January 20th Mary Wrote

Greetings from Mary,

What a great Christmas Season our family was blessed with. We had a tree again after many years of going without, not that a tree makes the season but it helps make things cheery. We planted the tree in the front yard with the other two we planted there years ago. The weekend after New Years we had 17 Goods sleeping in our house on Friday night. We decided to do brunch on Saturday for our get together, so we started on Friday night. On Saturday after brunch we went up to mom's field and launched off rockets. We had a total of 8 made by different children. We gave our boys rocket kits for Christmas and Paul had fun building and painting them with the boys. He was on vacation so he had time to spend working on them. We sent them off many times and only lost one. It was a beautiful morning and not even very cold, the mud was more a problem but we went with boots. Enough about that.

In another 2 months we will be married for 18 years, in the past several years I have had to remind myself that we are in the teen years and sometimes teens are hard to understand so that is where we are at. Our communication has been tested big time lately and I'm ready for these years to move on. I have big hopes for the 20's. I'm not sure I need any wonderful comments on that thought unless it will encourage me.

School is going fine although this has to be one of my most difficult years. Aaron finished first semister with B's in both classes and will be returning next week for 2nd semester. David has been doing very well at Tech School, we were invited for an honors breakfast for the first quarter, which means he had an A, plus no more than 1 absent day.(He had none) Nathan and Samuel are also doing O.K. We seem to have an energy challenge this year.

One more big thing is that Paul is back to work on our family room upstairs. We moved all the furniture we had in there into our school room so he could finish spackling and sanding. I am so ready to have this project finished. I will have a big open house party for all of you when that happens. Please don't hold your breath or it will definately be a small party.

God is good, reminds me daily that he is my strength and guide.

I almost forgot, Ashton, " Zoe" has adjusted very well to her new home, I did not realize just how much a cow and calf would eat. Some days the competition between them and the boys is really close.

bye, love to all, from all of us