This is our Christmas letter for 2006. It sums up our year pretty good.

            As usual, I start my Christmas letters off with January 2006 and hit all the milestones. This year has been full of blessings and challenges for us, but now as I begin this letter, I realize this year past quickly and we have accomplished a lot.

            In January, Curtis took a job offer from Prophet Systems, a division of Clear Channel Radio, and we moved to Ogallala, Nebraska. Of all the places we have considered living, I don’t even think this made the list, but we are always up for something new and so we made the move. Our first house here was an old farm house situated in 10 acres of wheat fields. At first I was excited to be living on a farm, out in the country, with a garden and very little noise; I had very romantic ideas about it. Those soon faded after the freezing nights, the septic tank backing up into the basement four times, some mice moving in and getting our car and van stuck multiple times on the dirt roads. After four months of this lovely paradise, we found a house in town. It is small and cramped, but it is suitable for us. Curtis walks to work every day and we have a park and pool four blocks from our house. We can walk just about anywhere we need to go here.

            April 10^th, Joshua Dennis joined us after a fairly quick delivery. He weighed in at 9lbs. 1oz. and has been a pretty sweet and snuggly baby for the most part. He is the fourth boy for us, but Hannah reminds us almost on a daily basis that she needs a baby sister. We do know we will have at least one more baby, but no word on when. I have to say that the more kids we have, the more I enjoy them.

            Curtis and I both graduated this year with our bachelor degrees. Curtis is finishing his this month in Software Engineering, and I finished mine in November in Business Admin. Curtis is looking for jobs in his degree field, and so has applied to move over to another section in Prophet Systems, but he is looking in other states for jobs too. I don’t know what I plan to do with my degree, but I’m happy I’ve gotten it done. We have continued to homeschool the kids this year. I had thought about and even presented the option to the boys to put them back in public school, but everyone decided they would rather homeschool, and it is working well for us. The second year of homeschooling has taught me to be a little more relaxed in our daily grind. Both Isaac and Jesse are doing 2^nd grade work together. Hannah is doing Pre-K. My neighbor asked if I would do Pre-K for her daughter, so she comes over every morning and the girls do their work, the boys do theirs, and for the last hour we usually do some kind of theme or project together. So far we have studied American Indians, Pioneers, apples, and our community. I have not mentioned Simeon yet, as he is still too little to really participate in school, but too old to be “a baby”. In August he fell off a small freezer we have and got a concussion. He had a seizure and in the next few weeks started regressing in motor control and speech. Going back to the doctor they said a concussion of that degree would cause some delays for up to year and we were advised to just “work” with him on various skills. His motor skills came back, but we are still working on speech.

            This fall was rather difficult for us health wise. Curtis was hospitalized for almost a week with a viral infection of the lymph nodes. They could only treat the pain, but had ruled out appendicitis, gall bladder or liver problems. The day he was released, I got sick with a sinus infection and then all five kids, all at the same time, had pink eye and ear infections. Apparently the flu season already hit us, and it was horrible. (Hint: get your flu shots).

            The Fourth of July was rainy but I insisted we go up to the part to watch the firework displays, which were awesome! Our summer was spent playing and swimming and having a BBQ here and there. It didn’t get as hot as Texas though, which I actually missed. Halloween was fun for the kids. They got to walk in a parade and then did their trick or treating through the businesses downtown. It was brutally cold that day though, so we didn’t spend much time outside. Thanksgiving was spent with our friends from church and the missionaries and was very enjoyable. Christmas this year will be spent here in our home, unfortunately we won’t be able to get to either of our families this year. We did survive the Blizzard of 2006 this week though. We got about a foot of snow and even four days later, the roads are still pretty bad. I think we will have a White Christmas!

            One other very significant thing has happened this year. Isaac turned 8 in December and so he was baptized on December 9. It was wonderful! He seems so grown up now, and I hate that time passes so quickly and only seems to get faster as time goes by.  Curtis serves as 1^st Counselor to the Branch President in our small, but growing, Church Branch. I’m a Sunday school teacher for 8-12 year olds. We also started working with missionaries. Our area has not had missionaries in 8 years, so they are just new to the area now. It’s been an awesome thing to watch how they are helping the community. We have had many opportunities for missionary work since they arrived, and I have to say I’m very much out of my comfort zone, but I try to put that aside.