Seasons Greeting from the Rowley's.  

This has been a good and busy year for us (just like every other year).  We’ve moved to Battle Creek, MI- which is south-central MI.  We don’t know if we like it here so much because of Battle Creek’s inherent coolness, or if it just seems pretty great next to New Jersey.  (Sorry to our New Jersey friends, we love you, just not the state!)  Nick is working for Kelloggs here in a Corporate Quality role.  This job is much more 9-5 and we are loving the more structured hours and seeing him more.  He is enjoying it too, although it may take some time for him to adjust to a less frantic pace.  With the additional time, Nick has been doing a great job of keeping up on my honey do list and is looking to start several of his fish aquariums back up.

As soon as we moved in, the kids started school and so I have been doing a little exploring and settling in with only Pierce in tow.  I’m working as the Scout and Cub committee chair here.  The Lord has a sense of humor!  With a new house, I’ve also started into re-painting the interior.  I can’t seem to leave walls alone.  It drives Nick a little nuts (especially since I like color), but the kids have loved picking out colors and themes for their new rooms.  Unfortunately, they greatly overestimate my abilities and had some crazy ideas about what we should do.

Brynli- Hey, It’s me!! This year we have moved (for the 4th time) and so I’ve learned to adjust to this new chapter in my life. I have made a few friends and I am enjoying school and I am taking choir as an elective. I am enjoying that. Church has been exiting with meeting new members and meeting the YW. I am getting used to the weather, (my allergies aren’t) and its snowing, so thats good. I am taking a finances class with our church program and I’m learning lots. I got braces and they are uncomfortable. Merry Christmas!! xoxo

Arwyn- Merry Christmas, good thing I am going next (Second is the Best!) I think we have decided we like it here. I still miss all of my Peeps from NJ. School is going well. I love the young women group here. I have been taking choir as an elective and if I sing Hi Ho its Christmas one more time I WILL lose my voice. We are enjoying our new house (Particularly the hot tub!) I recently got braces. Not fun at all. I am learning sewing but I can’t tell you what I am doing because my secret santa might read this. Recently I gave a talk in church (I barely  survived) a young man in my ward was making faces at me along with my friend Jacquie. I was so close to laughing but I did a good job.

Chance-  Chance has discovered reading and loves to read.  He is on his second time through the Harry Potter books.  Despite his love of reading, he hates writing and so I didn’t even ask him to do his section.  I hear enough whining when he has writing homework!  Chance and Chase have been in wrestling.  It is fun to see their different personalities come out in how they approach the sport.  Chance is methodical about it.  He learns the moves in his head and analyzes what he is doing and what he wants to do.  Chase doesn’t care about the moves or what they are called, he just wants to get in there and wrestle.

Chase-  Chase had a few bumps in the road with the beginning of school.   The first day of school the bus lost him.  (This happened last year on his first day of Kindergarten too).  The second day of school, Chase was so adamant that he wasn’t going to be lost, that he got off the bus, at the wrong time, and went looking for the bus he thought he was supposed to be on.  He got on a bus, just not headed to the right place.  The third mishap was that the school thought I was going to pick him up and didn’t put him on the bus.  When he didn’t show up, the school called me and I went to get him.  It being the third time, he was a little frustrated.  If it was going to happen to one of my kids- I’m happy it was Chase.  He was and is a champ and takes everything in stride.  He makes friends with everyone and is always seeing someone he knows or making friends with someone new.

Pierce-  Pierce is home alone with me all day this year (Chase had half day Kindergarten last year.)  We had a rough start.  Pierce wanted a playmate and I just didn’t measure up and I don’t do well with constantly being told how I’m doing things wrong and how I need to do them instead!  After an adjustment period, I’m loving this last year alone with him (I hope he is too).  He is an expert on everything, but when it isn’t directed at me, I love to hear him pontificate on everything and anything.  He is an awesome helper and too smart for his own good.

We have talked about how our family has moved a lot in our 14 year existence.  We have talked about some of the good and some of the bad that comes with that.  We think that the good has outweighed the bad.  We have lots of friends in lots of different places and we miss you all.  We hope that you are happy and healthy and enjoying this wonderful Christmas season.  

Love,

Nick, Tiffany, Brynli, Arwyn, Chance, Chase and Pierce

Merry Christmas!!!

This has been a crazy year with lots of change!  Nick grew up moving regularly, and he seems to get itchy if we stay in a place too long.  This year, Nick got itchy and we moved to New Jersey!  New Jersey is part of the continental US, but despite that fact, it has felt that we are in a new and strange land.  

