September

Mom and Dad

Dear Family,
We had a nice summer and hope that you all did to.
This will be short and be Cliff Notes:
Mom enjoyed her annual pilgrimage to Eureka with Kaye and Vicki for Tintic Days. They had a good time reliving memories.
For those of you who know her, Nicole Peterson got married last month. She and her sister and Michelle Bowman were back in Washington D.C. when we were in Aberdeen and we had a lot of great times together, including the lighting of the National Christmas Tree on the lawn of the White House that they invited us to.
Got the roof on the patio completed. Now to take time to enjoy it.
Enjoyed having Bruce and Marilyn here for a couple of days while they were down for Melanie's (Derek's wife) graduation from BYU. Congratulations, Melanie!! Went up to Granite Flat for a weiner roast with Miki and Michelle and Kyle and Jules.
Celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary. 55 years with the RIGHT woman! We were invited up to Bruce and Marilyn's condo at Wolf Creek up Ogden Canyon. Thank you for the enjoyable dinner and visit. We enjoyed visiting President McKay's family home in Huntville on the way back, especially hearing about the home told by his nephew who was there conducting a tour with a youth group.
Enjoyed our time at Fish Lake. Thank you all for coming. We missed those of you who weren't there. We'll have to do it again. The weather was great except for Sunday night. We were thinking of thinking of staying an extra day, but we didn't want another night like that. Glad everyone made it home safely.
Happy to hear that the two two missionaries from Layton are doing well and enjoying their missions and having success. Serves them right. We send our love.
We are enjoying our Temple calling very much. It's second only to the mission field.
Hope that all is well with each of you. We love you. God bless.

Mom and Dad

Scott and Tiff and Family

July was an intense month for our family. We started it out with a fun trip up to the Uintas where we enjoyed our trailer and trying out our new four wheeler. The kids are hooked and love to take rides any time they can. We next came down for the birthday party of all birthday parties. Ryan was turning 7 and I had promised Theoryn (Nate's son) that I would do his party as well, was turning 3. We decided to have a pirate party. We had two visitors, Pirate Pete and Pyper the Pirate. We sailed the seven seas looking for the Queen's treasure and walked the plank over a pool of live goldfish! We found out that goldfish are more resilient than I think anyone would have thought! A week and half later on Thursday, July 24th we welcomed Nathan Slade into our family. He weighed 8 pounds 12 ounces and was 20 3/4 inches long. We brought him home on Friday only to have to take him back on Monday and admit him for the night due to his jaundice number being 20 which is considered critical. After trying 6 times to get the I.V. in they finally had to put it in his head. They kept reassuring me he wouldn't remember it but it is a night I'll never forget. He was under the lights and looked like a glow worm. It was horrible. Thank goodness his numbers started to come down by the next afternoon so they let us come home. August found us going to Idaho for a reunion, Scott going hunting with Nate, us enjoying the water park at Liberty Park and the kids starting school! Ryan began 2nd grade and Jaydee started Kindergarten. She has been waiting for this since she was 3 years old. She loves having homework and riding the bus. She just seems so grown up now that it makes me sad not to have my little girl anymore! Thank goodness for the daycare kids to keep Gage busy or he would be completely lost without Ryan and Jaydee at home. I still have 4 kids that I watch but 2 of them are only part-time so it's not that bad. September began with Scott working 45 hours overtime in one week to use the time allotted by a grant from the Federal Government for speed time and DUI time. He would sometimes get home at 6:00 in the morning and head back out at 1:00 in the afternoon. Needless to say we didn't see much of him that week and it has continued to be that way on the weekends. I know it will be worth it when we see the paycheck but it's been hard not having him around. This month also saw me turning another year older. Thanks to Mom, Dad, and Miki for coming up to my surprise party. That was a fun day and made more special having them here. Scott got lucky this year that Haley planned it and got him off the hook. We also just celebrated our 9th Wedding Anniversary on the 18th. We are still trying to figure out where the time goes...! I have also jumped on the blog band wagon that seems to be pretty popular right now and a fun way to share photos and little blurps about what is happening with our family. If you would like to check it out the address is http://www.theneilson6.blogspot.com/

