January's around the corner!

It is going to be January before you know it and so it is time for me to get into letter writing mode. The mountains look beautiful all covered with snow and I enjoyed the move over to Christmas Music. With the general economic downturn my job at Snowbird has evolved somewhat. We are working with a much smaller employee base, and since we are not actively recruiting new employees at this time our office has been working at the resort where ever we are needed. It is very different driving to the resort every day, work in the Employee Services office one day, Public Safety one day, and 3 days as a cashier at the General Gritts store. I have enjoyed the change of scene but working as a cashier really wears me out ... 8 hours on my feet means that by the time I make it home I am really ready to call it a day. I really miss my nice office and I will be glad when we return to our normal schedule.. someday.

It has been an interesting year, some good things, some not so pleasant. Probably the most difficult was in August as we gathered the family together for Christina’s wedding in Montana. Her fiancé was killed in an accident only 2 days before the wedding so we gathered to mourn rather than celebrating their lives together. It was a very hard time for us as we watched Christina’s devastation and tried to help and support her. She decided to remain in Montana, reshaping her dreams there surrounded by good friends and fond memories. It has not been easy for her but she is coping, and she will be fine given time. We try to keep close track of her and visit her as often as we can. That is one thing nice about coming from a large family, someone is always planning a trip to Montana!

Jef and I are very excited that we have found a wonderful home to purchase in the Sugar House area of Salt Lake. We have wanted to be able to live in that area. That is where we lived after we were married until we built our home on Brighton Point. It is a classic California Bungalow style home built in 1910 and we loved it because in that 100 or so years it has not been changed dramatically so much of the woodwork and features retain that original charm. It was easy to fall in love with the leaded glass windows and large front porch. Yes, there are a few things we will need to repair and restore (including those windows) but we see that as a new and fun project. We will keep both houses, we can live in one and fix the other for a while. I am so ready to downsize now that I don’t have my house full of children to help me with the cleaning and yard work. It will be a little longer commute for me to get to work but it is really not bad. Jef’s commute to the airport will be shorter though. Jef has taken off work for the last couple of weeks to work on the house and Dylan has been helping him as often as he can around his snowboarding schedule. At the rate our list of repairs and remodels grows it will probably be a while before we could actually move. We wanted Dylan to move in since it is close to the Universit of Utah but that can't happen until we get internet service there because it is such a large part of his schoolwork, and you can't get the internet working until you get the lines run ... etc

We wanted to have Christmas in the new house, well that didn't work, but we did have our family Christmas party there and it worked out great since there isn't any furniture so we had lots of space. Rosalie got everything set up and made dinner for us. She really came through since I had to work at Gritts that day. Everything looked so festive and the food was GREAT. We decorated gingerbread houses and played games. Grandpa and Grandma Pat come up to join us, and we celebrated Grandpa's 89th birthday. Jef says that maybe we should just not furnish the house and use it for the party house... I'm not so sure I go along with that plan. Lydia and Jeffrey and the kids were there along with Dave & Kara and the kids. I told the renters downstair that we were having 16 people over on Christmas Eve, that many people on old squeaky floors can really put in dent in their quiet evening! They seemed OK with it, at least they didn't complain..

Jef is traveling as usual, and spent the last half of November in Ghana, West Africa, he tells me that they named a school after him in Ghana so there is now a Jef Fisher Primary School (if you take the opportunity to go over and check it out I am sure he’ll be very happy to meet you and give you a guided tour!)

Otherwise things are pretty normal. Dylan is attending the University of Utah, working, spending time with his girlfriend, helping Jef when he can, and sleeping very occasionally. Rosalie and James are doing well, they are renting a home in Sugar House, it is nice to be practically neighbors! Lydia is still in school in Arizona and Jeffrey is working at a job he likes very much. Sarah, Collin, and Mason just keep getting older and cuter. Dylan and I spent the Thanksgiving Holiday with them since Jef was in Africa and we wanted to go someplace fun. Sam and Heather are still in Brooklyn, Sam is working on building a bridge and Heather is enjoying using her hard earned degree in Landscape Architecture. Dave & Kara are busy trying to keep up with Anna and enjoying their new baby boy, James, born on December 3rd. Emily and Austin seem to love Vermont more all the time, and Lucy and Gavin are doing well, although I don’t get out there often enough either. With the family so spread out I am so thankful for cel phones and email!

