Season! The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...and Deshy hasn't figured out how to reach them quite yet.

Desh now has a third tooth in his top front. He has mastered waiving "bye, bye" and pushing around his toy walker. He has good days and bad days when it comes to eating solids and taking baths so his momma tries not to stress too much. He loves bubbles, chasing after balls and playing with anything that makes noise. We go to the Little Gym on Fridays and he loves all the other babies and the fun activities. He had his first visit to the zoo last weekend and loved seeing all of the sights! He especially loved the elephants and giraffes and about broke his neck trying to get a good look at them. 

Allyson is loving being a stay at home mom. She is still visiting the school once a month to help with a few things, but other than that, she stays busy chasing after, feeding, cleaning, rocking and playing with Desh. Ken and I closed escrow on some apartments in November so she is also busy with them. She has decorated the house for Christmas (sans tree) and has just about finished her Christmas shopping. Now for the wrapping! Her excitement this month is that she is getting braces (again!). Yay! 

Ken is also busy with the new apartment complex and being a landlord. We are preparing to tent the 4 buildings to get rid of termites and then will do work on the exteriors and finish up with new paint and some landscaping. We hope to create a beautiful environment for our tenants. Anyone know of someone that needs an apartment? Check out our website: www.bengstonvillage.com. Ken is also still enjoying his work with Quiring General. We will be attending their Christmas party this evening and Ken is looking forward to winning the trivia game they have planned. 

Merry Christmas, everyone! See you at the BCB.

Lots of Love,

The Motschiedler Trio 

WARD WIDE WEB

The Wards have been preparing for and enjoying the Christmas Season since mid November. We decided that Christmastime last year was much too stressful and the only way to enjoy the season is to get ready early! Thanksgiving break we put up all of our decorations, outdoor lights, and 2 Christmas trees (one real, one 12 foot artificial). So far this year we've done many of our favorite seasonal traditions:

- Black Friday Shopping

- Made 50 gingerbread ornaments for our Christmas Tree

- Letters to Santa 
- watched the latest family Christmas movie at the theater: Arthur Christmas

- Picked out a Christmas Tree

- opened the first gift of Christmas (new ornaments for each kid) 

- Started our 25 days of Christmas Advent Calendar 

- Relief Society Community Christmas Concert

- Took our annual Christmas Card photo

- Community Band Concert at the Tower Theater - how fun!

- Made Gingerbread Houses

- Clovis Electric Christmas Parade

- Hot Chocolate, Christmas Movies, Cranking up the Christmas music

It has been a busy season so far, but very calm and enjoyable :) We look forward to celebrating our Savior's birth all month. Merry Christmas from our home to yours.

OTHERS November 2011

MARSHALL NOOSE: By Suzanne

Happy November everyone! John and I are doing well. He is working in Spokane now and is appreciating being able to do his commute on the west coast for a change. I am still working at Roubicek & Thacker Counseling. We have been very busy there and I finally have an assistant to boss around - I mean - to help. Along with the regular family counseling, our office has started a couple of addiction related programs that has increased our clientele tremendously.

At church John is serving as a counselor in the High Priest Quorum, and I am the MiaMaid counselor. I love serving anywhere in the church and am enjoying being with the teenagers again.

This year John and I will be traveling to Oregon for Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to visiting our Oregonion children and their families. Because of that, there will be NO TURKEY BOWL THIS YEAR. We will continue the tradition next year. Gooooooooo Marshalls!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Daily Duran

Clare is doing such a great job getting up on her feet. Sometimes she will take a step or two and we expect her to be walking any day now, following Bella into all sorts of mischievousness. Clare was a cute Tinkerbelle for Halloween. She loved going trick or treating, pulling out the candy every time one was dropped into her bucket only to have to taken away and put in Dad’s pocket.

Bella is a wonderful ball of energy or maybe a ball of enthalpy would be a better way to put it. That is to say that Mom spends a lot of time picking up after Bella. She loves to sing her ABC’s and will randomly point out letters like the “A” in Target™. For Halloween she was Wendy Darling from Peter Pan. She could not believe how easy it was to get candy. You just walk up to a house, ring the doorbell and hold out your pumpkin.

