Exported Son, Imported Daughter.

Hello Everyone,

I can't believe it is the end of October. I am going to do a couple of posts today so that I can update stuff. Our son Leigh is still serving his mission in Jamaica and loving it. He is doing great.

Since his bedroom is empty, we decided to take the advantage and got an exchange student from Germany.

Her name is Friederike (Free-der-e-ka) Baumgartner. She is from Celle, Germany which is in northern Germany near Hanover. We absolutely love her. She has now been with us for 21/2 months and we are loving having her here. She fits in great, but I am sure she occassionally thinks we are very crazy.

When she first got here it was a bit crazy because our old dog Goldie died whom we had had for nearly 16 years, so on her second day with us, she helped us dig a grave to bury Goldie by her sister Blackie down in the lower pasture. Then she spent alot of time helping us plant trees and haul rocks. She is the one in the blue shirt in the photo. The girl in the pink shirt is Sara and she is living with our neighbors.

We did some fun stuff too, like going to Lagoon with our neighbors. The Burton family who have kids all the same age as mine, also got an exchange student from Germany. We all had a fun day at the amusement park.

We have been doing some other fun things like hiking to Timpanogas Cave (I haven't been there since I was 16). We had our first snow storm on October 11th, the day after Friederike's birthday, so she was thrilled because it was her birthday wish and they don't get snow in her hometown, only rain in the winter time.

Another fun activity was getting to ride our neighbors horses. We had bought a 4 hour ride from the neighbor at a ward auction earlier in the year so instead of one 4 hour ride, they agreed to borrow another neighbors horse and let all four kids ride for 1 hour. They had a great time.

We also got to spent a few days up at the Snowbird Lodge up Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake area over fall break and see all the leaves change color. We got to go on the tram to the top of the mountain and ride the Alpine slide and the kids even got me to go on the giant chair zip line. It was alot of fun.

All the kids are doing great and life is good.

Love to you all.

Cindy and the rest of the Clyde Family.

I have grass and trees

Hello Everyone,

I am so excited. I have 11 trees now planted in my yard and I have 1200 feet of lovely green grass in my front yard. Thanks to some very helpful nephew, children and neighbor boys we got all of the sod laid in just 3 hours.

The trees took the better part of 3 days

with Warren borrowing a little back hoe

from the neighbors to finish digging holes.

Life is so great when you have help.

Farmer Cindy and land scaping

Happy July everyone.

We are busily working on our yard again. I learned how to drive a mini excavator back hoe to work on digging trenches for sprinkler pipe. It was a lot of fun. I have even bought myself a cowboy hat for some extra shade. I bought 15 trees yesterday that will be delivered next week, so hopefully we will get the sprinkler lines in before they get delivered so that I can plant them and not kill them off.

Leigh had his 20th birthday yesterday. I sure missed being able to hug him. He is liking his time of service in Jamaica though.

Sarah is working at her dad's engineering office, but finding the heavy manual labor hard on her body. She has developed tendonitis in both elbows from pounding dirt and stuff, so had to go on light duty for a couple of weeks. She has started her Sociology class at BYU and has only 2 other students in her class, so she gets lots of one to one attention from the teacher.

Marie has been at YASE (Young Ambassador Summer camp) at BYU. They have dancing and singing classes every day and then perform for their families tonight. I will try to get some good pictures to put in next week.

Brian gets to go on his first back packing campout tonight and his dad is going with him reluctantly. all is good with the Clyde family. He has had fun with his new slip and slide and loves to play with the next door neighbor Jordan.

Love to you all.

Cindy

Summer in April,Winter in May, Spring in June,

What crazy weather we have had this year. More snow than in the past 10 years. Then spring tries to come and we go from 32 degrees to 90 degrees and back to 32 degrees. It snowed every monday in April and half of May and we finally got spring showers in June. I planted my peas in early april but they are still only about 6 inches high, those that even sprouted. They can't figure out what to do.
We have been working on building a retaining wall and flower bed at the back of the house and put in a fun fire ring to cook on and just enjoy a periodic bon fire.

We took a great trip to Kansas City Missouri where we saw the musical "Wicked" and then drove up to Nauvoo, Illinois with my brother Kevin and his family, and then we went down to their home in Lawrence Kansas and had a fun visit.

Sarah graduated from Lehi High School, Marie graduated from Willowcreek Middle School and Brian graduated from Pony Express Elementary. All three kids will move on to new school in the fall. No more kids in elementary school.

Leigh is doing great in Jamaica and has already been gone 10 months.

I have managed to lose 50 pounds since last November and am working on the next 40, but feel great.





We hope all is well with everyone who reads this.
Cindy

Where did the time go?

Wow! it is February and I haven't updated the blog since September. CRAZY!
Leigh has been serving the Lord in Jamaica for 6 months now. He is doing great and has lost 45 pounds and looks great.
We have had more snow this winter than in the past 5 years combined, but the kids are loving sledding.
Warren played Santa Claus at his brother's ward Christmas party.
My Grandma Smith turned 100 and we had a great party for her. All 10 of my brothers and sisters came into town to help celebrate.
Warren and I celebrated our 23rd Anniversary and still love each other.
Life is great.
Love to you all.
Cindy