It’s been three years since I sent a Christmas letter. Last I wrote, we were in the middle of the Pandemic. We’d gotten a new-to-us dog just as the schools closed. Alex’s first year of high school was all online. The first semester went pretty well… second semester, eek! 

Now Alex is less than 60 days away from his 18th birthday. I know this because the bank sent me a letter telling me so. Eek! He will graduate in the spring, and plans to attend Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He has done well and anticipates his AP scores will earn him enough to start college with a minor in German! 

Eli is a freshman at Tucson High School. It boasts a whopping 3,200 students. Eek! The school year got off to quite a start with him coming home every couple of weeks to report a fight on campus, one serious enough for the school to go into “lock down” and for the police to be called. It’s never a great day when your kid texts you to say, “Mom, we are on lock-down right now.” Eek! The reports of fights have become less frequent, luckily. 

My work has been crazy. My boss has been out on medical leave since November and the other two administrators and I have been holding down the fort. It’s been quite a ride! 

Corey’s working at Johnson Controls. Don’t ask me what he does. They make stuff there. Out of metal, I’m pretty sure. He’s in charge of something important, like making sure that they make stuff LEANly. Lean manufacturing was invented by the Japanese, probably because they are pretty slender people, so they know how to get stuff done without a lot of waist … or is it waste? I’m not sure, but lean is a pretty big deal. Or maybe it is slender deal? Oh, Corey just commented, he wants me to add that he is the Lean Manufacturing Engineer. 

And Sea Lion. Of course you remember the dog’s name (not Seabiscuit, not Dolphin). He’s entering doggy middle age at six years old, and witnessed a car accident in which a car jumped the curb, careened across the grass, and rammed into the play structure at the park. Eek! He has PTSD and is afraid to go to the park. I didn’t know that dogs could get PTSD, but it seems to be so. 

The year was punctuated by quite a few unexpected surprises—not all of them pleasant—eek! In spite of that, we are happy and healthy. Hope your new year brings you lovely surprises, and I hope our new year brings us lovely things without any surprises.

Christmas 2020 Photos

In keeping with the blog title "All washed up" here is a picture of Eli taking our laundry to the wash room in the apartment complex. One thing that I enjoyed about apartment living as that all the laundry could be washed at the same time--four loads, four machines, one switch to the dryers. And because it was all heavy, Corey and the boys carried it too and from the apartment. Everyone pitched in to fold, and laundry was done in under two hours. In the past, laundry was my responsibility and it took the whole day: wash a load, wait 40 minutes. Switch it, start the second load, wait 40 minutes. Empty the first load, switch the second load, start the third load, wait 40 minutes, meanwhile fold the first load. And so forth ...

Sea Lion, our pandemic pup. We didn't know when we picked him up at the beginning of spring break that we would be home indefinitely to get him acclimated to our home.

Alex

Eli

Corey and the boys prepare to go camping in Utah.

Alex shows off his origami mask

Alex laughs. He's a funny guy.

Samples of Alex's Origami

Christmas 2013

Yes, the Wandering Woodfords have moved again, this time to Between, Georgia. Want directions to our new home? Going Northwest on Highway 78, turn left at the Between Grocery. If you see Ho Hum Hollow Road, you’ve gone too far. The roads have weird names over here: “Youth Monroe Road,” “New Hope Church Road,” “Tipperary Circle,” “Bo Boss Road.”

Between, GA. Population three hundred. It is half way between Atlanta and Athens. Apparently, the Lord wants us to continue our cross-cultural experiences of “Southern Living.” We have a lot of room and would love for you to come for a visit next time you are headed to Atlanta.

Christmas 2011: Living in the Deep South is DIFFER'NT, ya'll

Savannah, GA.

We’ve moved to a foreign country. Trees. Trees. And More Trees. In the West, you can see for miles and miles. For example, you can see the Stratosphere on the Las Vegas Strip from St. George, Utah. Here, you can’t see more than ten feet in any direction. Additionally, the streets aren’t straight, they twist and bend and curve back around on themselves and they change names mid-course. No purple mountain majesties immovably point East. Linus-like I drag a ragged map everywhere I go—even to bed.

They tawk fore-ruhn. One morning we stopped at a fast food restaurant. A muscular black man walked away from the door of the restaurant toward a lone car. I questioned him when it would open. He said, “Potabeenia-yn.” Huh? We were five minutes down the road before I teased: “Supposed to be nine,” out of his single word response. We’ve met a few people that we flat can’t understand.

