California Contribution

We have made our plans for attending the wedding, TC has sent Nicola our travel plans and she will arrange the accommodation for us when we stay at Manti. We’re grateful to Laurie arranging her parent’s home to be available for everyone. That sure softens the finances needed. We plan to visit temple square, Salt Lake, BYU, attend conference for a couple of sessions and of course visit with family anywhere in-between. It’ll be nice meeting our American nieces & cousins and having another Petty reunion. Straight after the wedding luncheon we will head South to stay with friends in ST George for a couple of days with the Wiscombe family who have just moved away from Davis. They plan to take us to see Zion National Park and an uncommon spot to see the Grand Canyon which they say the tourists don’t know about. In their opinion it is much more spectacular. From ST George we will take a couple of days to get back home to Davis via Las Vegas and see the Hoover Dam then slowly drive back up through California stopping in Fresno and anywhere in between. Our trip is from 31/3/11 – 9/4/11. It’ll be quite a trip cramming in whatever we can during Spring Break. It’ll be our first big venture away from Davis.

The kids just finished Winter Break (Christmas holidays Dec 20 – Jan 2nd) and have started their 2nd Semester. They have finals exams in two weeks (I think that’s an assessment for the end of first semester), then 6 weeks of school followed with a week of holidays (Presidents Holiday – week of 21 Feb – 27 Feb), then 5 weeks of school followed by Spring Break for a week (April 4 – April 10). After surviving 9 more weeks of school, the kids will finish their first US year on June 9th . I think once the wedding arrives the rest of the school year will fly by.

Last weekend we took the kids to see Old Sacramento. I managed to bump into a rather low sidewalk seat and whack my shin. It left a surface graze about 3 cm long, boy it hurt! Today the boys completed a 7.5 mile hike (flat local town/university walk-about) for a scouting achievement. It was sure cold out too. TC has just had 3 weeks of annual leave. We’ve enjoyed having him around and now that school is back into routine it’s hard to get up early again. (5.10 am for me before getting the older kids up at 5.30am for seminary starting at 6.30am) Now the New Year is in, church schedule rotation has us starting back at 9am – no more sleep ins. The only bonus about morning church is that the rest of the day actually feels like Sunday hasn’t all been about attending meetings.

Southern California is having a whooping cough epidemic so all the school districts have decided to enforce all children over the age of 10 years are required to have a T-dap (tetanus, diphtheria & pertussis) booster immunization shot. I decided to get it out of the way during the holidays. The funny thing was that when waiting in the clinics waiting room, I heard Vaughan’s name being called by a Spanish nurse. I wasn’t sure I heard it correctly and said to the nurse “the Chadderton family?” she didn’t say otherwise and Vaughan & I followed her. The next thing we know Vaughan is getting blood drawn, I’m signing a piece of paper because he is under age and I assume it’s a routine practice because we are new with no records on file. I told the nurse we are actually here for a vaccination and would she be doing that also. She replies she doesn’t know anything about that and to check at the front desk. I think this is rather odd and we go back to the waiting area to wait for the other 2 kids turn. Another nurse comes out a few minutes later and calls our entire family. We go to another room and she starts the process of measuring weight & height for the right vaccination dosage etc. We wait for ages while the nurse gets everything written up and prepared. So Vaughan & I start explaining to the kids what happened. We figured that the first nurse must have said “Juan” not “Vaughan” (the way Americans pronounce “Vaughan” sounds exactly drawn out like “Juan”) so Vaughan ended up getting someone else’s blood tests done. We cracked up laughing and when the second nurse came back we explained exactly what had happened because we knew Juan would still be waiting for his tests to be done and there would be confusion with the days procedures & tests etc. The second nurse confirmed there had been some confusion and apologized for the misunderstanding. Trying very hard not to laugh, I said all was fine and to express our apologies to the first nurse because we misunderstood her accent. Humorously, Vaughan was rather put out about having two jabs that afternoon!

We got some minor repairs done at this house. A bathroom sink counter top tile needed re-gluing & grouting because it fell off when I was cleaning. Plus all the toilet roll holders & a couple of towel rails were falling out of the walls and needing tightening. We had a new microwave installed because the previous one died when I was making instant gravy. We like our landlord Kit Bocshken, she is a no fuss type of person and gets things done quickly whenever a request is made. Excellent!

The other night TC & I were assigned to participate in our stake temple sealing session. We were kindly given a ride by our Stake Relief Society President Sister Nadine Pinkerton and her husband Kent. They were saying their son is a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy movies. We told them to tell him they now know some people who live in the very town where the ring was made. They said that would just awe him. We had a pleasant evening with a rather chatty sealer that night. He was informative and very skilled at ensuring everyone got turns on an even basis.

TC & I have passed our California Drivers Tests. TC received his license in the mail today. I’ll probably get mine next week sometime. We are so glad that is over with! Now Vaughan wants to start learning. (Teens can start the process at age 15 ½ so we said he can start studying and read, read, read and pay attention whenever we are out and about.)

Nothing else to report on. It’s fairly low key here. So far I like winter here. The weather is colder but to me it’s like a mild Nelson winters day and everyone is bundled up like it was snowing outside. When the wind blows from the mountains then yes it’s very cold. We’ve had a couple of frosts and are starting to get fog in the mornings. The rainy season kind of started then just stopped, so I’m not sure if it’ll start up again. California will need it to fill the lakes ready for summer.

Have a happy day, love you lots….
Cerian.