Not many people have “the accent”, but when you come across someone who speaks New Jersey- it feels almost unreal.  New Jersey has the US’s highest car insurance rates, and although we have had no accidents, it is easy to see why.  The driving here is crazy and Bryn wants to make sure we are gone by the time she is 16,- because you can’t drive here until you are 17.  We’ve been to Independence Hall and seen the Liberty Bell.  We’ve played at the beach enough that the kids are sick of it.  Arwyn doesn’t like the sand getting in everything.  We moved just in time to tour the Philadelphia Temple’s open house, and then we got to attend its dedication.  We still plan on seeing Washington D.C. and the Statue of Liberty.

Nick is the Production Manager for the Kellogg’s Ego Waffle plant.  (Chase loves the waffles).  He is serving as the Scout Master.  Despite the kid’s underwhelming enthusiasm, while the weather was nice, Nick had us at the beach as much as he could.  He's also taken us kayaking on a man made lake, not far from our house.  

Bryn is in 7th grade.  She doesn’t seem to be too into boys yet, but she is excited about clothes and makeup and friends.  The rest will unfortunately follow.  She is doing great in school, although it has been a big change for she and Arwyn.  They are both started at the middle school this year.  Bryn is still a great help in the kitchen and she has taken up candle making.

Arwyn is in 6th grade.  Everyone single on of her 5 teachers told me the same things at parent teacher conference: “I wish every student was like Ari.”  She is a good kid.  Ari is always reading, although she is probably the only child I can count on to be willing to go biking with me on the bike trail behind our house.

Chance is in 4th grade.  Thankfully, he is still in the Elementary school, although he is “big man on campus.”  He was just chosen as a “Terrific Kid,” for the first quarter.  Chance and the other boys have loved playing in the wooded area behind our house, building forts and hiding from chores.  

Chase is a Kindergartener- a half dayer.  He could easily do a full day, but the half day has been a blessing for Pierce.  Chase is taking to school very well, and he astonishes me with how careful and neat he is in learning his numbers and letters.  He can’t wait to read.

Pierce is at home.  He is a good, sweet kid, but we all love him so much, and he is the youngest- he can’t help that he is spoiled rotten!  He can’t wait for Chase to get home and Chase’s homework and school has inspired him.  He wants to count and learn his alphabet.  He is forever asking me “school questions.”   When I tell him the answer, he tells me I’m wrong, and lets me know what the real answer is!

 We are making good friends here, but being in a newer place at Christmas makes us appreciate the friends and family that we miss.  We hope that you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Rowleys

It is a New Year!  We had a family party and made a ton of treats and ate too much and watched some movies we got for Christmas and then Nick and I got tired and couldn’t stay up.  The kids made it until midnight and quickly fell asleep (or so they told me).  I’m not one for making a big deal of the New Year, and traditionally, I’m rather against New Year’s resolutions, but this year I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and I’ve made some decisions to do some things and to try to change some other things about myself.  Wish me luck!

I love Christmas and I really enjoyed it, but surrounded by family and happiness, I also found myself a little blue.  When I realized that I was down, I tried to figure out what was keeping me from enjoying myself.  It took a little introspection to figure out what was bugging me and when I did figure it out, I was a little disappointed in myself.  I’m a very type A, goal oriented person.  I like to be productive and get a lot done and I usually gauge how good my day is or how I’m doing in life by how far on my to-do list I can get.  Well, with everyone on vacation and playing for Christmas, I was lucky to get myself dressed and the family fed.  The house was very lived in and all my projects and “to-dos” had to be set aside, and myI found myself a little depressed because the (eternally unimportant) things that I based myself on weren’t getting done.

I was mad at myself when I realized why I wasn’t totally happy.  It is ridiculous to base my happiness and my sense of accomplishment and self worth and such unimportant trivialities.  So… my resolution is to live more in the moment, as Thoreau said “to live deliberately.”   Dallin H Oakes taught that: “In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to know something, the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to become something.”  I feel like that applies to me, with maybe a little word changing.  I’m not just too worried about knowing something, but also doing something, when the truly important thing is what I am inside.