The cuisine is also foreign. I attended my first ever “fish fry” in our church parking lot. Four large kettles of oil perched on low-sitting burners in the parking lot, each nursed by a church member dropping in breaded fish and spoonfuls of batter to make hush puppies. (They will hush your puppies right up, because they’ll give them cardiac arrest!) I thought fried food went out of style in the 1980’s ... I asked about organic apples at the grocery; the produce manager explained that they don’t carry organic because, “You can’t get these country people to eat that stuff.”

We shop at the “Piggly Wiggly.” (Now, if that name don’t make you laugh ...) We ate boiled, I mean “ba-oiled” peanuts. Alex’s kindergarten concert sang “Jingle Ba-yells” and Santa asked Rudolf to “gaiyde his slei-ay tu-nait.” If you’re proper, then you always respond with “Yes, ma’am” and “Thankyouma’am.” Corey goes crazy when Alex responds to him with, “Yes, sir.”

Christmas 2010

Funny things the kids said or did this year:

On TV, they were comparing the popularity of the Democratic, Republican and Tea Parties. Alex says, “Poppan (grandpa) needs to be in the Coffee Party.”

...

Alex has a friend named Mac. They were playing in the basement, and I reminded them to stay in the play area before I left them alone. When I checked on them later,  they were in the food storage area. Mac had flour all over his face, in his eye lashes, all over his shirt and was choking and gagging on it.

Flour was dusted all over the floor. They had been eating FLOUR by the fist-full! Later, Mac came crying upstairs, “Alex hit me.” I questioned Alex, “Did you hit Mac?” “Yes,” he admitted, “I hit him back.” They both got a time out.

Later, when Mac went home, I stopped in to let his mother know what the boys had been up to. Mac confessed to his mother, “We got in trouble.”

“Oh,” she said, “What did you do?”

Mac answered, “I hit Alex last.”

...

We were out for a walk. Alex tripped and fell on the sidewalk. After he got up he said, “I was testing my gravity skills.”

...

Alex flew a paper airplane across the chapel during the Stake President’s talk. I’d given him paper to color and he sweet-talked the lady next to us into folding it into a paper airplane. Next thing I know, it is arching gracefully across the chapel. It slid to a stop next to the Bishop’s wife. Of course, we sit in the second row from the front, so pretty much everyone saw its maiden – and final – flight.

...

We rode in a combine. What fun! Eli (19 months) kept screaming, “MAAAMmower!” (lawnmower) and gesturing wildly every time he saw the other tractor or any other piece of heavy equipment. Alex enjoyed it too.

Life Today: Better than Wandering for Forty Years

Wandering in the wilderness?

We are studying the Old Testament in Sunday School. I've asked the class members to write a short essay about Moses and the Exodus. Ha, ha, ha. I doubt they will do it. I wouldn't, if I were them. I'd want to, of course. When I received the email, I'd think, "Wow, that is a nice idea. I'd like to do that." Then, the children would want lunch and the husband would wonder if there were any clean socks and the grocery shopping would need to be done ... and well, life would be far more urgent than a short essay about a prophet who lived long ago.

Since I'm the teacher, and since I am the one who asked them to do this, I feel an obligation to share a few words--in spite of the pile of bills on my desk that needs attention. You know, "Lead by example" and all that nonsense.

Here is the passage:

For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?  Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him. Deuteronomy 4:32-35

Moses is declaring that there had never been a greater time in the history of mankind. Here is the first set of questions I asked:


• Would you like to have lived during that time?
• For example, would you like to have participated in crossing the Red Sea and seeing the armies of Pharaoh drown?
• Or would you like to have heard the voice of the God speaking out of the midst of the fire?
• Would you like to have tasted manna?

Here are my answers: no, maybe, yes, no.

Yes, I definitely would want to have heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire. That sounds pretty amazing. And, yes, I would have loved to see the people crossing the Red Sea, and watch Pharoah's armies drown, but I don't think I would actually like to have participated in that. I mean, that would mean work on my part. Walking and walking and walking. You know that song about pioneer children that walked and walked and walked and walked and walked ... I like to walk, but forty years? That sounds like a lifetime. (Oh, wait, that is a lifetime for me.)

What? No manna?

This week's lesson focuses on the writings of Jeremiah. He says that while the Exodus was indeed the greatest event in history, a greater time will happen in the future: the Gathering of Israel and the growth of the church. We are living during that time. So the question is:

• How do I feel about being part of the greatest time in the history of the Earth?

