Merry Christmas 2018

Merry Christmas

from the Sumner’s

This has been a year of changes for our family. About a year ago we both felt the spirit prompting us to get our house ready to sell. In April we moved from our starter home after nearly 13 years and moved to a house with a bigger lot in a quiet cul-de-sac closer to the mountains and trails, but still right here in Tooele. We love our little city and the only surprising part of all this is how long it took us to decide to pound in our stakes and put down roots. Last summer we had Kyle Chen come stay with us for two months to practice his English. He is attending school in English back in Taiwan, where he hopes to graduate with honors and then come back to the United States for College.

Mike is in his 3^rd year teaching science at Tooele Junior High and working to finish the final steps to being a fully licensed teacher. In addition to teaching, he helps run the science club and chess club after school. He spends his free time torturing his kids on adventures and road trips. Mike and Jeralynn are helping organize one of Utah’s first female BSA troops, in which Kenzie is excited to be a founder.

Jeralynn continues working as a guest teacher at several Tooele elementary schools. Her favorite classes are the littlest kids and the special needs classes. She loves doing crafts and projects around the home and gardening. Even though our new home didn’t have much garden space created yet, she still managed to grow more tomatoes and cucumbers than we could eat. Her favorite activities this year were road trips with the family and having Kyle visit.

Cale is a junior at Tooele High School. He has a driving permit and loves practicing driving his family everywhere, which he is really good at as long as he doesn’t have to drive the pesky Rav4 with the clutch. His favorite parts of the year were having Kyle visit from Taiwan and scout camp at Hinkley Scout Ranch with his Dad, Kyle, and Trey. He is most excited about the announcement of a new online game he wants to beta test. He is taking programming classes in high school and hopes to be writing games of his own soon.

Trey is a Freshman in high school this year and loves hanging out with his friends, pranking them, and going to stake dances with them. He loves popcorn more than anything and wants to have a career in the popcorn industry someday. (Dad made up that last bit.) Trey’s favorite part of the year was the start of school.

Kenzie is in 6^th grade at Sterling Elementary school. She spends most of her free time reading graphic novels and then writing and illustrating her own stories. She loves candy and her favorite holiday is Christmas. She is a reading tutor for 2^nd graders at school once a week. The one thing she enjoyed most this year was sleeping on the trampoline with her cousins, Kyhah and Jeremiah.

Talon is in 4^th grade, still in the Portuguese program at Sterling. His favorite time of year is Christmas. He has been very good this year. He was Mario for Halloween. The one thing he enjoyed most this year was snuggle times with his mom and dad.