Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

For those of you who didn't get a letter and Christmas card because of my negligence, I sincerely apologize. I am posting the letter so you don't miss too much.

Dearest friends and family,
What an amazing year this has been for us. We hope the Lord has blessed you as we feel He has blessed and watched over our family.

Our year began with the closing of the sale of our first home. We thought we had a great home in the works to buy, but as short sales go, it didn’t work out in our favor. So, during the six week period of living in my parent’s basement, we began our home search anew. We happened upon a foreclosed home in West Jordan, about 15 minutes from Clifton’s work. It is a great neighborhood, a great ward, and a great house. We love it here.

Caleb (7) has done so well with our transition this year. He had to change schools twice, but came out shining. He is an excellent reader and loves to be in school. He had quite the adventure around his birthday when we had to take him to Primary Children’s Hospital to have his appendix removed. His maturing sense of humor is starting to show as he tells jokes and plays pranks. This next year he will be baptized. We are very proud of him.

Lauren (3) is growing and learning by leaps and bounds. She has quite a charged personality and on one hand is very independent. She achieved potty-trained status this summer. On the other hand, she is still very much dependent on Mom and Dad for reassurance and encouragement. This fall she began a “preschool” with some of the children in the neighborhood. She loves playing with these preschool friends and is learning quite a bit from school.

Eva just turned 18 months and it amazes us that she has grown so much just in this year. She went from just learning to sit up around last Christmas, to crawling, scooting, walking, to running all in a few short months. Her vocabulary seems to increase every day. For a while her favorite thing to talk about was “puppy.” Now she can identify quite a few animals. She just had her first official day in Nursery at church (we were going for a couple of months—either Mom or Dad stayed to ease the Nursery leader’s load). We love watching her grow and learn.

Susan has had fun trying to make our new home feel like our home. Trying to make all our stuff fit in a differently shaped house has been a good challenge, especially on a limited budget. She was recruited this summer by the PTA president, who attends our ward, to be on the local school’s PTA board. She worked many hours this fall helping out with the Reflections contest. Susan is currently serving the ward in the Cub Scouts as Wolf Den leader.

Clifton has been really busy at work this year. He still is in charge of the twice-yearly Garden Fairs and endless classes and seminars for teaching waterwise landscaping. The garden is expanding once again by adding an amazing education center that will contain his and other offices, classrooms and meeting spaces. He is really starting to get his name recognized—big establishments like Red Butte Garden make sure he is on their lecture schedule. Once again, he put his talents to work when he helped finish the basement in our new house. He says never again will we live in a house without a finished basement! He currently teaches Sunday School to the 12 and 13 year olds.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas season and may the Lord be with you throughout the coming year.

Love, The Smith’s – Clifton, Susan, Caleb, Lauren, and Eva