Boston Baked Boltons

(Editors note: as cold as it is in Massachusetts, I think we need a different name for the winter months. Something like Chill’n Out in Mass.)

The month of November, like the beginning of December, has rolled by so very quickly. November was a very busy and very fun month.

Mikaela is always at the end of the news, but she wants me to start at the bottom and work my way up. Mikaela is still taking gymnastics and is loving the class. She has quite a large class, that they have had to break it into two groups. Mikaela also performed in our ward's Sacrament Meeting Program. She practiced and practiced her part so that she wouldn't have to rely on the piece of paper. When she got up to speak, she gave a different talk. She did that two more times. I looked at Braden and said, "I thought

that she had just one little part. We haven't practiced the other lines." Braden said, "Well, she knows them very well, maybe they gave them to her last week and she just forgot to tell you." Come to find out, she was asked that morning if she would read the parts of the children that hadn't shown up. I was very

surprised. They could have asked some of the eleven or ten year old girls, but they asked Mikaela.

As you are all aware, Mikaela turned eight, the same day that Todd turned 40. She thinks it is pretty great that she has an Uncle that has the same birthday. We were traveling through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut the day before her birthday. When she woke up on her birthday, we were in Connecticut and she was surprised that she had birthday presents. She was wondering how we had gotten the presents there without here seeing. It wasn't as easy as she thought, but she doesn't need to know how. We finished our drive and arrived in snowy Massachusetts to finish off her great day. She

said she had a wonderful birthday, but was disappointed by the Chinese Food. She had wanted a buffet style dinner, but forgot to explain that part of the meal plan. We are planning her baptism for January 7th. We are trying to work around our ward's schedule and Siovhan's.

Ben has been selected by his school to take the SAT tests in January. He will start classes the first week in December to help prepare him for the SAT tests. He also is a new member of the Science Fiction Movie Club. They meet every Friday at school and watch the 1950's and 1960's Science Fiction Movies. His favorite so far is the "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." He said he never remembered laughing so much at a supposedly "scary movie." Ben also went to Connecticut the Monday after Thanksgiving. He

was on the Stacy Middle School's Nature's Classroom. It is a weeklong event where they stay in cabins and learn about the Under Ground Railroad, how to take care of the environment and how to get along with others. He said he was glad to be home, where he could eat real food, sleep in a real bed and shower without ten people in the same room. I told him it was a good experience to get him ready for college and mission. He told me that if that is what the real world was like, he was never leaving home.

Oops. I shouldn't have taken on a teaching moment.

Braden has been marching his feet off. His band is usually done with marching in mid-November, but because our High School Football team did so well, Braden has extra games and extra practices. He wasn't too sad when this week's practice was canceled on account of pounding, cold rain. The Milford High School Band participated in our State High School Football playoffs, called The Massachusetts Super Bowl. They were outside in Worcester (pronounced Woosta), all afternoon on Saturday, and didn't get home until early evening. Being a Scout helped to prepare him for the cold. He went with hand warmers and foot warmers, dressed in layers and had covering for his head. It was 20 degrees outside on Saturday afternoon, even though it was sunny skies. He said it was a lot of fun, but our team lost by 56 points. The score was 56-0.

Howard is home for the month of December. What a good thing that has been. I have had so much to do for Young Women that I have been gone almost every day for the past week, and it will be same for the next two weeks. Howard is still traveling to all the warm parts of the globe and loving it. He recently returned from Chile, where he was at a Latin America Conference. It was so much fun for him. He was calling me several times a day to tell me all the exciting events that they had planned. I was glad that he

could have so much fun. His knowledge of Italian helps him to understand some of the Spanish, so it makes it not as hard to go to the various conferences in the South American countries. It is funny to us though when he tries to speak Spanish, because he does it with an Italian accent. Howard loved Ohio and has spent several evenings researching houses and companies in the area. No we aren't moving, he

just is amazed by the amount of house that one can get for the price.

I loved the drive through New York's Alleghany Mountains on our way to Todd's. We went to Ohio on the northern route, and came home on the southern route. I was also very happy to spend time in Kirtland, Ohio. The area there is so beautiful. The weather was beautiful the day we were there, and the tours were very thought provoking. The children noticed a different feeling in the Kirtland Temple, than in the houses in Historic Mormon Kirtland. We explained that the land and homes in Historic Kirtland were dedicated and set apart for the Lord's work, and the Kirtland Temple was just a building, not a temple to us anymore.

We had a great time with Todd's family. The area has so many things for families to do. While the Trauntveins were in school on Tuesday, we went to the Amish part of Ohio. We had fun going to a cheese factory, touring downtown Berlin, buying lunch in a Mennonite-owned restaurant and driving through the countryside, seeing buggies all along the route on our way back to Todd's. It was fun for the

kids just to play for hours on end. They made up games, they played Nintendo and they watched movies. They talked for hours and laughed for hours. It was a very good visit. We were the traditional family; we took sick kids, and came home with healing kids. Hopefully, the Trauntveins had good immune systems and no one caught what we had.

Well, that's all for now folks.