Christmas Letter

What an exciting year we’ve had! We hope we can share the wonderful spirit of our year with you for the next few minutes. Everyone will agree this has been a year of change. We have moved, married, received a mission call, changed schools and left jobs. Through it all Adam (26) has been not only supportive but an enormous help. While Mario was gone for most of this year, Adam took over the care of the home and dog and watched over us all. He attended classes at UNM in Los Alamos until we left and is looking into program opportunities here in Virginia now. When the end of the winter semester at BYU rolled around, both Alex (22) and Sabrina (21) decided to stay in Provo and work over the summer. Sabrina also took some classes to try to get as much in as she could before leaving Provo for a couple of years (more to follow...). In May we got a wonderful phone call from Alex announcing his engagement to the lovely Maggie Terry. They decided they would get married August 15 so they could begin their new life together and a new semester at BYU at the same time. We are thrilled to welcome Maggie into our hearts and our family. Summer (16) wrapped up her sophomore year in high school about that time and took off for a week of volleyball camp at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (CO), a week of stake Young Women camp near Taos (NM) and a week of Especially for Youth in Provo (UT). Happily, while we were in Utah, Denise was able to go with Sabrina to get all her paperwork and medical requirements completed for her mission papers and she submitted those as soon as she was able to, July 25, hoping to receive her call with enough time that she could attend Alex’s and Maggie’s wedding. Yes, all this time Mario has been coming home to New Mexico once a month and hoping we can sell our home so the family can move back east. We finally decided to move whether the house sold or not so my parents drove down at the beginning of July to stay with Adam and Summer while I flew back to Virginia to look for a home. Once I came back, everyone pitched in to get ready for the movers to come the third week in July. I was still working at the Lab (and, in fact, kept working for a short while after we moved here) so the children really put in a lot of effort. We were also trying to leave everything ready for an open house to be given for Maggie and Alex in August in Los Alamos after the wedding. Unbelievably, everything got done and we moved at the end of July. After meeting the movers to get the furniture put into our new home and moving out of Mario’s apartment in Vienna, Virginia, we flew back to Utah to attend the most beautiful wedding and reception ever before heading back to Los Alamos one last time for the open house. Another miracle: Sabrina received her mission call to the Portugal Lisbon mission August 13th. We were able to take her to the Provo Temple for her endowment so that she could attend her best friend’s wedding before she headed off on one last road trip to Disneyland with her roommates. She will enter the MTC in Provo December 30th. Mario and I were both put to work right away in our new ward in Sunday School and Young Women. Summer and Adam are making new friends, adjusting to the neighborhood and school and feeling more at home each day. So, MERRY CHRISTMAS to you and yours! We’ve had a marvelous year full of love, joy and family and we wish the same for you in the coming new year.