HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN! (Remember that song and show? Remember Richie Cunningham?) These are my happy days because David and Hudson are going to be on their flight to Tennessee/Georgia today. They will spend a couple days with Stefanie and her family in Tennessee. Then David and Hudson will head down south to spend time with me and my family. Clair is taking time off Monday to show them around Georgia. On Tuesday, David, Hudson and I will go down to Kennesaw so Evan can show us his new life at Kennesaw State University. I'm looking forward to this--good times will be had by ALL!!

I have to tell you that Clair's BIGGEST part of us moving is him taking pictures from every angle of our new house and posting them here for the world to see. Finally, at long last we are getting a home that we have waited for for way too long. The catch is that it has been on the most part MY job to pack our everything into boxes and containers so we can get OUT of our present home. The good side is that I get to go through and trash all of the items we haven't thought about or used for a year or two. We have a GOLD MINE of those items!! And nothing feels as good as this!

Our New Home!

Finally, at long last, we get to have our first home, ours for the making. Clair and I have made the decisions on what we want, where, and what color. So then they start building.

...and building

...and building.

We go visit our new home every couple of days so we can see where they are at.

Our house is getting there. They have a lot of guys working on it every day--I mean like 8-10 guys at a time!!

This will be the view from our dining room. We are at the top of the hill.
This has been a long time coming--it is exciting but also scary.

I will catch you later on this!

I have no picture (again), but I want to write about our adventure to Duke University Hospital in No. Carolina last Sunday, March 28th. First of all, we almost didn't go to church, but I'm so glad we did because everything about the classes and speakers were perfect! Best yet, my dear friend who had to move came to our last meeting-->Sacrament Meeting. After a great 3 hours in church, Clair and I had to take off on our long 7 hour drive to Duke. It turned out to be a drive through a terrible wind and rain storm. There was lightning with whirlwinds and tornados parallel and behind us. SCARY! We listened to radio news during our drive and TV news in Durham. Driving home we saw the results of places we passed the night before. Where we saw lots of lights from security cars before on our left side, houses were totally torn apart. On our right there were trees pulled out of the ground and lakes of water. I feel we were blessed with safety for attending our full day of church earlier Sunday!

SPRING HAS SPRUNG

Here in Ringgold, GA we have had lots of rain and wind, but now we are on to some nice Spring weather. At this time of year, after it has been raining, is the perfect time to dig into our clay soil outside to pull weeds and plant gardens. I had been pulling weeds and checking out my serviving perennials and then the Young Women's leader called me. She asked if I could be their "Service Project". I felt embarassed at first, but I sure appreciate them. They brought me and planted a bunch of yellow and purple Pansies and I love them. Yesterday I bought more flowers for planting by these Pansies (shade) and out back where there is LOTS of sun. My Pansies look perfect and I will include a picture next time.

Sorry, it has sure been a while! Evan and Nathan were back to school yesterday, but now they're home again today and tomorrow because of some little snow flurries. I think that people here just don't know the life of 4 season Utah or New York. This is just more time for my boys to play their new game (Modern Warfare 2) or hang out with friends.

Hello friends and family. These are videos of Nathan wrestling for his middle school the Ringgold Middle School Tigers. (Nathan is in the blue headgear).

Against Bagley Middle School

Against Dalton Middle School

Now that Nathan's football is behind him, he has taken up being a member of Ringgold's wrestling team. Two football coaches, also a wrestling coaches, requested that he join so that he can work on his skills for next year. Nathan is on the varsity team and he is standing with his friend who is in our ward and is also on the varsity team (the picture). I have NO clue about wrestling, but Nathan is really excited about it and he does a great job at this sport. For Nathan to be on the varsity team, he had to weigh in at an exact weight early this morning. For this he had to starve himself yesterday, ran around and around the neighborhood last night, reached what he wanted this morning on the scale, then was able to eat again. (I'm just so amused with this!) Tonight at his first event he did a great, victorious job with wrestling. Watching them wrestle, I became so into it that MY shoulder muscles now are so painful---as though I was right down in there wrestling with them.

Rain, rain, go away!

Remember the song, "Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day." Well that is our situation here in North Georgia! It had been raining earlier, but Sunday Clair and I left Nathan and Evan behind while we drove to our Duke University Hospital's appointment. It rained so hard the whole weekend that the Ringgold Schools were closed both Monday and Tuesday, but back to school today. Here in our subdivision we're not as bad off, but on the news they show some really terrible flooding for homes not so far from here. The good side is that I don't have to water my flowers, but this also means that Evan can't cut our long, tall grass.

Ringgold Middle School's Football

Thursday, September 17th, Nathan had an "away" football game. It was a LONG distance away, but Clair and I also went to see his game. It has been raining and raining, so there was so much mud with the grass on their field! Clair took his fancy camera and I left mine behind, so regretfully I have no pictures to include with this. But I have to tell you what a proud mom I am! He always plays defense, but at this game he also played offense. Often they would call out his name telling every one what successful moves he made. Nathan would be embarrassed if he could hear all of the screaming and hollaring that I was doing-- "Go Bello", "Go Nathan", and more! And best of all, Nathan made the first of the 2 touchdowns for our team's game. I think that close to the end the other school made one touchdown, but our Ringgold Middle School football team WON! (My opinion-thanks to Nathan!) Sorry-I'm just a proud mom.

Ringgold Middle School Football

This year Nathan is on his school's football team, the Ringgold Middle School Tigers. He plays on both the offense as a Wingback and on the defense as a Linebacker. Nathan's number is #24 (until this year he was always #2 but it was changed this year). It isn't easy to capture football action with just our camera. This game was played against Trion Middle School (Trion, GA - about 35 miles south of us) and they won the game 22-6.



