Blue Nettles

We are going to see the Phoenix Suns (NBA) on Saturday night. They play the Portland Trailblasers. It is scout night (Davis is a cub scout). It should be fun. George has never been to a Suns' game (can you believe it)!

Love,
Ellie

Yeah - Charley! Good to hear from you. Yes these techno things can be intimidating at first but not really difficult at all. Good to hear all is well with you. Guess what - as we have been packing, packing and packing we have gone through some paper work and found that design Whitey came up with for the Park City house with an apartment in the basement. I'll put it in the mail straight away tomorrow before we loose it.

Whitey got his cast off on Tuesday. It is now doing very well. The bottom of his foot gets sore quickly but the good news is he is out of pain and able to do most work now. I have given 2 weeks notice at work. The money I earn is what we are paying someone else to paint so we decided it would be best for me to be available here at the house. Some friends are leaving to go caravaning (that's Australian for motor home)in 2 weeks and have offered us use of their house. So we can move into there and it will be easier to sell furniture and finish the house then. We are getting more and more excited about it all. Very excited about the new job coming up. As everyone says 'it is perfect for us'.

Love everyone - USA here we come!

(And where is that brother who created this blog thing?)

Max

Okay! Here I am. Even minor technological challenges make me want to "try it later". They never are as difficult as I make them out to be, of course. So we're on.

Nice of Larry to help get this started. Maybe he'll join in and give us weather reports or something from D.C. or tell us how the government is enhancing our lives and investing our money. I look forwqrd to his perspective (The Inside Story).

I'll just give the news bulletins to begin and maybe come up with other things later.

Luke and Gwen are in the thick of things. They've found many nice friends here in P.C. and our busy with school and other activities. Luke has done quite a lot of skiing the last two seasons and is getting pretty competent. He has skiied several days with friends and without me. I felt a little sad about that, actually. But that's the way of things I guess. Gwen is riding horses every week with Lynne and they are loving it. Luke and I may join them for lessons this summer. My goal is to take a family horsepacking trip into the Uinta Mtountains to fish for a week.

Lynne has been putting more time into her artwork and that's very good for her. She has also taken on some "adminisrative duties" for our business. Her organizational skills are far superior to mine and this frees me up to work with clients, do planning and meet new people.

My business efforts our concentrated more and more on the Park City population. The planning I do works for any family, but is particularly helpful to small business people and self-employed folks (realtors, retail shop owners, contractors, etc.). The Blue Skies website will be up and running in a couple of weeks and may be the primary marketing and information source for us. The Web's versatility and changeability are very interesting and I'm quite excited. I'll provide a link when we're ready.

It will be great to have Max and Whitey close but we regret not being able to visit Australia while they were there. Looking forward to the Marlars' summer visit, as well. Way to go Kay on the schooling. It's a big committment.

There's the news. This was easy, so I'll do it again and encourage the rest of the family to do it, also. Ciao. Charley

Hi everyone! So, we seem to have some spring fever spreading at our house. Marisa was sick with a fever on Sunday and she saw something mentioned on t.v. about "spring fever". She (so innocently) said "Mommy, maybe that's what I have." Of course, I explained to her what it means but it prompted me to have a conversation with the first grade class at school (I substituted for two days this week) about if they know what spring fever means. I asked them if they thought it was a good or bad thing to have spring fever- they all shouted, "Bad!" They saw me smile, so they changed it to good but they were perplexed. I teased them for a little bit and asked them what your temperature would be if you have this kind of fever, is it contagious, how do you cure it? It was a funny conversation and they all decided they have it. Another week and I've handled another week of my school counseling program. I don't want to sound like I'm whining because I really am jazzed about it- it just may be a week by week thing to multi-task everything. Last night the professor validated us somewhat to say "it's like trying to eat an elephant- you have to do it one bite at a time." (Why would I want to eat an elephant?) . Love, Kay

I hate the rain! It has been raining A LOT the last two months. The boys are inside way too much. They are wired. The weeds are huge. The mud has taken over the grass in our backyard. What a mess! It's not worth washing the dog or car. It's just going to rain again this week.

Where is our sunny weather?

Ellie

Hello all:

Nice to see you up again, Kay. So glad to hear you are enjoying your courses. Busy I am sure but worth it.

Yes we are packing. We've purchased white, plastic bins to pack everything in. That way it is all regiment size. Except for a few odd items it should keep the pallets we have to ship more organized. We are also starting to see off some of the furniture. We have 'acquired' some basic trellis type tables so when a friend takes the office desk and dining table this weekend we can use those. The sooner we can get rid of stuff the better so we have more room to move around the place and finish the house off.

