Christmas 2020

Merry Christmas!

Like most others, we have had a unique year. Many plans and activities were cancelled, but we still had a great year. We were sad to not be able to go on our trip to Washington D.C. this spring, but we did create our own Disneyland at home during the extra family time.

Ben stays busy working in the City as the Assistant Leisure Services Director and teaching a class at the University. With the little bit of extra time this year, Ben finished our built-in entertainment center/bookcases and our brand-new backyard pool. He used a pool kit and did most of the work himself. Ben and Westley also spent a week hiking and camping in the mountains and hiked to King’s Peak, the highest peak in Utah. He has also kept busy with serving in the Bishopric in our ward, which has been a blessing to our family.

Jill has been busy homeschooling the kids and chauffeuring them to all their activities. She also volunteers for many of their activities, including helping with costumes and backstage. As with most moms, she never gets enough credit for all that she does (I had to add this so she wouldn’t downplay all she does). Jill is now serving in the ward Primary and enjoys the children.

Jenna has been busy with dance and theater. Luckily, she was able to perform in the ballet A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the beginning of March, right before everything was shut down for Coronavirus. Along with her sister, she also participated in Lion King Jr this summer as a lioness.  She has been working hard to complete all her schoolwork. She began taking college classes online at Snow College this fall and earned 16 credits. She is president of her class at church, and although it has been mostly virtual this year, she still loves participating in her Young Womens’ activities, girls' camp, and seminary. 

Westley still loves sports, math, coding, and anything that can be remotely competitive. He is grateful to have been able to play basketball, a little bit of volleyball, a little bit of running, and participate in ninja warrior training this year. Sadly, most running races have been canceled, but he has still participated in a couple of virtual races. Westley also enjoys playing the piano and accompanied his sisters for a song they sang at church this fall. He has a passion for coding. He likes coding in Scratch best, but he also uses Python, Javascript, and C programming languages. He is currently working through Harvard’s Introductory Programming class on Edx. He has also found an outlet for his passion for math: math competitions. In February, he won 1st place at the Mathcounts chapter competition (the best 6-8 graders in the county). He then placed 19th at state, great for his first year participating. He also joined a MathClub hosted at the university. His big goals now include going to either Harvard, MIT, or BYU.

Charlotte enjoys the arts, performing and fine. She loves musical theater, dancing, art, drawing, cake decorating, reading, and sleeping. She also loves horses and going to visit Grandpa’s house so she can play with all his animals. She was in two plays this year, Shrek and Lion King. She also joined a brand new children’s choir in the area. She loves any opportunity to be on stage and perform. She also enjoys playing volleyball and was happy to get to play 3 games. She also loves drawing and making clay animals. She entered many art pieces into the county fair and a couple of items made it to State. Her Moon Pony, made out of clay, won a Champion Rosette at the State Fair.