Connected

Hey all. Just wanted to share a few thoughts. First of all, I like you all. I also love you all too. Been thinking a lot lately about my relationship with each of you. I want you to know how much it means to me to have you in my life. All of you. If it were truly up to me we would all live on a huge compound where we all had our own houses but were extremely accessible to each other whenever we wanted to be.

Sadly, That is not the case. I am so grateful for technology so we have to ability to stay connected. It has never been my first choice to be far away from you all. But it is my first choice to support Matt in his amazing ambitions and dreams. I want you to know that he started working hard as soon as we arrived here and he has only worked harder every day than he did the day before. He is so talented it makes it easy for me to support and love him. But not so easy to be away from our family at times. I found myself thinking a lot about how close we used to be when we all lived close. Now I'm not saying that we will be able to have those exact same relationships again. I know that our lives are in very different places, Literally and figuratively, than they used to be. But I also don't want to go through my life thinking about how we USED to be so close and how great that was but we are busy so we don't really have time now. I pledge to you all to make more of an effort to be involved in your lives. I am an open book and share a lot on Facebook and Instagram. I also am trying to post blog posts often and call and text you all as much as possible.

When Gram died we all talked about our family. How it's so important to experience each other now and have a family relationship. Well, life is hard and busy and we fall into routines and I am right there with all of that. I am not asking you all to rearrange your lives to call me everyday or FaceTime or email or whatever. I'm just saying I miss you all. I miss our relationships. I want to try and improve them. I want to be more connected. I wanna talk about life, politics, love, friends and anything else you feel like talking about. I don't want to just remember the good ole days! I want us to have good family memories NOW as often as possible.

So this is basically my fancy way of saying that i may be bugging you a bit more than normal. Just because I want our individual families to have a constantly growing relationship. So there you have it.

President Hinckley said we can't just be good. We have to be good for something. And that is a big reason Matt and I moved here. We want to contribute to the world in a positive way. Through music mainly but in other ways too. The sacrifice we make is that we are far. I feel like it's a huge sacrifice. At least for me. But I believe in what we are doing here and I know it's the right place. I just don't want to lose out on all of you because of a silly little thing like 2,000 miles. :)

Anyway. Miss you all. Can't wait to see how everyone's thanksgiving comes together. Love you all!

Stefanie

Listy, Listy, List, List...

Let's get working on these! Love you all! Ready for some family time. Seriously.

Okay I switched it again...

The other layout was too confusing I think. It worked in Safari but when I tried to see it in chrome it didn't show the lists, which are the most important part.

Mom mentioned exchanging secret santa gifts the weekend of Kelli's graduation, since a group of us will be together. I just want to put that out there because that means people need to add to their lists EARLIER so that we can have gifts ready by December 13/14/15th. So let's get moving!

Ummm...hey, guys?

Did the blog look like this the last time someone was on it? Where did all the Christmas stuff go? Just wanted to make sure I'm not crazy!

Love,

Jen

Details

Hi, all, it's Mom.  Couple of things:

1.  YES, YES, I hope you can all make plans to be here the weekend of Dec. 13 so that we can celebrate Kelli's graduation, possibly bless Mara (Guzmans mentioned that, and we'd LOVE it!), AND have our own early Christmas!  Kelli will give us details on graduation as soon as she knows.  Pig out, watch Muppet Christmas Carol and Elf together, make double decker fudge and decorate cookies.....oh, the possibilities!
2.  Initially, I signed in to this blog with my gmail/blog address, and it wouldn't let me add items/edit.  You have to use username and password that Holly sent you in order to add things.  The person I have REALLY needs to give me ideas, so all of you hop to it!!

Love, Mom

All Rise, All Rise, Christmas is Now in Session

Since Lisa sent out the Secret Santa assignments already, I think it might be cool to clean this up for this year around now. I'll email out the login if you guys don't have your own/remember.

Can't wait to hear how your Christmas and Thanksgiving seasons go. I am determined to get in the Christmas Spirit this year. I found this list, and although it isn't perfect (and I think there is a duplicate on there too), I thought it would be good to enumerate what I specifically want to do to celebrate Christmas, so that it actually feels like the holidays.

Found this on this blog source.

Thinking of you all. Hope we will see you for Kelli's graduation and get to celebrate the holidays together!