Amy has been busy with her calling at church and the primary program. This year the day of the program happened to fall on her birthday. She held a practice the Friday evening before the program, celebrated her birthday on Saturday evening going out to eat and watching the BYU Dance program, had the program Sunday morning, then was finally able to relax and eat some cake Sunday evening, and got to sleep in on Monday.

Thomas started working at Valley Health Team last month as a clinic manager out in San Joaquin . They serve mostly the people in the community of migrant farm workers which he finds to be very rewarding. He also started working on his last assignment for the MPH program and is ever closer to finishing his project for the MBA program.

OTHERS October 2011

Motschiedler Madness

Ahhh, Autumn is here! And we have been busy enjoying it!

Desh is on the move! He's crawling and climbing and kicking and grabbing and in.to.ever.y.thing! He finds a new place to explore everyday, which keeps his momma on her toes! His two front bottom teeth popped up last week resulting in an even cuter smile than before. No'ne possibile!

Allyson has decided that October will be her last month working at the Preschool so that she can spend her days playing with 'D' rather than coming up with distractions for him while she works. She and Deshy will miss our friends and the kids at Bluff View, but she's excited to be a stay at home mommy. She's thinking about taking a couple online classes, doing some projects around the house and maybe even another little mad mott to join the family...hmmmmm....

Ken has been enjoying his work at Quiring General. He loves working for a company that appreciates its employees and is family oriented.

Last year, he and his bestie decided to start a business and we are now in escrow for an apartment complex in NW Fresno. If everything goes well we will close at the beginning of November and we will become slumlords. Check out our website: theschussing.com (created by his wonderful wife).

For pictures and more on our happy life, check out our family blog: madmott.blogspot.com.

Lots of love,

The Motschiedler Trio

Wadds

We are in school, in church or running around town all week. That pretty much sums our month up.

WARD WIDE WEB
Jeremy was released as Ward Mission Leader and called as the Scout Master over Trevor's age group. He is excited to work with the scouts again - especially since his son will be participating. He is busy planning camp outs and fun activities to get these boys on track to earn their merit badges. He also installed a new radiator in our van - which was much needed and much appreciated :) What a mutli-talented guy!

Jennifer is busy with being a mama. She has learned to appreciate the bus (that we no longer have at our convenience). Driving to and from school several times a day is more time consuming than you'd think! She attends many sporting events, cooks delicious crock pot meals, teaches a few piano lessons, and folds a mean load of laundry in her spare time :)

Trevor is enjoying junior high. He is on the 7th grade water polo team and is doing really good! He gets lots of play time and plays hard when he's out there. He has scored 2 goals for his team so far this season. Trevor turned 12 last month and received the priesthood. This Sunday will be his first time passing the sacrament.

Logan is our football star. This is his first year playing football and he made the varsity team. He looks good in his pads and helmet. Logan is also our soccer star. He is a busy busy boy. Logan plays forward for his team. He got a great head bump the first game, "It didn't feel very good," he said. But it looked really cool!

Lizzie is our bubbly 7 year old girl. She is playing soccer this season and is a star player on her team! She also participates in a weekly dance club after school. Lizzie practices her dance moves any chance she gets - especially in the evening - she likes to crank up the music in the kitchen and get us all groovin'. She loves any social experience. Meeting new girls and having fun are Lizzie's specialty.

Jackson is our kindergarten boy. He is in afternoon kindergarten and is finally getting used to his new schedule. It was a rough start for our Jackson. After the 2nd week of school his teacher tells us, "He did really good today... he was only in time out a few times." She was so proud of him for making progress, but how many times was the kid in time out the first week of school?! Jackson is enjoying his first season of soccer and having his daddy for a coach. Go Jackson!



Jordan and Stephanie

The only thing that has happened to us is that Jordan joined the Air Force National Guard! We are so proud of him to have made this decision. He will go to basic training sometime next year which will be hard but we can do it. He loved having his family there to see him get enlisted.