HAPPY HOLIDAYS

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Now with Christmas approaching, faster than I am ready for, I just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. For Thanksgiving this year we kept it small at my mom's house with her and her parents, myself, my husband, my brother, and his youngest daughter. The weekend that following however we followed my brother to the mountains! A small get away that was EXTREMELY needed! I left my husband in charge of my dogs, since he hates camping and cant camp now that he is on oxygen. My dad, my mom, my brother, my youngest neice, and myself out in the mountains where my grandpa Heeding used to take my dad and my dad always took us. It felt like going home as we pulled up into wide canyon outside of Holden. I have not been camping since meeting a "city boy", so its been 12 years since my last camping trip. A weekend of mountains, fall colors, camp fires, ATV's, fresh air, and tons of deer all over the place. I am burried in project, but I do this every year to myself. If they all get done great, if not oh well. I am not going to stress out over them. This time if year is hard because this is when we lost my grandpa. I still regret that they would not let me see him before he died. I had a cold and they told me to stay away so that I wouldnt get him sicker. I offered to wear a face mask, but still they said to stay away. He gave them a run for their money though. Getting up from his hospital bed and wondering the halls with is hospital gown flapping in the breeze. Landon and Ryan showed up and the nurse told them to get him back in bed. I miss him a lot. After he died Landon and Ryan and I think Brande went and decorated grandma's house for Christmas. She took it all down and said she didn't feel like having Christmas that year. Now she can have Christmas with grandpa and her siblings and uncle Bill. I hope you all have a great holiday season. Talk to ya next year!

quick update

As I am sure most of you who might be reading this know. Phil has moved to Idaho Falls and living with Jim now. I am excited for him to have a new start and hope that his part time teaching will soon become full time teaching and that Idaho will be the place to give him his chance at recovering from all this down time. I also hope that the two of them get along well and will be good company for one another. In Utah news, my brother (Jason) and his wife are finally getting their divorce papers going. They have not lived together for two years, but Annie was the one who wanted a divorce so until she got in the mood recently nothing was done. I dont know how long it will take or any details, but I hope this will give J a new start. He is almost done fixing up his old house. It is a very small house, but with MaKenzie in AK for nine months out of the year and only having Harlee part time, the house is big enough for now. He has done a great job, especially since he had never taken on such a project before and was learning mostly by trial and error. He will soon realize his mistake on putting in all those flower beds in the yard I think. My husband and I are looking into moving. I work in Salt Lake and he now works in Tooele, however we live in Saratoga Springs. I am tired of the fire danger. We were evacuated in June, but luckily the firemen were able to convince the fire to go the other way just shy of our entire subdivision. We are also spending way too much in fuel and are looking to save some of that money if possible. We both are driving an hour each way (during the evacuation it was the longest hour of my life trying to get to my dogs, who are basically my kids). We are mostly looking in Tooele for a place, but also in the Magna, West Valley area. Dad was not able to find a job and his unemployment is running out so he has filed for early social security. He still lives in his/grandma's house. I have told him its just too big for one person, but he says its too much hassle to move. It is a bit more money to pay for that house rather than a smaller home, and it has a pretty large yard for upkeeping. Oh well, his choice I suppose. Three of my cousins lost a half brother at the end of Sept. Cindy's kids, Ryan, Landon, and Brande, lost their half brother through their dad/Cindy's ex-husband. Brock Butler was his name. He turned 21 in ICU waiting for a liver that just never came. He was sick most of his life and he was a good kid who deserved a second chance. In his obit, it listed Ryan and wife????? however I know nothing about Ryan getting married. I know he is supose to be engaged, but who knows maybe they snuck off and got it done without telling anyone. That is what Brande did a couple years ago. Well I think that about catches things up from what I know. Ya'll take care.

