In case you didn't see this yet...
Dear Family and Friends,
This
has been another good year for the Anderson family. We have traveled to Denver three times this
year (including for a baptism and for Thanksgiving) and to Dallas twice
(including for Christmas). Angela’s
brother Alan’s family came down to visit us for a few days for Memorial Day. One of the highlights this year was when
Grandma Diane came out to stay with our boys so that Angela could join Brian
for his week-long work conference in Montreal, Canada. Angela spent the days touring Montreal with
other ladies from the conference, and tasting yummy food while Brian sat
through the technical presentations.
Thanks Diane for making that trip possible! Another highlight was our summer vacation to
Brian’s hometown of Pleasanton, CA. We
spent a few days in Gilbert, AZ at Brian’s sister’s house before completing the
long drive to Pleasanton. We went to the
beach, swimming, and enjoyed a day at the fair.
Angela also got to fly to Las Vegas to join her sisters for a Pippin
family girl’s weekend. Other than our
big trips we spent a day at Cliff’s amusement park in Albuquerque and went a
couple times to Abiqui Lake for swimming.
Our church’s congregation got too
large this year so they split it into two congregations. Angela and Brian are busy in the new
congregation and are enjoying serving.
We have been especially enjoying the wildlife in our backyard watching
the birds that come to our bird feeders, and seeing the occasional deer and
coyotes that roam through our backyard.
Marcus turned 4 this year and has
been doing preschool with two other friends.
He also had his first opportunity to play soccer on a team. He was a timid soccer player at first and
just watched his team, but in the last couple games of the season he scored 3
goals! Marcus also had his first bee
sting on his index finger, which took place out in our backyard.
Lucas turned 7 just a couple weeks
ago and started 1st grade. He
also played soccer two times this year.
The first soccer season he was one of the older kids and he was scoring
probably too many goals per game. His
second season though he was a younger kid and preferred to play strong defense
and let his teammates score the goals.
Lucas also had his first bee sting ever just under his eye, again outside
in our back yard.
Travis turned 9 this year and
started 4th grade. Travis
played soccer two seasons this year and during the most recent season Brian was
his coach. Travis prefers to play
defense and is not afraid to challenge the other players to steal the
ball. He also played basketball on a
pretty good team and they went far in their playoffs. In the fall he chose to be part of the
school’s Lego robotics club instead of playing basketball. He got to participate in his first pinewood
derby in cub scouts. He selected a hot
wheels car he wanted to model his after, and he and Brian set to work designing
it and cutting it out. Travis did a lot
of the work but Brian helped out on the finishing touches. They applied a thick coat of paint and made a
nice police car for which Travis won first place for the best design.
Angela trained and then ran in her
first running race ever, a 5k fund raiser run.
She enjoys going to the gym each day when she can and especially enjoys
spin classes. She’s very active in the
boys school volunteering in both of their classrooms and serving on the
school’s PTO as the secretary.
Brian got to go hunting for the
first time in his life. His dad flew out
to join him as they set out to shoot a deer.
They didn’t see anything they could shoot at but they enjoyed each
other’s company and being in the cold outdoors.
As mentioned above, Brian coached Travis’ fall soccer team and many kids
really enjoyed Brian as their coach. He
got a new mountain bike this year when he realized that his bike of 20 years
was too rusty to be worth fixing. Work
conferences have taken him to Las Vegas, Nevada; Montreal, Canada; and San
Francisco, California. Next year he’s
been invited to spend three weeks in Sendai, Japan with one of his colleagues
there to do research with him. The plan
so far is to take the entire family to Japan for the three weeks to have an
amazing cultural experience.
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