The Christmas Cat
No, the cat isn't a gift, but Michael and Jenny's Sabrina luxuriating on a knit christmas covering that Marolynn put on the couch. Sabrina thinks that it was a present made especially for her and that's where she likes to sleep.

Just the three of us celebrated Christmas in Michael and Jenny's house (they being up at her folks, the Johns). As we're just a weekend away from closing on the home we are getting ready to move into, with some Christmas packages still buried in the mass of packed-up household goods, this has been a quiet Christmas for us (Marolynn, Paul, and Jonathan). We hope it is going as well for most of you.

The Riverwalk House
Over the weekend, taking advantage of a window in the cold December weather we made another trip to Albuquerque and brought the last load of household goods back to American Fork and stowed them away in the storage facility yesterday. It seemed strange to be in town but not to have a home, but thanks to the Newmans, we had a place to rest our heads and say a final good bye to ward members on Sunday.

The final negotiations were concluded today and it looks like we'll buy a house on Riverwalk Drive in American
Fork, given no unforeseen circumstances. We're set to close on the home on December 28 and move into it on the 31st.

This was one of the houses we walked through on the first day out with the realtor, and I instantly liked the character of its high ceilings and wood laminate floors. The first interior picture is of the family room, off from the kitchen and down a short hall from the living room. The master bedroom is just down the hall on the right and another bedroom and bath is just off the front hall.

The house has a full completed basement with two bedrooms and a bath, and a large cool storage room off from the main basement room in the picture. Outside is a large patio in back and a side yard along the garage. The house was the model home for the houses built ten years ago along Riverwalk Drive. It is on the corner and has a relatively large lot with room for several fruit trees that I envision planting in the spring. It will be nice to move into and enjoy a new home in Utah.

Sunday with Sabrina
This has been a busy week. We started out Tuesday by walking through homes for sale and continued through Friday. Actually we really liked the third home shown to us on Tuesday, and after seeing about 15 others and finally bringing my sister Marian and sons Michael and Jonathan through the Tuesday pick again on Friday, we decided to make an offer on it. We don't know for sure whether that home will be the one we buy -- the offer and negotiating process lasts through the coming week. But we all liked it.

Sabrina and Sadie are Michael and Jenny's cats, and though Sadie is the bigger, older cat, Sabrina thinks she's the alpha cat. Sabrina also sheds like summer is just around the corner. Jenny wanted a picture of Marolynn with Sabrina resting on her legs, so here it is.

The Albuquerque Packers
We got back home from the cruise Monday night, November 23 and closed on the sale of the house on Wednesday, and by the following Saturday we picked up another U-Haul truck and with the help of church members, packed it completely full, still leaving chairs and other things. So we had to rent a storage place and stash things away for yet another trip which we'll take mid-December when Paul returns to Albuquerque for a dental appointment.

Our piickup truck was also packed expertly by Marolynn, until you couldn't slide a piece of paper edgewise into it. I couldn't believe that she could put all the remaining things gathered from the house onto the garage floor into the truck, but with the exception of a couple of laundry baskets (we had to take things out and cram them into corners in the back of the truck), everything got packed in time to leave at sunrise on Monday the 30th. A forecasted storm slid into old Mexico and we encountered mostly clear skies and arrived as scheduled in Utah just after sunset. Next morning we rented another storage unit in American Fork and filled it with the loads in the two trucks and turned the U-Haul back in. So we begin our Utah adventure.

Karen's Hippie Dress
Before we leave the cruise altogether, I had to slip in a picture of Marolynn's sister Karen on the ship in her tie-dyed dress. Karen does a lot of craft work and sells it at various fairs in Utah and Idaho. At one of these she met another seller who specialized in tie-dyed dresses and was impressed enough to get one from him. Actually it looks pretty good. Marolynn's youngest sister, Susan is in the picture to Karen's right.

The Everglades Tour
The cruise ended early in the morning on November 22 and we and Susan and her husband had our flights back home on the 23rd, so rather than taking a shuttle from the boat to the hotel and waiting around for rooms to open up, we decided to arrange an after-cruise tour in the Everglades. The ship-arranged tours made this easy and baggage was handled as well.

The Everglades are directly west of Miami and the tour bus took us to one of the places that offer boat trips out into that wide, grassy river that runs from the lake in the center of Florida to the sea. They are driven by large fans that make so much noise that everyone is supplied with ear plugs.

The Everglades are essentially expanses of grasses which grow out ot the water that is only a foot or two deep. The boats usually navigate down watery paths that run through the grass. As the guide said, the boats could go anywhere but they dont go into the grass in order to preserve the vegitation. Many varieties of birds and also gators and crocodiles can be found in the Everglades and we didn't have to look far from the dock to see them.

After the boat trip, the tour group was seated around the guide and several alligators. The guide expalined that his particular Everglade business did not wrestle alligators but rather handled them in an environmentally friendly way. He could get their attention and pat them one by one by calling out their names - he said that it took a lot of trust on both sides to do this. It was a real interesting and fun trip and we were all glad that we opted for it.