More things are being done on the house these days. Whitey has been able to do supervisory things as well as helping a little. He is able to also get out and do some outside work as well with his assistant doing most of the work. He gets his cast off on tuesday and into his walking cast then. We are anxious to see how it is then. I'm sure it has healed but he still has some aching pains with it. But we are hoping that is just the basic swelling in the cast. He can expect the swelling to be on going for a few more months but without the cast he will should have more freedom.

It's a busy time here. And our social life has of course pick up with lots of dinners at our house and out. Fun! Only 7 more weeks till we depart. I think we will collapse then.

Love you all. Looking forward to being back stateside.

Max

Hi everyone-
I haven't had a chance to "blog" in lately. I have had a very full plate. Morning to night with my school, work and life at the Bush house. Quite frankly, the plate is too full. But I am really enjoying my counseling class and excited for it's future, of course I love my family life and I enjoy what I do at the school- but that is the one area I keep looking at how to revise. If I could find a way to reduce my hours there- I will. It would be good to keep my "foot in the door" at the school for any possible future counseling positions that might come available. But the reality is, I get paid so, so little that- well, we'll keep strategizing there.
So, Max- are you packing yet? I am so excited that you will be a "few" miles closer very soon. Hope the transition can go smoothly.
Ellie- did you do a recording of Davis' Broadway performance? We love all of the Broadway musicals- we'd love to hear Davis sing. So, did you call the Homestead Inn regarding your lodging for this summer? There is also another place we know of that is across the street- still in Sugarhouse area- it's call the Irving Schoolhouse Apartments. Megan had a classmate that lived temporarily there- maybe a possibility for you guys? It will be so fun to have you guys around this summer.
Mom's birthday was lots of fun- fun to all be together and celebrate her!
Oh, I forgot to mention also why I've been off the blog for a while- our computer got a virus/worm and it was slowly crashing. Eventually, we couldn't even get signed on to the internet. Duane had to have the computer guy at his office clean it up. Apparently, I must have accidentally downloaded something bad. I had so many popups coming at me- I must have clicked wrong on something...but we're back up and runnning except that we can't get back on the Comcast (the virus came through something there). So, we still have our AOL address.
Well, I've got a paper to write, get to work by 12:00 and parent/teacher conferences tonight. You're all in my thoughts and prayers! Love, Kay

Luke,
What is blue44?

Aunt Ellie

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday dear Mooooommmmmm -
Happy birthday to you!


All our love - Max and Whitey

Wow Ellie! That's a great idea for you all. It definately is nice to have more time with not too many rushed events. For us, I expect we will be working frantically at the marina since summer is the busiest time there. MAYBE we can swing a weekend over there. (Hey, at least we can think about it since we'll be in California and not australia!)

Well it is 8 a.m. The radio station we listen to is having people call in with their 'unusual wedding venues'. They put everyone in the draw and win a prize today then everyone in a draw for a big prize on Valentine's day. So I just called but got an operator and they call back whenever they are available. I thought I'd get through straight away. Now I am running late for work waiting for this call. Oh well.

Max

I know July is months away, but I wanted to share an idea we have been batting around.

I think we (the Marlar family) will be spending July in Salt Lake City. We are still working out the sleeping arrangements, money and vehicle concerns. We hope it will be a casual time to allow us more visiting, especially with Poppa and Lita. (I fondly remember the month we spend in Marfa). We're hoping George can work out of the Avaya office in SLC.

We have a few ideas of things to do... swim lessons, Brigham City, some camping in Southern Utah, Great Salt Lake. Lots of time to contemplate.

Love,
Ellie

Can't believe it but it is only 2 months when we will leave Perth. We've made the reservations and will pay for them in the next couple weeks. April 8 is our departure date. We are going to Melbourne for 5 days and then Hawaii for a couple and then back to SF.

Of course we have soooo much to do until then. The house is moving along more and more. Whitey was supposed to get his removable walking cast on the 26th of Jan. but the doctor said he wanted the bone graft and fusion to be 100% so gave him another fibreglass one for another 4 weeks. This one he has a little boot with it so can start to put some weight on it, but it is still a cast. He is in less pain so can at least be upright and supervise really well.

I have yet to tell my work. I will probably work until the end of March. It's mostly difficult to keep it quiet there but they are the type of company that would not treat me nice if they knew ahead of time.

And on top of everything, the social calender is rapidly filling in. But we are having fun!

It's going to be a gorgeous, sunny day of 27 C (80 F).

Your concert sounds like it was fun, Ellie! Tell Davis we want a solo when we see him next.

Love you all,
Max

Well, the big show "Beads on Broadway" is over, Friday and Saturday night. We sold out in three weeks and people were begging for tickets. For a church performance! We told people to check ebay.
Davis is great! He is so confidant. He is a real performer and I hope he continues to follow music. It's competing with sports, right now soccer.
I am exhausted and so is Davis. The schedule was very busy this week.
Davis reminded me that singing is praying to God. I think he's got it right.

Ellie