Spring in Utah

We are enjoying A typical spring in Utah. Which means 65 degrees one day and 29 degrees and snow the next day and back to warm then cold. But the flowers are finally starting to bloom. And a couple of weeks ago we built more garden boxes and moved my old garden boxes to their new area.

Since I last posted I have seen the passing of my Aunt Sandra Glade, my Uncle Bill Friemarck and my Grandma Smith who was 101 years old. They will all be dearly missed, especially Grandma.

We did some fun activities this winter like ice skating at the Olympic Oval and tubing at Soldier Hollow. Some of the other Exchange students and their families joined us.

Warren and I also took a trip to California and visited a walrus beach near Monteray Bay.

I have started taking an oil painting class and about half way through my first two paintings. One is of the old tree at Monteray Bay, California and the other is a sunset in the mountains. I hope to learn the techniques well enough to paint my own large sceneries in the future.

Elder Leigh Clyde is continueing to do well in Jamaica and is looking great. He will return to us on August 14th this year. I look forward to seeing him and hugging him.

Sarah is struggling with her first semester of college away from home and living with roommates and hard college classes. She will be happy to be home for the summer.

Marie tried out for and made the Musical Theater class at Lehi High School next year and is very excited about that. She also can't wait to go to Young Ambassador Camp this summer.

Brian will turn 13 on the 27th of April and just had his board of review for his Eagle Rank in Boy Scouts. We did his Eagle project in November and he finished his last 4 merit badges this past month. This was a goal that he set for himself and worked very hard at including adding a week long Leadership campout last summer in order to get enough camping days for his camping merit badge. I am very proud of him and how hard he has worked. He will wait to have his Eagle Court of Honor until his big brother gets home so that Leigh can sit in his Eagles Nest.

Friederike's family is here visiting America from Germany. She flew out and joined them this past week as they visited death valley and Sequoia National forest and other places in California.

They will arrive back in Utah tomorrow where we will show them the beauties of Utah.

Life is wonderful.

January 2009, where does the time go.

Wow. I can't believe January is here and nearly gone already. Christmas was great with getting to talk to Leigh in Jamaica for 3 hours and getting photos from him. The beach ones were sent after I begged him to send me some sunshine because it was so gray and foggy here in Utah.

The kids had a great Christmas too and the Christmas Eve party at my sister Debbie's house was a great success. My dad always makes the best Star of Bethlehem. Oh and yes the new bike is mine. It is an battery powered hybrid bike that kicks in to enhance my peddling power to make it up the hills to our house. It is fun to ride.

We also said goodbye to my parents this month. They will be serving as Welfare Missionaries for the LDS church for the next 18 months in Hong Kong. They are amazing at 76 and we are learning to use Skype to talk with them.

Sarah has moved down to an apartment in Provo and is learning to adjust to college life and apartment mates. We got her an apartment with her cousin Jamie Gee, but she has her own bedroom so she has an escape place. She has started into the Civil Engineering program.

It is cold and snowing alot and the kids love the snow, especially our exchange student Friederike. She loves the snow. We went ice skating a few weeks ago and they all had a great time.

We are all well and happy and trying to work off a few of those holiday pounds we gained. It didn't help that Friederike's grandmother sent a huge box of German chocolates and gingerbread. Man was it delicious.

Take care to all. Love the Clyde's

Exported Son, Imported Daughter.

Hello Everyone,

I can't believe it is the end of October. I am going to do a couple of posts today so that I can update stuff. Our son Leigh is still serving his mission in Jamaica and loving it. He is doing great.

Since his bedroom is empty, we decided to take the advantage and got an exchange student from Germany.

Her name is Friederike (Free-der-e-ka) Baumgartner. She is from Celle, Germany which is in northern Germany near Hanover. We absolutely love her. She has now been with us for 21/2 months and we are loving having her here. She fits in great, but I am sure she occassionally thinks we are very crazy.

When she first got here it was a bit crazy because our old dog Goldie died whom we had had for nearly 16 years, so on her second day with us, she helped us dig a grave to bury Goldie by her sister Blackie down in the lower pasture. Then she spent alot of time helping us plant trees and haul rocks. She is the one in the blue shirt in the photo. The girl in the pink shirt is Sara and she is living with our neighbors.

We did some fun stuff too, like going to Lagoon with our neighbors. The Burton family who have kids all the same age as mine, also got an exchange student from Germany. We all had a fun day at the amusement park.

We have been doing some other fun things like hiking to Timpanogas Cave (I haven't been there since I was 16). We had our first snow storm on October 11th, the day after Friederike's birthday, so she was thrilled because it was her birthday wish and they don't get snow in her hometown, only rain in the winter time.

Another fun activity was getting to ride our neighbors horses. We had bought a 4 hour ride from the neighbor at a ward auction earlier in the year so instead of one 4 hour ride, they agreed to borrow another neighbors horse and let all four kids ride for 1 hour. They had a great time.

We also got to spent a few days up at the Snowbird Lodge up Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake area over fall break and see all the leaves change color. We got to go on the tram to the top of the mountain and ride the Alpine slide and the kids even got me to go on the giant chair zip line. It was alot of fun.

All the kids are doing great and life is good.

Love to you all.

Cindy and the rest of the Clyde Family.

I have grass and trees

Hello Everyone,

I am so excited. I have 11 trees now planted in my yard and I have 1200 feet of lovely green grass in my front yard. Thanks to some very helpful nephew, children and neighbor boys we got all of the sod laid in just 3 hours.

The trees took the better part of 3 days

with Warren borrowing a little back hoe

from the neighbors to finish digging holes.

Life is so great when you have help.

Farmer Cindy and land scaping

Happy July everyone.

We are busily working on our yard again. I learned how to drive a mini excavator back hoe to work on digging trenches for sprinkler pipe. It was a lot of fun. I have even bought myself a cowboy hat for some extra shade. I bought 15 trees yesterday that will be delivered next week, so hopefully we will get the sprinkler lines in before they get delivered so that I can plant them and not kill them off.

Leigh had his 20th birthday yesterday. I sure missed being able to hug him. He is liking his time of service in Jamaica though.

Sarah is working at her dad's engineering office, but finding the heavy manual labor hard on her body. She has developed tendonitis in both elbows from pounding dirt and stuff, so had to go on light duty for a couple of weeks. She has started her Sociology class at BYU and has only 2 other students in her class, so she gets lots of one to one attention from the teacher.

Marie has been at YASE (Young Ambassador Summer camp) at BYU. They have dancing and singing classes every day and then perform for their families tonight. I will try to get some good pictures to put in next week.

Brian gets to go on his first back packing campout tonight and his dad is going with him reluctantly. all is good with the Clyde family. He has had fun with his new slip and slide and loves to play with the next door neighbor Jordan.

Love to you all.

Cindy