Happy Birthday on Tuesday

Hello Elder Nielsen,

First things first. We hope you have a great birthday on Tuesday. The big 20, you are getting old. I can't believe that little 5 year old boy who use to follow me around in the mountains in now 20 years old. We love you and are happy you are part of our family.

Spring Creek lost to Desert Pines yesterday 39-6. That is all I know as I looked it up on the internet. BYU beat UMass 56-9 or something like that yesterday. I watched part of the 1st half yesterday, but UMass is not very good this year. The BYU basketball team is 3-0 and off to a good start. They have the 3 from Lone Peak back from their missions, Haws, Mika, and Emry. They are all playing very well. It could be a good year for them.

Summer made the JV basketball team. She is happy about that and so are we. Chief Nutting is her coach and he does a great job teaching the fundamentals. Also, Summer asked about Thanksgiving weekend and he said Family comes first, then school, then basketball. So we like that as well. We are going to go to California to visit Con's parents. Grandpa is 89 and we don't know how many more chances we will have to visit him. Hopefully we have good weather.

Wednesday we had the sister missionaries over for dinner. Our warm weather has left and it is starting to get cold. We had not turned on our furnace yet and the sisters, 1 from southern Utah and the other from Puerto Rico were freezing in our home. 

Thursday, we had the harvest festival the the YM/YW put on at the church. It was basically a dud. We only have 4 families show up that were not part of YMYW. So we ate lots of donuts and candy. Our ward is hurting as far as activity goes. We only get about 100 people to church on Sundays.

Friday night I was working late grading homework for my class and mom called about 7:30 pm and said an airplane had crashed in the barrick parking lot next to us and she could see the flames from our kitchen window. So I came home, she wanted to go look at it, but when I got home, there was a ton of traffic on our road. And they had blocked off the road over in front of the Post Office. They had also blocked off Mountain City Hwy, so I think all the lookers and people trying to get past the freeway were trying to find another road North. When mom went to go pick up Summer from bball practice at Adobe, it was a parking lot in front of our house and she could not even back out of our drive way. It took her 1/2 hour to get to Adobe by way of 5th street. I did not go over as Addie and Carly were scared. I guess after it crashed, there was a big explosion and that shook our house and it started a bunch of parked vehicles in the lot on fire as well. Also, one of the pickups there had ammunition in it, and bullets were going off as well. So I did not think it was safe to go over, but Mom went over to Lois' to see it. Saturday morning as I was doing the paper route, I could see the results of the plane and it was right next to the fence across from # 17 in the brown apartments. It looked like the pilot tried to take it down where the least amount of damage would be done. It was a medical plane taking a guy with heart problems to Utah. All 4 people aboard were killed. Tiffany Urresti 29 years old from Elko was a nurse was killed. Mom coached her sister in PAL volleyball Jamie. I think she is Amber's age. But it was less than 200 yards from our place. Lots of excitement in Elko. The crash got national exposure.

Erin just told us that John Carpenter died yesterday. Nick Meo had called me last week and told me he was not doing too well. He was a big part of Elko.

Saturday, mom and I were going around trying to get our yard winterized. Mom was trying to put on the C-mas lights as it might be out last nice day before winter. I washed the truck and 4-wheeler to get all the mud off from out hunting trip. We could not get the rotor tiller going so I had to use a shovel and turn over all the dirt in the garden. Carly had a pal bball game. Her team lost by 2 points. She played well, and her team was depending on her a lot, but she missed a few wide open shots. They were close but she could not get them to go down.

Today, We were suppose to have a girl from college over for a missionary discussion that I met in Battle Mtn. She lives in Elko now. She was going to go to church with us and we were going to have the Elders from the 4th ward come teach her, but she had to work. So we rescheduled for Tuesday. We will have them all over for dinner and then a discussion afterwards. So that will be good.

Addie was not feeling well today and threw up a couple times this morning. So I went to church with the 4th ward to take the sacrament and went to ward council. Then I came home and stayed with her. I rocked her and she slept for most of the time. She is sleeping again now, so she is not feeling well as she never sleeps that much.

Mom and I are going to go home teaching tonight.