Enough sermonizing and introspection!  That being said, I find that there isn’t a lot else to share.  Things have calmed down here, considerably.  The kids finished up basketball before Christmas and our schedules have cleared for the near future.  (Thus all the introspection!)  Even though we are done with Christmas break, the kids have had a teacher inservice day, a snow day and tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jn. day.  They have been home a lot!  They were so excited to finally have snow the first day it snowed.  I tried to convince them to wait until later in the day to go outside, when it would be warmer, but they were determined to go out early and play.  It surprised me that, despite the temperature, they lasted a long time outside building forts, shoveling snow, and playing with the sleds.  It’s good that they enjoyed it, because the snow was gone soon enough and I don’t know when we will see more!

Nick’s birthday is on Tuesday.  I’m always excited for his birthday to come.  He is younger than me.  Most of the time, I’m only two years older than he is, but between my birthday and his, if you just do the math on our ages, I pull ahead by another year.  That is part of why I like it when he gets to add another year to his age, it makes us closer in age and makes me feel, if not younger, at least like I’m not robbing the cradle!

Merry Christmas!  

This year has been so full, and happy, and BUSY.  Even when we don’t have anything on the calendar, with so many people in the house, it always feels alive and BUSY.  But that is a good thing!

Nick moved work positions this year.  I never know his “official” title, because they seem overly complicated and politically correct and this one is no different.  He was put over an expansion project at this Kellogg’s plant.  This past month and for the next two weeks is the execution period and it has been busy and stressful for him.  We have hardly seen him and we have had lots of popcorn for dinner with a pajama party-movie night to help  keep me sane when he leaves before we are up and comes home after we are in bed.  With all of that, he still seems to manage to find some time for us and all the other obligations he has.

Brynli is in 6th grade this year.  I think she is excited that it is her last year in Elementary School!  She is doing great in school.  Everyone tells her that she looks just like her mom and she is young enough to still take that as a compliment!  She loves to dress up for school and accessorize (she might look like me, but she is much more fashionable than her mom).  Other than fashion, Bryn loves to cook and bake and I love it.  She is such a big help with everything, but especially with feeding this bunch of wild banshees.

Arwyn is in 5th this year.  While she and Brynli usually get a long well, Ari likes to make sure that her interests are different from her sister!  If we let her, her only interests would be watching tv and playing video games.  Luckily for her, she rarely gets to do those things, so she is enjoying  (forcibly) piano and (of her own volition) basketball.  All of the kids like to read, but Ari, more than anyone, can usually be found hiding from mom somewhere (trying to avoid conscription to some chore) reading a book.  

Chance is in 3rd grade.  While the girls seem to enjoy school, Chance tolerates it.  He is good at it, but insists he is bored.  Then again, Chance is bored a lot at home, so it probably isn’t just School.  For all that Chance tries very hard to cultivate a real reputation as a clown, a boy and a tease, he has a soft heart and people are always telling me what a sweet, good boy he is!

Chase is five and missed the Kindergarten cutoff by only a few weeks.  I am happy he missed it.  I love having Pierce and him home with me to keep me entertained and to play with each other.  Going places during school won’t be the same when Chase isn’t with me.  Chase makes friends with everyone, everywhere we go.  He loves to talk, and if he doesn’t have something to say, he’ll make something up just so he can say it.  He is a bright boy, so while it is obvious, at times, that what he is saying is pure…. um….. imagination, he says it in such a way and with such assurance that it is hard not believe his blarney.  It is even harder not to laugh!

Pierce is well loved and he returns that love on all of us with smiles and hugs and words.  He loves to run and does it everywhere, always starting out with a superhero pose and swing, before taking off.  He always tells us “I won,” even when we didn’t know we were competing!  Pierce is also a bright one, with a good vocabulary.  I don’t know if it was because of a plugged ear drum (we hope) or something else, but despite his vocabulary it is hard to understand what he is saying.  It is made harder by the fact that I’m trying to interpret his speech into simple phrases and he is using words I don’t expect him to know.  If Chase doesn’t having me laughing, Pierce does!

There isn’t much to share about me.  All the chaos and my advancing age has me loosing a little bit of my mind everyday- but I couldn’t be happier.  My life is pretty simple, caring for my family and trying to do a few other things along the way, so there isn’t much to share.  