Once again we are so thankful for the love and support of friends and family. We all hope that you had a wonderful Christmas season and a great year ahead!

What? November already?

After being soundly admonished by Heather to correct my slovenly blogging schedule here I am. I was shocked to realize that November is a week gone. I guess I had so much fun in October I just didn't want it to end.

Rosalie and I took the opportunity to go on an adventure to visit Christina. Sam and Heather had gone the weekend before and experienced a Montana Autumn snow storm. Of course they had to get the real experience by getting stuck in the snow, more than once. Rosalie and I saw little patches of snow but we spent a beautiful warm weekend in Montana. We got a chance to get acquainted with Dash the Dog, she is sweet and lovey, and a wonderful companion for Christina. We got to watch the Peirson family and friends bring in the cows and calves. Then they separated them, weighed the little ones and shipped them off to a feed lot. Rosalie and I watched, and Christina was right in there with the cows... I am always amazed by my cow-girl daughter! Dave & Kara and Anna are there now. I sure hope Christina doesn't get tired of having company because we all love to go and visit.

Jef and I have been looking at houses. It has been very fun to look at the different houses and consider how they might work out for us. We wanted to look in the Sugar House area because I have always loved that area of Salt Lake. We finally decided on one that is on 17th East. It is a pretty classic bungalow style and although it has been updated in the last 100 years, the best parts of the home had been left intact. Danny Nix acted as our real estate agent, and we really tested his patience! Good thing he's related!! Actually he did an outstanding job for us. We made an offer on the house but the owner didn't think we had offered enough. We gave it a lot of thought but we just didn't feel good about offering more so I figured we'd just look around some more. After I got back from Montana, Dan let us know that the owners hadn't had any other offers since ours... so Jef decided to make another offer, less this time, and they decided to take it. I don't think that is the usual way to play the offer game but then Jef doesn't always like to do things in a conventional way. This time the economy worked in our favor. It is a lot smaller than our house on Brighton Point, Jef calls it 'Grandma's Bungalow'. It has a small yard, it will take Dylan just a few minutes to mow it. He is going to move into it, it is close to the University of Utah, while we do a few projects like put in a stairway and finish the surprisingly large attic area to add another bedroom and bath. We need have Baird teach us how to fix the leaded glass windows, we have quite a few, they are still intact but barely. You know we have been looking for a fun project... Jef will be leaving for Africa next week so I will get to take care of the final details and sign the papers on the house on the 21st, we get the keys on the 24th. Dylan and I will drive down to Arizona to spend Thanksgiving with Lydia and family just a couple of days later. Jef gets home from Africa on the 29th, Dylan and I will drive home on the 30th and then we will start working on Grandma's 'doll house'. Jef says we will be having Christmas dinner there. Sounds good to me!

It is time to get Jef from the airport. Jeffrey and the kids are coming to visit us this weekend because Jeffrey has a doctor appointment in Idaho Falls on Monday. I am taking Monday off to play with the kids while Jeffrey goes up to Idaho. I haven't see Sarah, Collin, and Mason for several months and I was so delighted that they will be coming up. Lydia will stay in Arizona to have the chance to get caught up with her classes and study. We'll miss her but I think she will be able to put the time to good use, and we'll be there in just a couple of weeks.

A Long Month

It has been a difficult month for our family, and especially for Christina as she struggles to put her world back together after Chad's fatal accident just two days before their wedding. There are no words to express our heartbreak as we witnessed Christina's joy and excitement turn to utter despair. The family gathered to support Christina and love her during those first difficult days. We all helped as Chad's family planted a tree in his honor, even the little children worked to dig the hole and then water the tree so it would grow up to beautify and shade the home and people that Chad loved so much. Coming home and returning to work was difficult for me but I accepted the fact that Christina needed time to herself. We all left our hearts with Christina when it was time to us to return to our homes, forever changed.

