Books read in 2023

The books with an asterick means they were bookclub books. The books with a pound symbol means I gave the book 5 stars. I listened to about a dozen of these books on audible. 

1. The Christmas Promise by Richard Paul Evans
2. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
3. The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg*
4. This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger*
5. Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat*
6. Glimmer of Hope by Sarah M Eden
7. Lovely War by Julie Berry
8. The Mountain Between Us by Charles Martin
9. Think Again: The power of knowing what you don't know by Adam Grant*
10. Hope Springs  by Sarah M Eden
11. The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis
12. Beauty in the Broken Places by Allison Pataki #*
13. Secret of the Sonnets by Samantha Hastings
14. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
15. Seven Miracles That Saved America by Chris Stewart*
16. Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole#
17. Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza*#
18. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
19. Grace to Become by Emily Belle Freeman #
20. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott #
21. Anxious People by Fredrik Backman*
22. Where the Wind Leads by Vinh Chung *#
23. Dreamland by Nicholas Sparks
24. What's the Big Deal About Pornography? by Jill Manning

The books Scott read in 2023

1. Football's Principles of Play by Peter Prickett
2. Developing skill 2: A guide to 3v3 soccer coaching by Peter Prickett
3. Developing skill:A guide to 3v3 soccer coaching by Peter Prickett

4. Easier than you think by Richard Carlson

5. Tranquility by Tuesday by Laura Vanderkam

6. Peril at End House by Agatha Christie

7. The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie 

8. The Big Four by Agatha Christie

9. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

10. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

11. The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

12. Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie

13. Believing Christ by Stephen E Robinson

2023 Christmas Family Newsletter

 “God, I’m still counting my blessings

All that You’ve done in my life
The more that I look in the details The more of Your goodness I find.”

-Seph Schlueter

Here are some of the blessings we experienced in 2023:

• Good health and active bodies.  Elisabeth walks everywhere in Ecuador. Charles spends time at the gym and playing pickleball, Jane switched from gymnastics to tumbling and cheer, Annabelle and Nora both play soccer, and Scott and I spend time each morning in our home gym or running/walking outside in the neighborhood or in the mountains. I was able to trail run Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon this year with a couple of good friends. Penny (our black golden retriever) loves her 2-mile walk each day. 

• Work. Scott has worked for the same civil engineering company for years which has been a blessing. I get to work at the elementary school as a Literacy Aide, where my schedule allows me to keep the same hours as my kids which is a blessing. Charles continues to work at Subway and both he and Elisabeth had full time jobs over the summer that helped them save for upcoming missions(Elisabeth did mosquito abatement and Charles did yard work). Elisabeth is currently serving a full-time, 18-month mission in North Quito, Ecuador where she gets to do the Lord’s work all day, every day. Annabelle and Jane have been reffing soccer games this year and they often babysit, as does Nora on occasion. 

• Relationships. We were fortunate enough to be able to attend family reunions with both the Smith and Garnica sides of the family in North Carolina and St George, UT. Scott and I were also blessed to go on a week-long trip together to Kauai to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We’ve been blessed with good friends and neighbors, people who were put on our path just when we needed them: an uplifting conversation, a smile or hug, a thoughtful conversation or listening ear. 

• The gospel of Jesus Christ. I can’t think of a greater blessing in our lives than this. He is constant, He is good, He is omniscient and He loves each and every one of us and desires to bless us with His love, His peace, and His strength during the good times and the bad. Life can be messy but He always comes through. We are so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ. 

We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We love you! 

Love, 

Scott, Elisa, Elisabeth(19), Charles(17), Annabelle(15), Jane(13) and Nora(11) Smith

December: bookclub, iceskating, Christmas

We got a little snow! Not much though, it didn't stick to the roads, but it was something! 

Scott and I had a temple and dinner date. We tried a new Mexican place called El Morelense; they have yummy street tacos and a few other items on their menu. Doesn't this picture look so festive? I loved the red flowers they had as centerpieces. 

Penny begging Annabelle for food, as per usual. 

Watching the Christmas Devotional together. 

Elisabeth got transferred, still in Quito, but another area. Her companion is Sister Orellana who is from Ecuador. Elisabeth is still adjusting to the new area which takes time. They don't eat with members as often as they did before so getting to know them takes longer. But they're still having success.  

I have been in the same bookclub since 2008. I love my bookclub and I look foward to meeting with them every month. We meet the first Thursday of the month and we rotate houses/hosts and the host picks the book for the month. Every December for bookclub, instead of doing a book we use the latest General Conference magazine to share something from, and we have a bookclub dinner and invite our spouses. Elisa Ludwig (she joined our bookclub a couple of years ago and comes when she can), hosted our last meeting/dinner. 

