Dear Elder Nielsen,
Well I made it through another busy tax season. I feel as though there is a huge monkey off my back and I can think about something other than taxes. I had a pretty good tax season. I only extended about 8 returns and one of those is mine. That is the least that I have extended in many years. Usually I extend about 15-20 returns.
Monday I took the day off and finished up all the returns that I had received information to do. I was scheduled to take both Monday and Tuesday off, as the dead line was Tuesday and those are usually crazy days. But I had everything under control and was able to go to work on Tuesday.
Tuesday and Wednesday were normal days. It rained a lot on Tuesday. Wednesday, I took my lunch hour and went and watched Elko play Spring Creek in baseball. Elko won 5-4. It was a good close game. SC was leading most of the game. Elko's player playing in left field did a Cody Nielsen trick. Sheldon Wilkerson hit a deep shot to left and he was running back watching the ball and tripped and fell on the upward slop and the ball about hit him in the head as he was falling down. When he was running back, I kept thinking to myself, you need to be careful and sprint back to a spot and try and locate and catch the ball. But he dropped it and Sheldon got a triple. Sheldon is walking on to UNR to play football. The win puts Elko in 2nd place behind Dayton.
Thursday after work I took Carly and Summer to the Church and we met up with a Lady (Cammie) and her 4 daughters to practice bball. I guess they go up a couple times a week and have a girl Carly's age. Cammie played college ball in Montana. We need to get them in the gym as much as we can to improve their skills. We just stayed there until mutual started.
Friday, I went to work and we just hung out at home Friday evening. Summer left for Carson City on Friday for a varsity track meet on Saturday. She ran the open 400 and the 400 in a medley relay. Saturday morning, mom and I got up and did the paper route. Mom went to the clean up Elko day with the cub scouts. I stayed home and filed tax paperwork all day. Mom got us all free tickets for the lunch. So we went to the city park for a BBQ. Sat. evening we had a fund raiser for the girls camp. Mom helped Carly make that cheese cake we had last week and it was auctioned off and it went for $70. I offered a tax return preparation for either this year or next, and two couple were bidding it up to $150 and I said I would do them both for $150. So the Nielsen clan raised $370 out of the $800 they raised that evening. It is all for a good cause.
Today we had great meetings at church. Good speakers in Sacrament meeting. Brother Welch and brother Bates spoke to us on Family history. During the 3rd hour, the young men and young women took care of primary so all the women could go to relief society. I, of course went into nursery and had a ball with them. It was fun. We had left over soup for dinner and mom and I are going to go home teaching this evening. It has been a delightful Sabbath today.
I showed Sister Balbuena your picture of your district from the MTC and her trainer was in your group as well as her 2nd trainer. But she knew 4 of the sisters in your district. What a small world! She said you wrote her back which was neat for her. She said her trainer told her that you helped her a lot with her Tagalog as she was Polynesian and spoke a different language.
We hope you have a great week. Keep working hard and finish strongly. It is sprint to the finish line now. Dig deep and hit it hard to the end. We love you and pray for your daily.
Love,
Dad
Dearest Elder Nielsen,
Adelaide has accomplished what most 5 year olds can do... she is an an official bicycler! It's not her fault that it has taken her so long. She didn't really have a bike; the one we had that she could have ridden always had a flat tire. She was a super scooter rider though. She got a new bike for Christmas, but it wasn't until now that the weather has made it possible for her get out and give it a whirl. It came assembled with training wheels, and she rode it with those a few times, but she looked kind of silly because she is so big to be using training wheels. I took them off and then helped her stay up by holding the back of the seat as she was getting the feel of how to distribute her weight. She got kind of discouraged because she thought she was going to tip over, and she complained that the seat hurt her "booty". Later that night she took her bike into the back yard to practice on the back patio. She would start on one end of the concrete and then ride off into the grass and she would pedal until she started to turn and then bail off. She did that about 15 times, and got better and better each time. Dad told her to just put her feet down if she came to stop, rather than falling over. The next morning she wanted to try it out on the sidewalk in the front. It was instant, she just got on and went. She spent the whole day riding all over--up and down the street, into the yellow apt. Nathan(the neighbor boy) was visiting so they had a good time hanging out on their bikes. It's kind of like the concept, that if you wait to potty train until they are good and ready, it happens in a snap! She was sad that she couldn't ride today, because of the Sabbath.
I had my first den meeting on Tues. I had 6 bears show up for the activity. I just follow the book and it listed about 8-10 games to play with them, involving balls, bean bags, and blindfolds. They were a little crazy, but there was enough change of activities that it kept them looking forward to the next. I would compare it to planning a birthday party for 9 year olds each week.
Saturday, was the Clean Up/Green Up Elko Day, when they let you take a load to the dump for free. The cub scouts had an activity involved with that, and we went to the Peace Park and cleaned up all the trash around the area. It only took about an hour. Then, for all the volunteers you got to go to the Main Park for a free BBQ. I got extra tickets so the whole family could go to the BBQ, and then they also gave the volunteers a voucher to go to the dump anytime next week for free.
Carly and I made a cheesecake that afternoon to take to the Ward Spaghetti Dinner/Girls' Camp Fundraiser. The ward provided the Spaghetti and the members were to bring rolls or a green salad. I only heard "salad", so I got the stuff to make Pistachio Salad (the fluffy, green one). Then Dad told me I was supposed to bring a "green salad", but I said, Oh, well, its still green." All the girls were to bring a dessert to be auctioned off. I had made this Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake for Erin while she was here for Easter and then I sent some home with her for her and Landon and some for Amber and Kevin. Kevin "loved" it, and said it was the best cheesecake he had ever tasted. It looked really impressive with this glossy chocolate ganache frosting and fresh raspberries arranged on top. They did a live auction and there must have been some serious cheesecake lovers there, because they were battling for it. It started at $20.00 and the final bid was won at $70.00! It was the top selling dessert. Then Dad offered his tax preparation services for next year and there were two families dueling for that. When the bid was at $150.00, he offered to do them both, so they each could have it for 150.00--more money for the girls. Afterwards, Sister Simons was counting up the total funds for the evening at it was over 800.00 "Thanks to you husband", she said. So, Dad was the big hero of the night. He says he can't make a cake, but he can do taxes. That makes me curious, what would a cake made by Dad look/taste like? We may never know.
Sister Babuena, the Filippina said that she got a response from you. That is really neat that you knew her trainer. She said that her "Mama" had told that you had helped her with her Tagolog in the MTC.
I know you have been an excellent missionary, keep it up, we love you lots, Mom
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