March Madness is here.

So March is here in full bluster and blow and I still haven't gotten out my Christmas cards. I stayed on crutches until Christmas and then the first week of January slipped on some water and dislocated my right shoulder. I didn't dare show up to work or church in my sling because I knew everyone was going to laugh their heads off at my new klutz wardrobe. I am actually grateful that I had more smiles and condolensces than full blown gaffaws from friends and family members.

Leigh and Ali continue to live in our basement apartment and have added to their residence of not only their dog Brinley, but also kittens (they babysit the neighbor's toyger kittens getting them familiar with other handlers, ready to go to new homes). Ali also has started helping a neighbor with their sled dog team and has gotten to go with them up to Park City and become a musher in training to learn to drive the sled. Leigh is looking forward to school being out and will just have work at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) everyday but not classes and homework on top of it. So now our house has 3 dogs, 1 bird, 3 permanant cats, various foster kittens and two bunny rabbits.

Sarah has been accepted to start the Early Childhood Education major at BYU so starts into official teaching classes in April. She has spent this year finishing up all of her GE classes to be able to start. She has a PE class geared towards teaching PE to kids so has gotten to relearn how to hula hoop and play hopscotch and 4 square. She is loving it.
Marie just turned 18 in January and had a fun surprise birthday party. She also just finished being in the school play "Diary of Anne Frank and other WWII stories" at Lehi High School. It was an amazing 3 hour show and touched all of us deeply to want to be more accepting of everyone in our world. She is now in rehearsal for their musical for next month which is Titanic, the musical. This was actually put on Broadway about 3 months prior to the Leonardo DeCaprio movie version came out and though it did great it's first 3 months it died after the movie came out and hasn't shown since. It is emotionally challanging because she is a steward and had to help keep passengers back from the lifeboats when there isn't enough room. She says the songs are beautiful and the show nothing like the movie except that the boat still sinks in the end. Marie will graduate with high honors 4.0 in June and has accepted enrollment at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg. She has many cousins who are also attending there so is excited to join them.

Brian continues to enjoy life. He is in 9th grade and Rockwell Charter High School and plans to stay there for the next 3 years also if possible. He enjoys singing and his art and jewelry making classes and cooking classes that he has been taking. He plans to go to Young Ambassadors Singing Entertainers Camp at BYU again this summer with Marie, they both loved it last year. His favorite new game is TRON on the Wii and loves to hang out with his best friend Jordan Rohan who lives across the street.

Life continue to be fun and crazy as we yearn for spring and try to start getting gardens planted and garage cleaned out and winter dust mucked out. Keep smiling, it makes people wonder what your up to.

This is for you Amber Sue

So my dear friend and collegue Amber told me that since I had a few weeks off due to injuring my knee this week, I now had plenty of time to update my blog, so here's to you Amber Sue.

June stayed busy after the wedding of Leigh and Ali because my parents came home from their mission in Hong Kong. My sisters decided that remodeling and painting their entire main floor of their house was a great idea. We all worked very hard painting, pulling up carpet, changing light fixtures and stuff like that. They were very surprised and it was great to work together.

In July we attended our Cedar Pass Ranch Rodeo. We had alot of fun watching the riders and Ali got to ride with the ladies of the neighborhood doing fun formations.

We also had the Smith Family

Reunion and everyone made it to Utah except for Frank and his family. the Talent show and my brother Randy were especially in "Hog calling time in Nebraska". We drove through the Nebo Loop and it was beautiful.

In August, Warren became cubmaster for our cubscout troop. He has always wanted to build an official Cub Racer so we did. He built four of these racers, one as a demo and one for each of the dens to decorate. I am the Webelos leader so this is our Webelos Racer my boys decorated. It won first place overall when we were racing.

We also inherited two bunnies this summer, Ying and Yang from Sarah's friend Riley.

May Showers-Wedding and Snow

What a crazy May we had both in Weather and Activities.
My son Leigh married his lovely bride Ali Wright on May 15th.
There wedding ceremony was performed in the LDS Jordan River Temple with many of our family and friends in attendance. After many days of rain and occassional snow storms, the 15th dawned bright and blue and the day was lovely.
Ali was a beautiful bride and when people would tell Leigh he had quite a catch he commented that "the Lord truly does bless you for all those days of tracting in the rain as a missionary in Jamaica".
We fed 85 people at a luncheon at Golden Corral buffet where everyone was able to eat their fill of everything and anything they could want.
The reception was held up in a church meeting house near Ali's home and many of our friends from Eagle Mountain and West Jordan as well as many relatives came to support us. Thank you so much.
Leigh had managed to keep the honeymoon plans a secret from Ali for the whole time, not telling her until they arrived at the airport. He then wisked her away on a plane to catch a cruise ship in Florida for a 7 day cruise in the Western Carribean. They had a wonderful time.