We got the Christmas decorations out dunning Thanksgiving break.  We have two nativity sets and the girls helped to set them up.  Since the moment they have been set up, we have fought a battle with the younger boys to keep them from messing with the nativity.  I finally gave up, but Brynli kept fixing the figures so they were evenly spaced and facing forward.  She would then rant and rail at her younger brothers and as soon as her back was turned, they would crowed the masses back around the baby Jesus, with their backs to us.  One day, after Brynli had again fixed the set, it was obvious that the boys had come behind and “fixed” her fix.  I shook my head and wondered why, with all the Christmas decorations and presents to bother, this was the one that they kept messing up.  Why couldn’t they leave the figurines evenly spaced and facing outward?  And then what had been obvious to me since they started it, finally clicked in by mind and heart.  They were making sure that the focus of the nativity scene, and all of its’ characters, is on the Christ Child.  I hope that when our family has the opportunity to see our Savior and worship him, that we don’t do it evenly spaced and facing outward, in order to look our best.  I hope we crowd forward and in, close to Him.

Merry Christmas!

Happy, late, Thanksgiving!  Ours was a really low-key day, but it was great!  Since my sister moved back West, we don’t have family near and although we invited some friends, they already had plans- so it was just our family for Thanksgiving.  Nick, who is in the middle of a work project he is in charge of, spent a lot of the day ironing out kicks with work, so the kids and I worked on food and then played.  The weather was beautiful! and we weren’t tied to a schedule, so we had a very nice day.

Arwyn won an art contest for entering a picture of a “fat eagle” (her words) in the Veteran’s Day contest.  She won the GRAND prize, along with $150.  She was and is soo excited and has been plotting how she can spend her money.  It is amazing to me how her confidence in her artistic ability has taken off.  Once she saw that her art was appreciated (and had a fiscal reward) she hasn’t stopped drawing!  Her picture has been on display at the library.

Art isn’t the only talent my kids have.  I’ve recently discovered that Chase will listen to music on the radio and then can sing it back to you.  His memory is quite good for lyrics, although he doesn’t always understand what is being said and fills in gaps he doesn’t understand with his own words.  It makes for great entertainment, but has made me much more picky about what I listen to in the car.  Their most recent song is a pop song that has the refrain, “I’m going to break, break, break, break your heart” (repeated several times).  Chase (5) and Pierce (2) go around singing it all the time.  They thought it was really funny when I asked them to NOT break MY heart and it only egged them on to sing and say it to me more.  When Pierce is in a loving mood, he now tells me, “I not break your heart, Mom!”

I’ve already done a lot of Christmas shopping, here and there, and with the kids home from school, we got the tree up and have started putting presents under it.  I love Christmas.  I love seeing presents under the tree and I’m excited to see the kids open up their presents.  While I love these things, they also fill me with a sense of sadness and guilt!  Even as we strive to keep Christ at the center of this holiday, it seems like things and money so easily crowd out what is more important.  We are not rich, or even close, but we have so many blessings and while I’m filled with gratitude for all we have, I know I also take so much that I have for granted.  Seeing our Christmas bounty laid out, waiting for us, makes me feel a real need to look outside of our family to all those in the world who don’t enjoy all the blessings we do.

Nick and I were talking about this last night.  This last conference, three new Apostles were called to fill positions in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  One of these new Apostles, Elder Dale Renlund, told of an experience he had in the Democratic Republic on Congo.  Elder Renlund had asked the Saints at a meeting, what their challenges were.  He related that, “an older gentleman stood up and said, ‘Elder Renlund, how can we have challenges?  We have the gospel of Jesus Christ.”  Now, my faith isn’t as strong as that African brother’s, I have the gospel, but I KNOW I still have challenges.  At the same time, I do know (but need to constantly remind myself) that my challengers are nothing compared to the blessings I have been given, especially those that come from the Gospel.  Elder Renlund concluded that those African Saints “look like they have nothing, but they have everything.”

Life has felt crazy lately.  It is funny how my life frequently feels “more” crazy than usual, when in fact I think it is a rather constant stream of craziness that I should be used to.  I feel like I should acclimate to all the chaos, but maybe in the end it isn’t a good think to have crazy be normal.

Nick was out of town again last week.  He has had to travel a lot lately.  The night before he left, he got home early- even before the kids were home- so he could pack.  After the kids were home, I was unpacking  their backpacks, and I have always thrown the empty bags by the back door, until I am done and then I pick them up and hang them in the garage.  Well, the bags are nylon and I was in sock…. I was hurrying by them, doing something, when I caught the edge of one of the bags and slipped.  I’m not exactly sure how it all happened, the kids were sitting at the counter, but no one really noticed until I was already down.  Somehow I eded up laying in the opposite direction and my head, not my hands, met the hardwood floor first.  I sat up, whimpering a little, because it hurt, when my hands came away covered in blood!  I was happy Nick was home and the kids got him from outside and he got to look at the mess before me!

