Febrary 26, 2006

Housekeeping Items:

1. If you click on a picture, it will be enlarged.
2. Archive links are on the right hand column.

Well it’s diet time again. Hannah and I have decided that we’re going to stop eating sugar again….for the most part anyway. We did it for about six months last year, and were feeling great. Sundays were treat days, but other than that we were just about sugar free. Christmas was our down fall. We had treats every day, and our addiction came back with a vengeance. We started cutting back this past week, and starting Monday morning, no more sugar until Sunday. It won’t be a fun week, but after that it won’t be bad. We found that we didn’t even miss it last time.

Work is still great for me, but not so great for Hannah. She feels a little trapped. They are relying more and more on her, and wile it’s kind of flattering, it also makes it harder for her to leave. In addition to getting more responsibilities, she doesn’t feel that she can commit to a new job if we are able to adopt in the near future.

My commute is still long, about an hour and ten minutes each way. It sounds really bad, and I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I’m actually enjoying it. I work out during lunch and Hannah goes to the gym right after work, so each get home between seven and seven thirty. Since we have less time to spend together, I’ve found that we work harder at making our time together better. We talk more and appreciate each others company more.

A friend in the ward had the same commute to Boulder for years and collected hundreds of hours of talk tapes for his drive. So in addition to my personal study in the morning, and reading with Hannah in the evening, I get two extra hours of gospel learning. I feel like I’m on my mission again. It’s great. I may be singing a different tune when I run out of things to listen to, but it’s great for now.

One of the topics I’ve really gotten into is the Martin and Willie handcart companies. They were truly amazing people, both the immigrants, and the saints that participated in the rescue operations. I left work the other day, and it was about zero degrees. The wind was blowing at about 5 mph, and I was so grateful that I didn’t have to endure what they endured.

I had last Monday off, so Hannah took a half day, and we hiked Carlton peak. It was a really easy hike with about thirty five hundred feel of elevation gain, spread out over a few miles. We did it in about two and a half hours. It had been a few weeks since we had been hiking, and it was great to get outside. We took it really slow, and just talked the whole way up.

Last Friday we went out to eat with three families from the ward: the Calis, their daughter and her husband, and the Bergs. Brother Cali, is one of the friendliest people I have ever met. He and his wife quickly befriended Hannah and I when we first moved in. We have been good friends ever since. It was no surprise that they knew the owners of the Chinese restaurant we went to. What was surprising was that we got all our appetizers for free – and we got tons of appetizers. I am not exaggerating when I say that this was the best Chinese food I have ever had….nothing even comes close. It was fantastic. We ate some many appetizers, that when the entrées came, we each had a taste, and asked them to box it up. We had a great time.

Saturday was spent cleaning the house, and going to the temple. Hannah also went to stake women’s conference. Not to exciting, but fulfilling none the less.

(Hannah speaking) Women’s conference was a little tough for me because I think I need glasses. I sat in the back and while trying to focus on the speakers I gave myself a terrible head ache. Our church building is located on a block with 3 other churches. There are 2 LDS chapels, a Lutheran Church and a new Catholic Church. At the conference we had 2 women from the Catholic Parish next door come and speak. They talked about how they had prayed for years to have their own Church in Highlands Ranch and how happy they were when the Church was finally built. One of the women talked about how when they were first moving in a LDS relief society sister knocked on their door to welcome them to the neighborhood and invited them to participate in one of our humanitarian service projects. Just last month all of the LDS and Catholic sisters met in their basement and put together comfort kits for cancer patients and the LDS boy scouts and some of their male members installed their landscaping. This Catholic sister talked about how wonderful it is to have neighbors in Christ. The spirit was very strong.

I have been listening to talk tapes as well this week. I was listing to a talk on President Joseph F Smith or Heber Grant (I can’t remember which one) One of them was saying how they longed to see the day when latter day saints would be good friends with their neighbors of other Faiths. I thought that he would love to see our relief society here in Colorado.

I had a great phone call this week from Stoney, my Dad. He called me from the Provo Temple just to tell me that he loved me. It made my day. I remember when I worked at BYU and he had Fridays off. He would ride his bike to my greenhouse and take me to lunch. When I say take me to lunch I mean take me to lunch Stoney style. We would find an empty bench on campus and he would pull out a thermos full of beans, a hunk of his manly, homemade herb bread and 2 spoons out of his pocket. That was lunch. He is wonderful and so is my mother.

We hope you are all doing well. We love you and miss you all, and want you to remember that our home is always open to anyone that wants to visit. Which reminds me, I know that some of the Petersen kids are thinking about visiting Mom and Dad this summer? It’s been a long time since we’ve all been together. I talked to Don a few weeks ago and he suggested that we all just pick a date. Hannah and I can do it any time in July or August. I have a very busy work load the end of June and will not be able to travel that month. If you have any other suggestions, please reply to my email. It would mean a lot to me if we could all make it at the same time.

Love Eric and Hannah

And now your moment of ZEN…..