Dad’s Weekly Report

Dear Family,

Happy New Year to you all. We moved to Flagstaff, AZ this week. Monday I start my new job at W.L.Gore Company. It is a little scary to start all over, but I am excited to have work again and I think that it is a really great company. We are now in temporary housing which the company is paying for, for up to three months. Hopefully during that time our house in Washington will sell and then we will fly back there, supervise the packing of our belongings and move to a new house here.

On Tuesday afternoon it started snowing in Camas and snowed pretty much all night. Luckily it was warm enough that not much stuck to the roads. We left Camas on Wednesday morning with our small white car and Allen’s car and drove to Fresno, CA. It took us just about 14 hours. Then on Thursday, another 10 hours driving brought us to Flagstaff. We stayed in a motel on Thursday and then moved into our place on Friday morning. We brought just what we could jam into our two little cars. The place we are staying is a condo. We think that it is owned by someone who lives in Phoenix or Tucson and is there summer home. They just rent it out during the winter. It has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a large room that is the kitchen, eating area and family room. It also has a washer & dryer in the front hall. It is pretty nice and will be fine for us. Hopefully we won’t have to be here very long. Here is a picture. Ours is the lower right. You can see we have quite a bit of snow on the ground. It gets cold here, especially when the sun goes down, lots of blue sky though.

Izzie, our dog is the most upset about our move. She rode in the car fine, sitting on her bed on top of all of our stuff. However she is not used to the new place and gets very upset if we leave her at all.

We had a great Christmas. All our kids except for Lyle and Emily came to see us. We weren’t expecting Ruth & Curt to be there and they surprised us. Ruth called Sandy to ask her what she was doing. Sandy said that the UPS guy was there delivering the last of the Christmas packages. Ruth said no there was one more coming and then walked up to our door. It was a great surprise.

Christmas Eve we went to April’s parents home for a nice dinner and party. On Christmas morning everyone was at our house to open presents. We got a ton of really nice gifts. Everyone was very generous. I am afraid our gift giving was sparse this year because of my being out of work for 6 months. Thank you everyone.

We have already had two sets of visitors. On Thursday night when we arrived, Candy, Philis, LaNell & Greg were staying in Flagstaff. We met at a restaurant for dinner then played some games. It was a nice New Years Eve celebration. Then yesterday Dale and Ann came for a short visit. They were on their way from a visit to Beaver, UT.

Well we have lots to learn about our new home and job. It will be a fun new adventure.

Love,

John