Derek and Melanie

Hello from the Monson's! We are coming up on our 2 and a half year anniversary!!! Wow, well we are doing fabulous. And way to go Cougars!! We are having an awesome football season. Well, we have made a lot of changes in the recent months. Among our recent exciting news is Melanie's graduation from BYU in August, and our move to Holladay, Utah. We have upgraded from our south of BYU campus apartment (the third floor of a house, with single guys living beneath us) to a lovely townhouse very close to downtown Salt Lake City. I can't tell you how happy we are that Derek's days of commuting to downtown Salt Lake City from Provo every day are over! As a side note, it is so nice to have more than one bathroom and a dishwasher! We love our new ward as well, of which 70% of the members are over the age of 60. Everyone has been so friendly and welcoming to us. They are all so "tickled to death" that we have moved in :). Both Derek and I are on the activities committee, and we hope to spice up the activities a bit. Derek also currently teaches the 14-17 year old Sunday School class with me as his assistant. We enjoyed an awesome trip to Maine in July for a reunion with my dad's family, and we had fun spending time with the my mom's family during their annual reunion in Provo. We had a blast with Derek's family this summer during the Monson reunion as well. We are so glad to be settled in our new house.Derek continues his work as a Policy Analyst for the Sutherland Institute, and he is loving it there. He is the author of several recent publications for the institute, including one on immigration and another on government transparency. Derek's work gave us second row tickets to the BYU-Wyoming game a few weeks ago, and that was awesome! We are currently reading the Harry Potter books together for the second time, and we are on book 4. I am still looking for a job here in Salt Lake. If any of you know of any open jobs, I would love to hear about them! Well, I think that about sums things up for us. We love you all and hope you're all doing great!

Picture 1: Derek and his parents surprised me with balloons and a rose right after I walked off the stage! (Some lady got really upset at them, though...)

Picture 2: The whole group at my graduation

Picture 3: The front of our new place. Its a good thing I captured those fall leaves to prove we had a bit of fall!

Picture 4: This is a pretty gazebo outside our house

Picture 5: We went on a ferry ride while in Maine. This boat takes mail to all the surrounding islands.

Picture 6: We had a sack race during the reunion in Maine...Derek was awesome, but I didn't do so hot.

Rob and Marci and Family

For a full rundown of our lives, you can check out our blog at http://robandmarcipeacock.blogspot.com/.

But just to sum up some highlights of the summer here are a few:

• LANDSCAPING - This could be pretty much the word that described our WHOLE summer. We literally worked from the first of July to the end of September and still have a few things to do still this year. But we are happy with how it all turned out, complete with a new playground, fire pit, and water features.
  
• Landscaping Injury - Unfortunately, my toe came in contact with a large ground tamper which crushed my toe, ripped off the nail, etc. and I spent the rest of the summer in a post-op boot. It still isn't completely healed. I guess this is what you get when you do landscaping in flip-flops.
  
• Swim Lessons - The 3 older kids spent most of the summer improving their swim skills and are certifiable fish!
  
• Cayden went to scout camp, earned his Wolf badge, and numerous other awards. He also won the Raingutter Regatta and his scout shirt is starting to look like a Christmas tree.
• Grandma's House - We were so sad to see Grandma and Grandma Neilson's home be torn down. We did take a few opportunities to go over to the house with the kids so they could see the house, yard, etc. As McKell put it best, "This place is WONDERFUL Mom!"
  
• Sadie's Birthday - Our little Sadie turned ONE in August. I can't believe she is already a year old! Thanks for all who came to her big birthday bash. It was great!
  
• Fish Lake - Always a highlight of our summer. The kids had a wonderful time and all caught plenty of fish. Uncle Jay officially showed Cayden how to clean a fish, which he wasn not at all impressed with. Sadie found a new best friend in "Uncle Aye Aye" aka Uncle Jay. He is by far her favorite. Check out our blog for lots of Fish Lake Photos.
  
• School Starting- We are happy to say that this year went much smoother than last year. We put Ashlee and McKell in different classes which caused a lot of turmoil at first, but we have it all worked out now and they are doing great. They all love school and are keeping busy learning so many new things.
  
• Hair Cut - I cut about 5 inches off my hair.
  
• Car Accidents - Yes, that is plural. You can read more about it on our blog, but to sum up, Rob got rear-ended on the way to work, I got a call saying he was being ambulanced to the hospital, as I was heading to the hospital, I was hit as well. We are both still stiff and sore and I have a herniated disc in my back. Not fun.
  So, that sums up the Peacocks for the past few months.

We hope you are all doing well!!