Happy
Holidays from the 'Texas' Turners!
It’s
been another great year in Texas for the “Texas” Turners.
The events of the last year have given all of our family an opportunity
to become closer to each other and work towards common goals that we have set
for ourselves.
The ‘biggest’ event of the year for our family would
have to be the purchase of our first home.
After 2 years of looking at the property, selecting house plans, waiting
for lawsuits to be settled among the developers, enduring general contractor
ignorance, 2 separate burglaries of the construction site, and several other
interesting experiences, we finally moved into our new house.
The adventure did not end once we moved in, though.
We had arranged to be out of our apartment by the end of August, so we
had to move into the new house or be homeless.
Couple of problems with that plan. . .
The builder had not arranged to have our electricity or gas turned on.
For the first few days it was cold showers and no air conditioning.
In Texas, the cold showers can be tolerated, but the lack of cool air was
a bit difficult. After a few days,
Texas Utilities showed up and got us hooked up and since then the difficulties
we’ve faced have been significantly less challenging.
The best aspects of living in our new home: living next door to 2 other
families that are members of our ward, being able to have weekend projects, the
sunsets over the lake in the backyard, and most of all, being able to have a
place where we don’t have to listen to other people’s music upstairs, just
our own.
The other ‘big’ accomplishment is not necessarily one
event, but the simple fact that Hailey and Abby have lived another year and
taught their parents quite a bit about how little girls work.
Hailey is 3 ½ now and loves to identify letters, wherever she sees them
and can even write her name. Her
favorite things are to run around the house in dresses, check out library books
and have Mom or Dad read them over and over again, ride her bike (with training
wheels), and playing with the neighbor boys.
This year, Hailey was having some frequent illnesses and several Dr.’s
suggested that we should remove her tonsils and adenoids.
We followed their advice and there has been an amazing improvement in her
health and in the way that she sleeps at night.
It was a difficult experience, but definitely worth the time and effort.
One big step for Hailey was to start going to a mother’s day out
program. She spends one day a week
at a Church-of-Christ-sponsored pre-school.
We have been impressed with her growth and use of complex sentences.
Abby is 1 ½ now and tries every day to act just as grown
up as Hailey. Abby has started to
form brief, yet effective sentences such as “I want that” and “That’s
mine.” From Abby’s
perspective she has a very large vocabulary and from the looks on her face, she
thinks we should understand every word of it.
But, a lot of it is still un-decipherable.
Abby is very easy-going and puts up with a lot of Hailey’s harassment,
but once she reaches her breaking point, WATCH OUT!
She can be a holy terror if she wants, but there is one sure means to get
her back under control. . . Put the
Wizard of Oz in the VCR and she will sit there transfixed for hours at a time.
Holli and Aaron have been in a survival-mode for the last
year, with Holli dealing with the pressures of living with 2 children in a 2
bedroom apartment while Aaron was out of town on his many business trips. But,
she managed to survive and stay sane. She
is now busy decorating our new house, directing Aaron to paint certain walls, to
put up crown molding, and to hammer things onto the wall.
Aaron has been putting his entrepreneurial energies into
starting a new consulting practice for Microsoft in Latin America.
It has been a challenge and has represented many hours of air travel
(this letter being typed on a 777 right now).
One of the unique experiences that Aaron had this past year was being the
‘Phone a Friend’ on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”.
Interestingly enough, the question was, “Islamabad is the capital of
which Country?” In March of this
year, that was still trivial, and Aaron suggested that the answer was Pakistan
and his friend used that answer to win $64,000.
This holiday season, we’ll be breaking in our new home
and spending a few days in Walt Disney World.
The Texas Turners have been incredibly blessed this year and wish all of
you health and happiness in the year to come.
If you have a few extra minutes and an internet connection, you can check
out our internet site at http://texas_turners.tripod.com
- Aaron, Holli, Hailey & Abby