just a lil update

I have no idea if anyone still reads this or what, but a lil update from Utah. My dad, Bob, is still living in my grandparents home, he bought it after grandma died. I hear through the grape vine that one of my cousin's is getting married. Looks as though Ryan is gonna marry his gfriend of about 2 years. I rarely hear from my cousins, but we are all friends on facebook so I check up on them from time to time. Ryan and Landon turned 30 on June 3! Wow! I can remember sitting in a foyer at the hospital when they were born. I remember everyone being panicked because something went wrong during delivery and they didnt know if Cindy or the boys were okay. My brother is a home owners now! He got some help from my moms credit and got a small house for him and his two girls. He shares custody of Harlee with her mom and sees her at least part of every week, and then shares custody with MaKenzie's mom who lives in Alaska and only gets her during summers and every other Christmas. He is enjoying having a place of his own (well enjoying all of it except the bills part). He bought it knowing it needed a lot of work and has dedicated himself to fixing it up the last several months. Putting in a whole new kitchen and bathroom and redoing at least part of every room. He is now putting in a yard, as it didnt have lawn before. One can only hope he is going to see a little better luck in the future, especially with women! He also has had bad luck with pets, as he lost his 17 year old cat and 4 year old dog in the same day a couple months back. We dont know who did it, but they were poisoned. It was a very hard blow to him, as he loves his pets. He has gotten a new dog now and has gotten into raising chickens and quail, and chuckars. MaKenzie will get here a little late this year for summer break, since she had to do summer school for being a little slow on reading. She will get here June 30th and we all cant wait! I start looking forward to seeing her again the day after she leaves. I hope all of you are doing well. I hear from Phil that he may be moving and he seems a little bit happy about it. I know things are hard for him and wish there was something I could do to help him out. I am planing on sending him some info on some cousins through grandpa Herberts side (his brother, his niece and her son). I also have been contacted by a distant cousin's father in law about any info we could give. Grandma Lillian's sister Ethel married into the Droubay family and her son Raymond had a family and went off to war in WWII. Aparently he suffered greatly after returning home and took to the bottle. His wife took the kids and left, they never saw each other again. If there is anything about Raymond Droubay that any of you can recall please pass it along to me or let me know you have something and I will be happy to forward it along to his son or give you the email address I have for his father in law. To contact me you can email me @ saratogaredneck@yahoo.com. Phil remembered him but now much else. I also wrote to Jim, but have not heard back from him as yet. I have been lacking on writting to Jim lately and feel horrible about it. I always tried to write at least once every couple months, especially when Bill was around, but since loosing Bill, I have not written as much. I hope that Jim is doing well and wish I were closer so I could visit with him every so often. In my deffense, I have lacked on a lot of genealogy and so on, I have been very busy. I am still working full time, I have my three dogs, my youngest step son left on his mission in Feb. for Georgia, my husband ended up with pnuemonia and we have since learned that he has lung damage from health issues that surfaced three years ago. He only has 55% use of his left lung and when the pnuemonia set in it almost shut down all together. He is on oxygen 24/7 and has to sleep with a machine that is a mix between a cpap (sleep apnea) and a respirator. It forces air in and then sucks it back out, to get the exchange he needs. He quits breathing on his own and this machine will make sure to force the air in even if he quits on his own. Its been a long, busy, few months. In the mean time he cant do much, so I am on my own for house and yard work. A neighbor brought his kids over and they helped me for a whole evening cleaning out flower beds and filling trash cans with weeds. I am so thankful for their help. Of course things around the house keep breaking so I am getting a crash course on how to do home repairs on my own for a few things. I have taught myself how to install a new door lock (thanks to the guy at Lowe's for keying it to my old keys to match the rest of the house), how to repair a jetted tub (its my sanity I was going crazy without my jetted tub and a good book to relax with), how to fix a door that had a bullet catch instead of a regular door latch, and I even fixed the lawn mower myself after calling about every mower repair shop in Utah trying to get some one to tell me what size bolts I needed (they all wanted to charge me service fees and repair part charges instead of just telling me bolt sizes so I could do it myself for a fourth of the cost). I am also getting pretty good at arguing with insurance companies and doctors offices over bills and claims. I have won two arguements so far and hope to win at least two more in the next couple weeks. I had a lot of practice at doing this three years ago when my husband almost died. Well, now that I have typed a short story here, I will end it now. Ya'll take care.