Merry Christmas to All...

Dear Family and Friends,

Each year as I sit down to write a little of what has happened in our family during the year I always wish it could be delivered personally to each of you. Over the past year and a few months it has been so fun to share blogs and other sites to keep up with where some of you are in your lives. How time flies!!!

As I sat down this year I thought:
“This can be the shortest Christmas letter ever. All I have to do is write down our blogsite http://bhenwood.blogspot.com and call it good”.
On that site we have posted pictures and comments of our various goings on. It has been a fun way to share the things we experience through out the year. So if you want the longer version of our year…check it out!

Here is the short version…

In February Ben will begin his 10th year working for MarketSource. He still enjoys the flexibility of working at home and the change of scenery (to warmer weather) with his frequent travel. He is now the Young Men President at church and enjoys the monthly campouts with the Boy Scouts (yes, even in the snow!). This past summer Ben helped the boys finish their “plyaks” and the boys had an adventurous trip down the Provo river. Ben and Jace were both able to spend a week a Camp Maple Dell and had a great time. Jace has been able to go on most of the campouts with Ben and has loved it…except for the one last month where Jace got lost for about an hour while hiking-(see blogsite:). Most recently Ben has enjoyed Scout activities where they have gone shooting. This year Thanksgiving was at our house and Ben made his ever yummy stuffing and enjoyed playing football at the park with other guys from our neighborhood. He is such a great husband and Dad and so fun to be around! We sure love him!

I am at home as Mom and wondering what to do next fall when Emma starts school! I have been involved once again with PTA. I am the Membership Chair at the school this year and also serve on the Community Council. I have been the Room Mother for Lauren’s classroom and have enjoyed planning parties and having fun at school. I am also still the 1st Counselor in the Primary at Church. We have about 25-35 children at Primary on Sundays and I just love each of them! I continue to work on projects around the house when I can. Lots of painting has been done both inside and outside this year. We are anticipating more heavy-duty projects in store for next year! (I think the 3 upstairs bathrooms are next!) We shall see!

Jace is becoming quite the little man of the house. It is so nice to have a “built-in” babysitter so that Ben and I can go out for a date night every week. Jace is very careful to keep track and save up his earnings. We got a Wii (finally) earlier this year and Jace likes to buy points to upload games to play on it. Jace is loving 6th grade and doing great! He impressed all of us, including his teacher, by memorizing 23 parts of the human heart and getting 100% on his test two days after first learning the names and locations & direction of blood flow-ie. Posterior vena cava, Interventricular septum etc. etc. ( I could barely pronounce most of them!) Then he got 100% the following week identifying 29 bones (in medical terms) of the human skeleton! Maybe we have an MD in the making! Jace still loves to read and also enjoys playing night games in the park with his neighborhood friends.

Tanner is so much fun. He loves to joke and tease and his laugh is very contagious. Since it has snowed Tanner has loved going to the park to sled. He has spent hours on the slopes, talking any one he can into joining him. He has loved playing night games at the park with Jace and their friends and really enjoyed tennis lessons this summer. Tanner is definitely his own person. He is excelling in school, still hating homework, but is among the top in his class. Yeah Tanner! Tanner enjoys Cub Scouts and is looking forward to competing in the Pine Wood Derby next month! Tanner loves to cook. He helps me all the time with dinner and even makes some things all on his own! Now if we can just get him to make us treats regularly!

Lauren is our ever girly-girl. She loves wardrobe changes, glittery makeup, and pretty hair things. She loves school-most days- and is a great friend in her class. Lauren is our resident artist. Her artwork plasters the walls, halls, drawers and boxes of our home. She loves to draw anything and everything. Lauren just lost her first tooth! She was so excited to give it to the tooth fairy! Throughout the summer Lauren has loved to “sale things”. She would gather particular items to put on sale outside for everyone to buy. She has sold flowers/weeds, drawings, rocks, stickers, and candy to name a few. Depending on the “merchandise” I would move her and her table further away from the road and potential “customers”-although customers mostly included Mom, Emma, Halle and Halle’s mom across the street. She is quite the entrepreneur and had collected many a penny from her pursuits!

Emma is getting so grown up! Our baby just turned 5! She was disappointed to not be able to start school the DAY she turned 5 but we told her she would still be 5 when she starts school next fall! She missed the cut off for kindergarten and aced the school’s preschool placement test, (they were only taking the 28 lowest scores), so she has not so patiently been waiting to go to school…ready with backpack and all! Emma loves to draw a color too! She has really taken cue from Lauren. They are so good to play together and along with Halle they are quite the threesome! Emma has much more energy than any of us can keep up with and knows exactly how to get her own way! She is very inquisitive and loves to learn new things. It will sure be quiet around here come next fall…at least for a few hours a day!

Well, we hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year! We love the Savior and all that His life and teachings mean to us. We are trying our best to do what He would do and hope that each of you can feel of His love and our love for each of you at this wonderful season. All our love…