California weekend

Hola Hermana Nielsen,
 
How was your week?  The one lady who I am friends with on facebook, said that her husband saw you in the temple last week from villa el salvador.  She said her husband lost his job, so they are a little worried right now.  Last week went by super fast.  Carly had a couple of bball games and scored 1 basket in the 1st game and 2 in the 2nd.  But she is unselfish and passes the ball alot.
 
This Friday is homecoming and Cody is one of the 5 finalist for the homecoming king.  He said the only good thing about it is that he got a free lunch out of it.  That is what he told Ms. Rodgers and she said that sounds like your dad. I am not sure what she is thinking, but she does not know me.  We are guessing that Chelsea's comments on food budgets on the chorliers trips is what she is referring to.  She still talks about how Chelsea would come home from those trips Money ahead as she would stuff her purse with buffet items.  Chelsea left a lasting impression on her on how to budget and save money.
 
Cody played Truckee in football on Sat. and Carly had two indar soccer games in Reno on Sat.  Cody had to be at the school before 3 as the bus left at 3 am.  And we were planning on leaving at 6.  We left Chica with the simons in exchange for me taking him and his dad deer hunting this wednesday.  But the papers did not get here until 6:40 am, so mom and I hurried and got the papers done and we were about 2 hours late getting on the road.  Carly played at 11:30 am by Galena and we got there about 1/2 way through the 1st half.  So she played the entire 2nd half.  She did well, she is about the littlest one out there, but she battles with those big girls.  She had some good passes.  Her team won 5 - 0.  They had 3 extra players, and she was suppose to play again at 2:30 pm.  But we told Ramon that we were just going to go to Cody's game at 1:30 and continue on over the hill to Grandma & grandpa Crofts.  It was raining real hard driving over to Reno and the temperature was about 43 degrees.  Cody's team beat Truckee 46-0.  Cody did not do any thing spectacular, but played well.  It was not much of a game and Elko was up by more than 45 points early in the 3rd quarter, so they had a running clock.  The 1st string did not play much the 2nd half.  So then we went to the Crofts.
 
Grandpa, just sits in his chair all day.  He needs to get up and move or he will be less mobile.  We had a really good quick visit.  We stayed at Curtis and Betsy' cottage house next to their.  It was nice.  We went to a 9 am sacretmeeting and that ward was having their ward conference.  Every one told us we should move into their ward.  It was a good meeting.  Then we went to Grams and spent the day there hanging out and visiting.  We got home last night around 10:45 pm.
 
This next week Cody plays Fallon and that is going to be the toughest game of the year.  He is already getting pumped up now for this Friday's game.  I hope we have a great game and beat Fallon. 
 
I have this FitBit thing I wear on my wrist and I have to get in 10,000 steps a day for a challenge. And the other night I was a little short, so I was marching in place and adelaide said, "So, I see you have to go to the bathroom" since I was doing a dance.  She is a character.
 
Amber got a calling in her BYUI ward and Ward family history specialist.  So I don't know what is up with all of our family history, but it must be very important.
 
We love you and are always praying for you.  That Nisler girl (the permanent Elko fan) always asks how erin is doing when we see her.
 
Well work hard, this is a very special time in your life.  Give the Lord all you have.
 
Love
 
DAD

Dearest Hermanita Nielsen,

How is life?  We have had a great week, capped off by a really good visit to Grandma and Grandpa Croft's.  Carly had her first PAL games this week and she did well.  She is not quite the smallest on her team (they have 2nd graders on the team, so she that helps), but she has not grown too much this last year, except for her hair.  I was looking at her pants when I was putting them away and she is still wearing a couple of pairs that are size 6x.  She rolls the bottoms up like capris, because they are too short, but her skinny little bum still fits in them.  We celebrated her birthday on friday night, big 10!  She was going to get her ears pierced, but she is going to wait until after Indar and PAL season, because they won't let you just cover them up with tape.  Summer had to take hers out, and that was a big PAIN--literally!  For Carly's bday, she got a watercolor paint kit from IKEA, and then she wanted to go to the new Petco store that opened here last week and look at the animals in there.  They had fish, rodents, reptiles (cool lizards) and some birds.  Then we went to the new Marshalls store (where Fashion Bug used to be) and she picked out pants and a shirt with matching scarf.  She is officially a size 10 slim.  

Saturday we got up to get the papers done, and of course they were late.  We were heading over that morning to Reno for Carly's Indar game and Cody's football game against Truckee.  We got on the road 1 1/2 hours later than planned, so Carly missed the first half of her game, but she got to play all the second half.  She did a good job of passing the ball to other teammates.  We won 6-0.  Then it was on to Truckee to see Elko play.  It was a blow out as well. 46-0.  We then went over the hill and down to the Crofts.  Curtis and Betsy offered to have us stay at their cottage house, which is right next door to their home out there in Loomis.  At first I thought, 'No, I think I'd rather stay at Grams even though we'd have to sleep on airbeds in the living room.'  Grandpa is still spending the night in his hospital bed which is right in the middle of the family room.  But then I thought it would be nice to take Curt and Betsy up on their generous offer, and besides that way Grandma wouldn't have to worry about getting them all blown up and washing all the bedding.  So, we drove over about 9 pm and they were there to welcome us.  The "cottage" as they call it, is really cute.  Its just a tiny little one bedroom house with a king size bed and a little twin in the corner.  Cody slept on a hide-a-bed in the family room and Summer slept on the couch.  We all slept really well.  The next morning they made us breakfast, but we were trying to make it to a ward in Loomis, by 9am, so we went to the sacrament meeting and then went back to their house to eat.  We had a really amazing visit.  Betsy and I cleared the air of all our past grievances.  Its funny I had a feeling during church that maybe I should just apologize for the "trespassing " episode of the past.  I'm not sure how it came up, but I think she was ready to put the past in the past as well, because one minute we were just talking and the next we were hugging and crying and telling each other we were sorry for all the stuff that had happened in the past.  Dad said he turned around and saw us carrying on hugging and blubbering and he was like, "Hey, Curt, show me that bear skin you've got".  I think they felt kind of awkward.   It was really good though, she said she'd changed and that she's now a different person, and I said I was sorry for anything I had done to offend her.  Life's too short to keep stuff like that festering.

What did you think of the Womens' General Conf.?  I got to see the last two talks, but it was really good.

I loved your last letter, where you compared this time of your mission to "half-time", going along with the Game theme of your mission.  sorry, this letter is late again, I had to sub preschool today.  The Mom that was going to teach today was having plumbing problems at their house, so I stepped in the last minute.

We love you so much, have a wonderful week, Love, Mom