I have started working in earnest on our garden and got fabric and bark laid all around our new orchard. I then planted a bunch of squash and cucumber starts, waiting until after mothers day and what does it do? SNOW 4 Inches on May 24th. It was the latest snow storm in history at the Salt Lake City Airport. Needless to say my cukes and squashes were toast. My peas, strawberries and onions are still surviving but I will have to replant alot of the other stuff. Oh well, I get a A for effort anyway.
It is great having the kids finally done with school for the summer, they are being alot of help.

March ALREADY???????

Happy New Year! Happy Valentines Day! Happy St. Patricks Day! Happy Easter next Week! WOW! What happened to life.  Lets see if I can catch up on my life. Spring is trying to decide whether to come or not so we have 50 degree weather one day and then snow the next and then back to 50 degree weather.  This is happening weekly.  Yesterday was snow again and today blue sky and warming up.

Leigh decided that he really missed one of the girls he was dating while we were gone on our cruise for Christmas so started dating her exclusively and is now engaged and Leigh will marry Ali Wright on May 15th in the Jordan River Temple in West Jordan Utah.  He is also working on his general education classes at BYU and leaning towards going into Accounting.  He has good genes for it.

Sarah, after struggling with Calculas and Statics in Engineering has decided that taking classes that she loathed and struggled to even get a C grade from in order to hopefully get to work as an engineer in an office like her dad was not worth the pain. Her counselor agreed.  She is changing her major to something she actually does love and that is Early Childhood Education.  She has to finish all of her GE credits before starting the program where the Engineering program had you do them all the way along so she has at least 2 more semesters to finish those up before she can start the core Education classes but she is much happier being out of Calculas.  She has been a great help tending her cousins Dillon and Julianne.

Marie is loving life, dancing and singing. She will be in the school play "Thouroughly Modern Millie". She is in the ensamble and learning to dance the Lindie and other dances and is loving it.  She has try-outs today for the madrigal group Encore at Lehi High School which if chosen she will be in all of her Senior year.  She has already tried out for Musical Theater and Accapella and gotten into those classes.

Brian is playing chess at school and doing scouting activities as well.  He is looking forward to full spring so that he can start riding his bike more and wants to learn to play tennis this summer he thinks.

Warren bought me a new toy in the fall, a lovely orange tractor. Boy has it been great in the snow removal department for us and alot of our neighbors and I can wait to start using it to spread some sandy dirt we got for free to cover up my last layer of rocks so that we can finally lay sod this spring over to the side of my house behind the garden.  YEAH!!!

I am busy teaching CPR classes at work and working nursing shifts and trying to keep up with my knitting loom orders which are on the increase this year.  It looks like people are starting to need to make gifts again instead of buy them all. 

I am also taking an oil painting class and have had alot of fun so far with it. 

The funnest thing going on is that two of my siblings are moving out to Eagle Mountain with me.  I won't be the lone person clear out here, but now there will be three of us.  Kevin & Katrina are coming from Kansas this summer and are buying a house about a mile straight across the highway from me. Kristy & Jason will be moving this summer also and will be about 2 miles the other direction from me in a great home for them.  Life is going to be great between Katrina's dessert baking craze and Kristy's whole food and homemade cooking craze, I will get to learn to make all kinds of good stuff, and if I cant make it, I GET TO TASTE THEIRS.

Life is great.  Love to you all.

Cindy and the rest of the Clyde Clan.

Marie dancing the Lindie

Christmas in the Carribean

What  a great way to spend Christmas break.  Our family flew to Miami on Saturday the 19th and then boarded the Liberty of the Sea, ocean cruiser owned by Royal Carribean.  What a great time we had.
We were joined by Warren's sister's family. Helene and Larry Arnett and their two children Scott and Anna.

We had a great time.  Our cabin was great.  It included a outside deck where we could look out at the ocean anytime we wanted.

The kids had alot of fun just being on the boat the first 2 days.  All you can eat food and cookies and they really loved the flowrider which let them boogie board and surf board on a ship.

Our first port of call was Labadee, Haiti.  It rained most of the morning but finally cleared up so Warren, Leigh and Marie got to go riding on jet skis and the rest of us played on the beach.

second port of call was Ocho  Rios, Jamaica.  We were met by the Richardson family.  Leigh had lived with them as a missionary last year.  They took us to Dunn River Falls and they were a wonderful family.

Our 3rd port of call was St. George, Grand Caymen.  We got to swim with dolphins and Sarah and Marie both got their first kisses bestowed by a handsome male, his name was Capernicus.

We also got to visit a Sea Turtle Farm.  The kids all got to hold different sizes of young turtles.

Our final port of call was Cozumel, Mexico.  We visit the Tulum Mayan ruins and spent Christmas day on the white sandy beach. White Christmas afterall.

Back on the ship we had a formal dinner night in the main dining room and dressed up for it.  Lobster and prime rib was served. Yummy

We had a great vacation.

We came home to snow and have had 8 more inches since last night. lots of fun but I miss Jamaica.