This below is a picture of him hunched over--that means they are waiting, ready to make their move!



At this game, Nathan played mostly defense, but he was out playing his Linebacker position the whole game. He is also ONE FAST RUNNER! Maybe some day he will make some $$ with his skills in this area!


This is a picture of Nathan on the ground after he made a tackle.

Weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee

Over the weekend, starting Friday Aug. 28, I went to Knoxville to spend the weekend with Stefanie. I got there Thursday night so that I could go with her Friday to spend the afternoon with her and her class of 2-year olds. This age is such a handful with all of these kids (12-14 in her class)! However, I was so impressed with Stefanie and the great job she did working with them. This is a job I could not take on, but she does an incredible job with these kids! I am again so impressed with Stefanie!

On Saturday Stefanie had a birthday party for Sophie at a "water park" with a whole bunch of kids. (I have no pictures of this, but it was quite an event!) She had a cake for Sophie that was Cinderella. We all had fun, and fortunately we had a plastic cover above us so we could keep up our fun through LOTS of rain. Everyone brought gifts for the birthday girl!

While at church we went outside for some snapshots of the Pohlsanders. Aren't they a good looking family

Great pictures of Jordan and Sophie!

I had a great time with Stefanie and a weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee! I just love it when we can get together!

I haven't blogged in a really long time--SORRY! Right now my obsession is with my flower garden. It gets so HOT and humid here in the south, so it is sure to my advantage to get out and take care of my flowers in the morning.


Flowers beside and behind our house get so much sun all day and so there are certain flowers that are planted out back (above), while others planted in the front of our house are in the shade most all of the day. (below)

I am so loving the Black Eyed Susans. They are my favorite and need lots of sun, so they are in the back and on the side of our house. They are perennials and will increase when they come back next year. I mix my annuals in with my perennials so that my garden will be different next year with some flowers the same and some different.

Like these perennials sitting next to annuals in the sun out back.

Next to these are some daisies that are not looking as attractive right now.

This is Clair and Alison at the Duke University Hospital in North Carolina, which is a 7 hour drive away from home. This room has SO MANY people recieving chemo into their arm and a nurse told us that there are about 150 patients each day that recieve this. The chemo wasn't bad, but the long drive works out to be a REALLY long drive! We left for Duke Monday, April 20th at about 2:00 PM, spent the night not far from the hospital and then came home Tuesday night.

It's Prom time in Ringgold, GA. Evan's date's name is Lauren. They are with his good friend Shawn and his date Mallory. Mallory just lives down the street from us.

It seems that the tradition her in the South or Chattanooga is that the couple's outfits match. There were other couples going to the same prom that were having their pictures as well and it seemed that everyone's outfits coordinated. (There were a lot of guys in white tuxedoes with either a turqoise or variation or pink or variation vest and ties). Yes, Evan's tie and vest are pink - he wanted to get pink shoelaces and we were happy that he didn't.

Overlooking the Tennessee River in the Bluff View Art district.

This is the restaurant where they had dinner in an old Antebellum mansion converted into a restaurant in the Bluff View Art District in Chattanooga, TN called the Back Inn Cafe. There are views of the Tennessee river from the dining areas.

Last weekend we went to the Atlanta Temple and all went together. It was the youth temple trip and the boys did Baptisms for the dead with the other youth from the ward. Clair and I went and did an endowment session while Evan and Nathan did the baptisms. This was Nathan's first visit to a Temple. Afterwards we went and had lunch and did some shopping in the Atlanta area at stores that we don't have in the Chattanooga area.

On March 8, last Sunday, Nathan turned 12 years old. He was ordained a Deacon on his birthday. Clair ordained him and Evan was able to participate and help ordain him as well.

This past Friday night for his birthday, Nathan had a sleepover and he had invited 6 other boys to spend the night-- to play video games, watch movies and make a lot of noise. It was raining that night so there was no way to kick them out of the house and let them run around outside. After many attempts to get them to calm down we finally had to put our foot down when a big wrestling match started at 5 AM.

Today, March 15, is Evan's 17th birthday. He lives quite the life and he has his own car to drive around in. Mainly, he is supposed to be available to take Alison on any errand that she needs to run or send him to the store. Another blessing of having Evan driving is that Clair doesn't have to get up super early to take him to Seminary - he won't wake himself up and we have to set our alarm and get him out of bed. He also takes for ever in the shower and we are always constantly banging on his bathroom door to get him out of the shower. We think that he goes back to sleep when he is in the shower. He enjoys going to Ringgold High School and is very popular with a lot of friends. It is hard to believe that in 2 years he will be ready to go on a mission.

Today Nathan was able to pass the Sacrament for the first time. Evan was one of the Priests to bless the Sacrament and our Ward has a tradition that the Father of the new Deacon can pass it alongside the new Deacon. So, Clair passed the Sacrament with Nathan. They are both growing up so fast.

This is my "Baby Nathan" (he really needs a haircut) and I just wanted to share with you his report card. I don't think that he cares as much about his grades as I do, but I just wanted to share with you this picture. I really look forward to coming out to Utah in just over one month!!

Love, Ali

This is a video of Nathan playing football. This was a game from last year. His grandparents were visiting us from Utah and were at the football game.

Hello! I am very excited to come to Utah at the time of Andrew's wedding! It will be so much fun to be there with the whole family--Stefanie, Sophie and I will be there! I am really hoping that Robert, Cuqui and Baby Robbie will be there also. It has just been so long since I have seen or spent any time with the family! Stefanie and I (and Sophie, of course) will be there for the whole week of March 22-28th. I look forward to seeing everyone!! (Even members on Clair's side of the family!)