Kind expressions of love and comfort have come from family, friends & neighbors, and we have felt their compassion and support for our family and especially for Christina. Christina is working and getting ready to go back to school, starting the spring semester at Montana State in Bozeman. She is surrounded by good friends, and Chad's family, as well as the love of her own family. It is a road we could never imagine that we would take, but we will take it together.

I returned to work after being away for almost two weeks. My co-workers had really pulled together to cover my responsibilities during my extended absence but there was plenty of things for me to catch up on. We are beginning to hire for the winter season. The CEO of Snowbird called a meeting of the managers to give some direction during this time of economic challenges. That changed some of our hiring, with budget cuts everyone is working harder and getting along with less, and the managers are looking at needs instead of wants when hiring new employees. But it isn't all work. After our staff meeting last Wednesday we had the opportunity to go on a mine tour. Little Cottonwood Canyon was heavily mined for silver and other minerals from the 1860's through the 1930's and both Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood Canyons are honey combed with miles of mine tunnels. We first went in to the Wasatch Drain Tunnel where Snowbird has capped the tunnel in order to store and treat the water used by the resort. Millions of gallons of water filter through the rock from the snow melt and from connecting mile tunnels to be stored behind the 'plug' to be used at the resort for the hotels and buildings as well as for snowmaking. Part of the water is released into Little Cottonwood Creek and flows down into the Salt Lake Valley. Then we moved on to Alta and entered the Bay City Mine. I will admit that I was really nervous about walking into a cold, dark mine shaft with only my hard hat and lamp .. and a flash light in my hand. There were enough of us that with all our head lamps the tunnel didn't seem so dark, it was just that you couldn't see ahead of the first person more than about 10-15 feet. We walked along the old rails, the walls and ceilings dripped water and there were several inches of water on the floor in many places. I was very thankful for my hard hat, I would be watching the floor to see where to put my feet and suddenly the roof would suddenly dip down and I would hit my hat on the rock above me. I tried to look up and down at the same time but it just doesn't work out that way. There is a lot of old equipment left behind in the mines, and tunnels go off in every direction. We were thankful our guide knew his way, it would be so easy to become lost and fall into a mine shaft. There is also some interesting graffiti left behind by the miners who left their names and the date painted on the wall with the black soot from their own lamps. At one point he stopped us to let us know we were now in Big Cottonwood Canyon, 1400 feet below the surface. The town of Alta uses one old mine elevator shafts to store it's water, it goes down about 300 feet. Then we went into another part of the mine that connects with the Emma Mine. That is when things got a little more exciting. We climbed up a mine shaft, about 50 + feet, it was about a 70 degree slope and it was my first rock climbing experience. I should have waited further down the line until Pete had climbed to the next level and tied off the rope..but no, I was about 4th in line and so I followed them up about 2/3 of the way before they threw down the rope to those last few at the end of the line. I didn't know my legs could stretch so far, that I could grip with my hands so tightly and balance my toes on little ledges and rock outcrops to pull myself up into the darkness. We had to climb over fallen wooden platforms that were slick with water, I kept asking myself how I was going to climb up from here, but I made it and I was VERY proud of myself. Yes, there was some social pressure involved, being a good 20 years older than most of the group..I would never have believed I would even attempt it, let alone be successful... of course that was before I had to go back down!!! I was positive I would have blisters from holding onto the rope, and going down is a lot harder because you have NO idea where you are going to put your feet.. you can't see where you could put your feet anyway because looking down doesn't do much good so you hold on to the rope and hope for the best. I asked the girls from the office to sign an affidavit saying that I had done it and returned just a little worse for wear but in one piece because no one would ever believe me. I am still sore, my knees and shoulder muscles really got a work out! By the time we came back out of the mine I was wet and dirty but so glad that I had had that experience! It was so interesting, and very fun. Am I going rock climbing again soon? Unlikely.

It's Been a While!