December 10th is my dad's birthday. He was born in 1926 so he would have been 97 years old! We watched the interview my brother Lowell made of him, of which I'm so grateful for! 

December 12th we had a combined RS activity with a few other wards where we had the Decibelle's come do a christmas concert for us. One of our ward members, Marilyn W, is in the Decibelle's. They are an older singing group that were so entertaining and fun! 

Nora wanted to redo her room, but instead I suggested a good deep clean and told her I would help. Here is the before (lots of things on tthe floor and lots of clutter on desks):

And the after: We also did a thorough cleaning of her closest and got rid of clothes she doesn't use.

We love our Monday calls with Elisabeth! 

Nora decided Thursday to have a Christmas party on Friday (the next day). Luckily I had several games already made up from previous parties so it wasn't too difficult. We got some yummy foods, they did a while elephant gift exchange, and they played pin the carrot nose on Olaf, Christmas Scattergories and Christmas Bingo. They also painted nails. 

It has become a family tradition to go iceskating on Christmas Eve, but because this Christmas Eve was on a Sunday, we decided to go on Christmas Eve, Eve. So Saturday at 1:30 we went iceskating at the blue ice ribbon. Ludwigs joined us of course. 

With all our time off for the holiday, we also decided to do a winter puzzle. We just happened to have one on hand that we'd never done before. It was 500 pieces and only missing 3. It took us a couple of days to finish. 

The Hague's got a new puppy for Christmas, Grizz, which Nora was excited about. 

We went to Church in the morning; it was only one hour since it was on Christmas Eve. Afterward we acted out the nativity and used our chimes for a few of the songs in our nativity. 

We found out later that Adrianna was happy to have visitors at the hospital, so we went up to visit her after dinner. Christmas Eve dinner was Italian as per usual. We had Stromboli, salad and Pandoro cake. 

We brought our chimes, and got there around the same time as the Watsons, so we put on a little show for her and her mom. After the first song, Adrianna joined in for the next two. She seemed happy to have us there playing for her. It was a beautiful night. I only wish Charles would have joined us but he decided to stay behind..something about already having too much family time this weekend (and I think he wanted to play his xbox)

Christmas morning we had bacon, eggs and sweet rolls for breakfast. This year I made cinnamon rolls AND orange rolls. They were both SO yummy! 

Once all the kids were up, we opened Penny's gift, a new bed. Then we had the kids open the gift that Scott and I made for them; Tila Bracelets. Now we all have matching Ecuador bracelets! We even made one for Elisabeth that we'll save. 

We've played games and watched movies together as a family over this holiday break. One of my favorite new christmas movies we watched is called, I Heard the Bells, and it's based of the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet who wrote, I heard the bells on christmas day. 

 

November: Thanksgiving

Looks like someone punched a hole through our vinyl fence recently. Scott's planning to fix it himself if we can find the right slats to replace it. 

This is the first year in my 4 years working at the school that they've asked to have my picture for the year book. It's also the first year of being a literacy aide whereas before I was a recess and workroom aide. I'm going up in the world! :)

Romney's came out to celebrate Thanksgiving with us which was nice. We ate lots of yummy food. 

We bought an apple-corer since Scott likes to make apple pie each year and we all took turns on the new gadget. It makes peeling and slicing apples so much easier! 

We have a sweet 14-year-old neighbor girl who was recently diagnosed with tcell lymphoma cancer. She started chemo during the week of Thanksgiving. Her hair will fall out and so her mom asked if I knew someone that cuts hair that might be willing to go up to primary children's hospital in SLC to cut her hair short so it's not so drastic when it starts falling out, and so they could possibly try to make a wig from it, and it just so happened that Becca was in town when she asked and Becca and I were able to go up there one evening and she ended up doing three haircuts (mom and sister as well), and both mom and daughter got the same cut and are going to send their hair in to hopefully make a wig from it. We ended up being at the hospital for nearly 3 hours and gone from the house for 4 hours, which was so kind of Becca. I'm grateful for her and her good heart. 

Becca goes to the gym regularly in ID these days so while she was here we decided to go together one morning. I had so much fun trying out all the machines! I would love to get more weights in our own gym, with an olympic bar and plates so I can lift more. 

After Thanksgiving, we took Trax up to SLC to look at the lights. There weren't many lights because of the temple construction going on, but it was still a fun adventure and the boys loved riding the train. I don't know if I mentioned before, but Leia moved out here with Lani, along with Leia's girlfriend Katya and their two sons. Leia and the boys came with us to SLC too which was fun. 

Jane switched from gymnastics to tumbling and cheer this year. This is her stunt group.