Sorrow

After sharing the exciting news with us the she was pregnant, at Kylee's doctors appointment today she learned the baby she was carrying had died.  She and Ryan sent the family this sweet email:

Hello Family!

Well, I guess we jumped the gun a little bit sharing our exciting news at Thanksgiving. Our routine doctors appointment today did not give us information about the healthy baby we were hoping for, no heart beat.

We are feeling optimistic and blessed to have a little trial to learn from together and some empathy to gain.

Sorry to spread the burden... We are really doing great and we just didn't want to create any awkward situations by not letting you know.

Thanks for all your wonderful examples and love!

Kylee & Ryan  

How our hearts hurt but how grateful we are for the gifts of the spirit and the love of family at moments like these.  

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a great weekend, celebrated by family get togethers in both Utah and Texas.  The girls were in Utah and the rest of us in Texas.  The Janis women in Utah created a spontaneous arrangement of For the Beauty of the Earth. Wish I could have been there to watch the process. I'm grateful that I could see the performance online.  Brandon and I both spoke in church on Sunday and I directed the choir for the first time.  I felt Heavenly Father's pleasure as we performed.  I will learn from being choir director and may even find it to be a well disguised blessing.

Thanksgiving Music Making in Utah

The Last Few Weeks

We haven't been up to too much lately.  Last Friday we installed Damon and Tiffany's garden.  We'll be sharing it with them until we have one of our own.  This Saturday Tiffany and I got it planted.  Last Saturday Brandon and I went up to Dallas to watch Sarah and Laura in Annie Jr.  It was fun to see them living their dreams,  pictured with them is Esther.  This weekend Brandon and Daenon went on a scout camp out.  Like father like son, you can see them rolling their eyes at me for making them get their pictures taken.  I've been very busy with work.  Working a solid part time job has definitely changed the tempo of my life.  At least I like the work. Daenon has been a big help and now takes care of most of the cooking and kitchen clean up.  His mission companions will be lucky! Daenon was a boom box for Halloween.  He even made it so he could really play music.  He enjoyed our ward Halloween party.  He loves our ward.  Sundays are his favorite day of the week and this from the three-year-old who called church the "dumb, stinky, ugly place".   BYU won the Mountain West Conference soccer championships.  The tournament was in San Diego. Auna played well.  They beat New Mexico in the final.  New Mexico was their only conference loss so it was vindi cating.  The NCAA tournament begins on Thursday.  The link to the BYU women's soccer page is:  http://www.byucougars.com/soccer_w/ .  Ron is giving a presentation at a medical conference in Denver and will be gone until Tuesday evening, it's possible that BYU will leave for the NCAA tournament on Tuesday, that means Auna and Ron will end up spending a week and a half apart.  Poor newly weds! Ron was able to fly down and surprise Auna by watching BYU's Thursday game.