I have a good fish hook sized and shaped cut over my left eye, which quickly swelled up into a good sized egg.  The cut will scar, but luckily it wasn’t too deep and we super glued it together.  I also had a bruise along the middle of my forehead (I must have bounced!).  The egg has since gone down, but the blood has just drained down, giving me a pretty impressive black eye!  I’ve been thinking about taking it easy since then, I know it gave me a little of a concussion, but taking it easy is hard to do!

After about a month of no success and work, Pierce seems to be officially potty trained.  One day, he just started using the toilet.  Trying to teach him was miserable, but when he decided he wanted to do it, he has done great!  About the same time he decided he was a big boy, and not a baby, he has started telling me: “I love you, Mom.”  As I wrote that line, he is sitting on my lap and turned around, almost like he could read what I was writing and said, “Mom,” long pause to get my attention, “I love you.” 

He is two and a half and I love to hear those words, but it has made me think a lot about love and how he even knows what love is.  Love is such an abstract concept, how can anyone so young, who’s vocabulary consists mostly of nouns, understand?  I think that he knows what love is because love can be felt.  It is in reality a very tangible, intangible substance.  I know when someone loves me.  Beyond knowing that someone loves me, there are those moments when those feelings of love seem to hang so heavy in the air you can see and touch them.  As I have held him and loved him up until this point, when I felt that overflowing feeling of love I have kissed him and told him I loved him and he has felt it and he now understands and returns that love.

It makes me think of 1 John 4:19: “We love him, because he first loved us.”  I don’t think I ever understood that before, but Pierce has taught me a little about what it means.  We love God and really can only understand the concept of Love itself, because of the love we have felt from our Heavenly Father.  Just as Pierce has felt my love for him and because of that has learned what it means to say, “I love you,”  I have felt God’s love- and compassion- for me and because of that I can begin to say that I love him and others.  

It feels like forever since I have sat down to write.  Part of that is that it has been a while, and part of that is that we have been so busy and doing so much that it has made it seem like it must have been a long time since I last wrote!  We got home about a week ago from the West.  We went to my moms family’s reunion in Wyoming and then we drove to Colorado for a few days for Nick’s family reunion.  Nick had to fly home for work in the middle of that, so we drove back to Wyoming and spent several more days with my family before the kids and I made the 24 hour drive back (not in a straight shot, but in two days!) to Ohio.

It was so much fun and so much work all rolled into one!  It is really important to me that my kids know and love their extended family, and since we live so far from them, it is so nice to be with them.  We canoed and zip lined and made our own water park.  We went off roading and camped and got really really dirty.  At one point, the kids and I even ended up stranded in a ditch.  The GPS took us a bad route to my in laws new house and I couldn’t get anyone on the phone.  We ended up on an ungroomed country road that had been washed out.  It was an adventure, and thankfully we weren’t stuck for long.  I have pictures to remember it by, although I’m positive that the kids won’t let me forget about it either.

As I was stuck, with the five kids, in a ditch, waiting for rescue, I realized that I’ve grown and have more life experience than I used to.  When I was younger the whole stressful experience would have precipitated some stress crying, but I made it through dry eyed- although there was still a little stress involved!

One of my favorite things is going to my moms family’s reunion.  My grandparents joined the church when they were young and they taught their family to love God and do good.  That tradition has continued.  My grandma has Alzheimer's now, and Grandpa wasn’t able to be there for a lot of the days, but I loved seeing all my aunts and uncles and cousins and their children and the strength that the gospel has brought to all of our lives and our families.  We all have struggles, and there are some that have chosen different spiritual paths, but the love we all feel for each other is so strong, and it is because of that shared heritage of love and faith.  I hope that my children and my children’s children will have that same heritage.  They are awfully big footsteps to fill!

In the last general conference, Elder Christofferson quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian that was executed in a concentration camp because of his criticism of Natzi Germany.  I love this quote about family, and felt it at out family reunion.  Bonhoeffer said in a letter to a newly engaged niece: “Marriage is more than your love for each other….  In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory….   In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind.  Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal- it is a status, and office.”  I felt that as I was with my family, I felt the links of our generations and it was a beautiful feeling.

School starts in two days.  We are very ready and at the exact same time not ready at all.  Just like so many other things in life!  Ready or not, it comes and we are excited for it.