Huh? What kind of question is that? I feel pretty mundane about it. It doesn't feel like the greatest time in the history of the Earth. Feels pretty normal, in fact. But, I really have no basis for comparison. It's not like I can say:

"Gee, when I was living during the days of Adam, the Earth felt really fresh, everyone had a sense of wonder and excitement."

Or "Man, during the days of Enoch, DUDE those were the days! Talk about high home teaching stats. Everyone was doing it."

Or "Whew. The days of Joseph of the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Wow that was living. We had it good in those days."

Or, "Seeing Jesus at the wedding at Cana. Man, that was beautiful ceremony. That was before the Word of Wisdom, and wow, the wine he served ..." 

And "Now that I'm living during the days of the Gathering of Israel. I can see that all those previous eras pale in comparison." 

Not the Red Sea ... but they walked and walked and walked

No, I can't say any of those things. I have no basis to compare today to any other era of history. I can't even say that I was living during the time of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. These days seem normal to me because they are the only days that I've known. However, I can share a few events that excite me.

I was blown away when the church announced the building of a temple in Hong Kong. Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! They announced the temple in 1992; it was complete by 1996. I knew that the UK's 100 year lease was about to end, and the sovereignty of Hong Kong would be transferred back to China. It meant that we'd have a temple in China! The lease expired in 1997; tad-da, Hello, Hong Kong, China Temple.

I was excited when I learned that the government of the German Democratic Republic (what we used to know as East Germany) asked the church if they would consider building a temple in East Germany. It was the first temple built in a communist country. That is cool. It was completed in 1985. The wall fell just five years later. Coincidence? You decide.

I am pleased that I was present during the General Relief Society meeting in 1995 when President Hinckley first read the Proclamation on the Family. "We ... solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God." I did not know how polarizing that statement would become fifteen years later when the battle to redefine marriage heated up.

Crossing our own Red Sea

I've been excited by the changes to the missionary program over the years. First, the emphasis on "raising the bar." Then the introduction of the Preach My Gospel book. Next, the changes in the youth curriculum and the lowering of the missionary age. Now, the new emphasis on spreading the Gospel through electronic means. All of these have accelerated the gathering of Israel and the growth of the church. It is exhilarating.

Many other events have amazed me over the years. However, I need to check if there are are any clean socks for tomorrow, and Corey noticed that we are almost out of milk, and the stack of bills on my desk is not getting shorter. In other words, the urgent tasks of daily life beckon, and I need to wrap up this essay. I look forward to discussing the growth of the church in class. I hope that a few of you will take time to ponder and jot down your thoughts before you come. (And post them to your blogs, people.)

Ode to Creston

We've lived in Creston for seven months. We didn't indend to make it such a short stay, but here we are, ready to move back West. It's been a whirl-wind adventure here. We had some lows, but we also had some great highs.

We went to McDonalds tonight for dinner, we saw five people that we know. That's what is it is like to live in a small town.

Thanks to Mrs. Weese, Mr. Blake, and Miss Jecceka for running a tight ship with lots of fun and many creative ideas.

Thank you to Julie Lang for believing in my language learning ideas and helping launch my professional speaking career.

Thanks to Mrs. Chubick, Miss Julie, and Miss Chris for sick days that gave me a chance to learn so much.

Thank you Terry and Gail for teaching me that play is the work of children.

Thank you Betty and Donna for helping me see all of the fabulous things happening around me and for being a turning point in my stay here. Also, thanks for laughing at my outrageous comments--you are very rewarding.

Thanks to all of the capable women who cleaned my house, cared for my children and watched over me when I was sick.

Thanks to Lori--my fellow Skinner scorpion--for walking my path ahead of me and saying, "It gets better, it really does."

Thank you Lenox Branch for loving my children and being so thrilled about our arrival.

Thanks to Carly Roberts and Jessica Camp for your consistent service with me in the nursery.

Thank you, Corey for never giving up.

Thank you, God, for the beautiful night sky that is so clearly visible from my back porch, the geese and deer that feed in the field behind the path. (We'll never see that in Las Vegas.)

Thank you to the Cihaks who braved the worst storm of the year to help our family. Also thank you for the combine ride--definitely one of the highlights of our time here.

Thanks Brother Lui for the facsinating explantion of how to modify plant cells.

Thanks to our family who traveled to this out-of-the-way spot to visit us.

Thank you Bryan Zachary for the personalized tour of the village.

Thank you Dennis Carter for being a great friend, an honorable person, and for not selling us a house.

Our lives have been richly blessed in the short time that we've been here. So many people have reached out to us in kindness and have welcomed us into their hearts. Thank you to all of you who have been a part of our experience.