Family Letter M ay 17, 2009

Missionaries Family and Friends

What a full week we have had. Devin said that I had to tell a story from when she was out of town last week. I dropped Devin off at the air port and then headed to Brigham City to hang out with my sister for the weekend. I got a few extra dollars to spend because Devin was away and I decided how I wanted to spend the cash. Being an engineer I wanted to do a scientific experiment. I had heard that kids get wild when you load them up with sugar and crashed afterward. My theory states that if you give a kid enough sugar they will crash quickly and fall asleep before they get hyper. Just so you know I need to find these things out before I have children so that I can be the lovable dad but still get the kids to bed. I took my niece Jessi and nephew Brian out to the store to get some stuff for a party. Both of the kids picked out an ice cream, Jessi picked strawberry, Brian picked chocolate. Their favorite candy bars, Jessi peanut butter cups, Brian chocolate bar. They saw a bin of salt watter taffy and got a bunch of that. I picked angel food cake, strawberries, and whip cream. The kids also got to pick out their favorite soda; Brian sprite, and Jessi picked pink. From what I have learned for 6 year old girls pink is a flavor, the lemon aid is just there to support the pink. When we got back the kids wanted to start the party but I told them that the party could not start until Mom and Dad went out on a date. I think that Bart was a little disappointed not to be included in the sugar fest. We got the adults out the door and had a great time watching “Bob the Builder”. After about 30 minutes I believe Brian hit his sugar limit and fell asleep. He had chocolate all over his face so I cleaned him up and put him in bed. I was not brave enough to sugar up the 6 month old Chelsea, but I think the other kids sugar high rubbed off on her and she fell asleep soon after that. Jessi and I watched another movie before Mom and Dad got home. I was hoping for my experiment to work 100% but only had a 66% success rate. This may seem like a success but I need something that works better. I guess that I will need to keep looking for better ways to get kids into bed.

I will say that one of the highlights of my week came last Sunday. I got to talk to my brother Jacob for a few minutes. Jacob is serving a mission in Boston. I have not gotten to talk to him since I dropped him off at the MTC in November '07. Since he could not call everyone Jacob called Mom, Mom called me and they put both phones on speaker phone and I got to talk to him that way. I know I only talked for a few minutes but Jacob sound good and I hope you enjoy the rest of your mission.

Devin is not very good at telling me what she did in Arizona this past week so I will tell you what she did and fill in any blank spots with what I think happened. Devin had a few reasons to head to Arizona for a few days. Devin will claim that it is because she had a long stressful school semester and wanted a little break between semesters. Devin will also tell you that Anna just happened to have her birthday during this visit. I want every one of you to know that those reasons by themselves were not even close to the reason Devin wanted to go to Arizona. A few months back Anna brought a bouncing baby boy into the world named, Nicklaus, and Devin is baby hungry. I do not mean to say that Devin wants to eat babies, just that she wants one of her own. I told her to pick one up on the way home but she did not take my advice. Devin did take the advice of my Grandpa Payne when it comes to going on vacation which is “Take half as many cloths and twice as much money”. Devin did expand on the advice and brought back twice as many cloths that where needed. From what I can tell for a 4 day trip Devin needed

12 shirts

2 skirts with matching tops, not included in shirts

1 dress

3 pair of shoes

1 pair of pants

That is more cloths than I was expecting but Devin and Anna found some good deals and came out spending less than what I expected. Last Sunday night Devin had a family gathering to celebrate the wonderful mothers that are in the family. Devin claims the evening was fun with everyone talking and enjoying being together. For some reason in my imagination I saw Devin feeling like a failure taking Nicklaus to a corner in a back room and holding him and cried about wanting to be a mommy. Since Arizona is such a warm place I also think they spent most of the rest of the time hanging out at the pool drinking raspberry sherbet smoothies while laughing. Tuesday Devin's play time in Arizona ended and she came home to me, which makes me very happy. I do not sleep well without Devin close and with Devin back I had a great night's sleep.

I only got one good nights sleep before several horrid nights of pain. Wednesday I went to physical therapy for my ankle. In the past they put me on a shallow incline and made me do go up on my tip toes and down 40 or so times. I told them this week that I can do that on the stairs with out to much effort so they put me on a machine where I do the same thing but with some extra weight on my shoulders. For some unexplained reason the loaded me up with an extra 50 pounds plus the weight of the bar. I got through that exercise feeling a little tired. At the time I did not know was going to happen for the next three days. My calves decided to rebel from the abuse and refused to do simple things like letting me stand, or sit, or even lay down without complaining about what I did to them. One morning around 3:00 I was soaking them in a hot bath trying to pamper them but they were not getting any quieter so I drained the bath and after that I talked to them for another hour before I could convince them to let me get out of the bath and go back to bed. Devin claims that I should not have gone out earlier that day and run, but my legs felt better after the run my feet felt worse because I did not change my sandals and I know have a blister on my feet. This has not been a good week for my legs and feet I am hoping that next week will do better. For the first time since physical therapy I woke up and was able to walk across the room without leaning on stuff. I also got some new running shoes and hope that they will help with the ankle as well. I know that many of you may be wondering why I am mentioning my new shoes but I think they are very cool. They are very light and are made by a company that makes shoes for climbing cliffs. Devin claims that having a pair of shoes designed not to wear socks and has individual toes is just to strange, she also thinks that I should not have picked the bright red ones. I like them and it is almost like not wearing shoes and that is all that matters.

Saturday was a very fun day for Devin and I. Most of the day was spent driving in the car but that was all right. We drove to St George to attend the wedding of Devin's cousin Krischelle. The sealing was nice and we had a good time talking to family at such a joyous event. Mom and Dad Zobrist came along with most of the Zobrist families. It was fun to see family gathering and celebrating. Thanks to everyone who put together such a fun event and we wish everyone the best and hope that you have a great week.

Jared & Devin