It has been quite a few weeks since I worked on our blog spot. Actually it has been rather frustrating. My internet has been sketchy at best so we decided to move to Comcast and get the phone, TV and internet all from the same place. Sounds great in theory but it is not as easy as it would seem. With all the construction Jef wanted to run wires for the cable to all the rooms. Dylan took on that challenge and did a great job but you can't run the wires to 7 different rooms without it taking some time. As usual they couldn't just install the cable because Jef had some very specific requirements as far as the wiring coming into the house..so that took some time. When they were finally able to come and get us all hooked up the man said he had never done an installation like it before but it worked out very well, good thing we got an experienced installer and not a new guy. This has made a lot of difference in the quality of our internet. It actually works all the time and it is fast! However it meant that we had a new email address and since the internet is wireless in the house I had to have Charles Fisher come over and help us with some connections. He said if I had had a gmail account for my email I wouldn't have lost my address book etc when AT&T turned off our account so now we have a new email address! You can write this one down in ink because it isn't going to change!!! suzannenfisher@gmail.com of course if you want to be sure I get it sooner than later I'd still send it to my work address at suzanne@snowbird.com but now that my internet actually functions maybe I can check it more easily. The down side of all this changing is that I can't log in to my blog to write more stuff because of the address change so I had to set up a new one. Sorry to all of you who have to now add the new address. If someone out there knows how to change the address on my old one just let me know. It wouldn't be any fun if it were easy, but it would be a lot less stressful!!

Dylan is working for AMEC, he does materials testing which means that he gets to play in the dirt all day, breaking it, turning it into mud, honestly is there a better job than that? Playing in the dirt and getting paid for it? He really does like his job.

I have been having a lot of fun getting things ready for Christina's wedding. She wanted cupcakes for her wedding cake, with flowers on top. So Rose and I have been working on that little project but now I have to get really serious about it because we just have a few weeks left. I have enjoyed making them, I feel so creative! I took off a few days to go on a work trip to Alaska. We went to a job fair in Denali to see if we could get some of their seasonal workers to spend the winter at Snowbird. It has been a cold and rainy summer in Denali so the thoughts of spending 6 months in the snow was a little hard to sell but I think when their season ends in September there will be people contacting us. We drove up from Anchorage, 4 or 5 hours on Thursday.. and our flight out left on Monday morning at 1 AM. With Friday and Saturday at the job fair that gave us all day Sunday to play. With all the rain I wondered if the 'mule' would make it on the muddy roads, trails, and through the rivers of icy water but it really did well, even with a novice driver and I hardly got wet and muddy. Anyway I was able to dry off during the ride back to Anchorage. I had ordered "Breaking Dawn" but since I was in Alaska I knew I would have to wait until I got home to begin reading it. Sara and I decided to try to find a book store on the way to Anchorage. We went into a Fred Meyers store in Wasilla but they were all sold out.. I was losing hope. They directed us to a Walden's Book store, we found it but it had closed 10 minutes before we got there. I guess we had really long faces as we looked in the door because they came over and opened the door so I could buy the book. So, no sleeping on the plane home for me. We landed in Salt Lake at 7:30 AM, Rose came to pick us up. I felt like a zombie. I was SO glad to get home and into a nice shower, and then to bed for a few hours before I finished my book. I will have to read it again now that I am more coherent and see if I slept through anything important. I knew I had to finish it because my work load is pretty heavy right now, and I have flowers to make, so no time for recreational reading...well maybe a little. I am thinking I will take the flower stuff over to Rose or Kara's house so I can make flowers in an air conditioned environment, maybe I can get more done if I'm not so warm.

Sara and Collin have been in Sun Valley with their Cockayne grandparents but they will be coming here tomorrow evening and then staying until Saturday when the Cockaynes drive them back to Flagstaff. Dave wants to go mountain biking on Saturday up at Snowbird and since Kara is in class that day I will get to play with Anna all morning. I am glad to have a chance to get to visit with them! It will be wonderful to have all the kids together in Montana in a few weeks too, I am getting very excited!