Valued Friends

A little over three years ago we moved to Arizona so I could attend graduate school at the University of Arizona. Previously, my wife and I had been attending Brigham Young University. During that time we met the Yancey family, and I even participated in the production of a play that Jason Yancey directed. He was a year ahead of me in school and ended up going to the University of Arizona a year ahead of me. So, for the last three years I have been the beneficiary of someone who figuratively took me under his wing, helping me prepare for deadlines and deal with the stresses of graduate school. Since he was a year ahead of me, I could always go to him if I had questions about classes I was taking, paperwork that I needed to turn in, or to learn about deadlines that were occasionally so "transparent" that you would never know about them unless someone told you about them. Now that Jason has graduated and the Yanceys have moved on, we are left wondering how we ever would have managed without them. Hopefully, we can be the same type of friend to others as they were to us. So, thanks, Jason and Aleece, for being such good friends. Thanks also to our many other friends. We hope you're all doing well!!!

Fairy Magic

Fawndear has enchanted our daughters with her fairy adventures. Things went into high gear when they watched Tinkerbell just before our trip to Disneyland back in May. They were delighted to meet Tinkerbell and Rosetta while at Disneyland, and since then they have made fairy traps, fairies, and tickets to fairy land--which they plan on redeeming as soon as Gabs loses a tooth. This is how it works: The tickets aren't any good unless they can get them to a fairy. So Gabs plans on putting them in an envelope with her soon-to-be lost tooth. The Tooth Fairy will then see them, read them, and then take them to visit the fairies.

During the last month or two, they have created fairies at pixiehollow.com, where they can choose the color of eyes, skin complexion, dress color, leg and arm position, etc., etc. etc. They have given their fairies names like Emerald Twinkletoes, Flora Flutterflower, Sunflower Prettyshimmer, Twilight Candleglow, and Windy Roseflower.

When they put up a fairy trap (a doll's bed and doll dinnerware) it took a fairy nearly a month to come sleep in the bed and leave behind pixie dust (glitter). The girls were so excited you would have thought it was Christmas.

In addition to all this, they are always drawing fairies or making wands of light like those in Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus. This last July Gabs had a fairy birthday party where she and her friends all got fairy wings, which they decorated with glitter and plastic jewels. It's great to see the girls' imagination at work!