We hope you have a great week. Keep working hard and being exactly obedient in all things. Have a great day on your birthday. Make it the best by teaching the gospel.

We love you,

DAD 

Dearest Elder Nielsen,

We had a busy, activity filled week.  We found out on Monday that Summer made the JV basketball team.  She was really happy about that.  She's happy because she will be able to watch the Varsity teams play; I think the freshman travel opposite of everyone else.  She will be wearing #12, so hopefully she will do your number proud.  She really likes her coach, Chief Nutting.   I was happy that she could be gone over Thanksgiving, her coach was really good about it.   I don't know when the next time we will make it out to Calif. for Thanksgiving, probably not before one of my folks pass away, so I am really happy that things have worked out to go.  Now, if the weather will cooperated, that would be perfect.  

Tuesday we had our Relief Society Holiday Dinner.  I was pretty much in charge of the dinner.  We had the pork roast that I make with the yummy gravy.  I made 3 of those and a vegetable side dish.  We asked everyone to bring their favorite holiday dessert, so I made Mud Balls for that.  We haven't really had a lot of support for the last RS activities we have had, so I wasn't sure how many would come to this; but you never know when there is a dinner involved, it tends to bring out more people.

That wasn't really the case here,  I was pretty disappointed.  We had 14 sisters total, that was all of us.  I have kind of lost my ambition, and I didn't put a whole lot of extra effort into it, because I didn't want to put out if there wasn't going to be many folksies.  The good thing that came out of it was we had food to take home and that is what I fed the Sister Missionaries the next night when we had them for dinner.

On thursday, we had our annual Harvest Festival that the youth put on for the kids in the ward.  It was kind of the same story, only about 4 families came that didn't have a youth involved.  We had fun even though it was low attendance, and hey, we got to take home the extra donuts from the "ring on a string" game,  Our poor ward is just kind of struggling.  We have had people move out, but not really anyone move in.

On friday, we had a tragedy.  There was a plane crash in the Barrick Parking lot, across from Smiths.  I was in the kitchen with Carly and we heard some noise, kind of like fireworks going off.  I looked out the kitchen window and I could see flames that looked like they were close to the brown apartments.  I called Lois Gurr since she lives over there and she told me a plane had crashed in the parking lot across from her apartment.  As I was talking to her there was a big explosion and the airplane exploded.  I walked over there about 15 min. later, but the fire dept. had already put out the fire.  There were about 4 or 5 cars that were burned out.  I had to go pick up Summer from bball prac. at Adobe, but I couldn't even get out our street, because the police closed the area of Mnt. City Hwy. near the crash, so there were cars going everywhere trying to find a rode to take them where they want to go.   The story was that the plane had just taken off from the Elko Airport when it had some engine problems and the pilot was trying to get back to the airport to land,and when he couldn't, it crashed.  It was an airmed flight; and on board was a heart patient, a nurse, another medic, and the pilot.  They were all killed, but no one on the ground was hurt--only lost a few trucks.  The nurse was Tiffany Ursesti,29 years old.  I deliver the paper to her parents on Willow St.  That was the big excitement of the weekend.  It was all over the Utah and even national new.  Luis Mata was one of the first to be on the scene and he recorded footage on his phone, that showed up on all the newscasts and had kind of gone viral. 

Saturday, it was a nice day outside, so I decided to clean out the rain gutters, because I could see they were overflowing with leaves.  I got the ladder up and was doing that and thought, 'since I'm up here already, I should just put the Christmas lights on.'  So, that is what I did.  I had to stop and go to Carly's PAL game about midway through.  She is playing with a lot of confidence.  She dribbles down that court with wild abandon.  She made 4 points, but they lost 12-14.  Once again Carly had a 2-shot freethrow with under a min. and she came up short... literally, both shots were "no-rimmers".  We've got to work on those.  We attended the wedding reception of Garrett Moore and Desiree Hyzer on Sat. night.  It was decorated really nice.  They did the branches with lights and evergreen trees.  Rachel Moore said I should have patented the tree thing for all the duplications that have been done since we originated the look.

You are having a birthday this week.  I hope you have a great day!  We will be thinking about you.  We may even have some sausages for breakfast in your honor.  Have a wonderful week, keep working hard, 

Love, Mom