Our 2010 Christmas Card

Here's our Christmas card for the year.  Thanks for caring enough to read this blog!  Merry Christmas.

Loosli Family Adventures - 2010

2010 brought our family plenty of adventures - large and small.  Good thing we like adventures!  Here's a summary:
New Job Adventures:
After spending the first 1/2 of the year marketing his award-winning Cool Cab project while completely rebuilding The Power of Moms website, Jared got a great opportunity to become the Chief Technology Officer for an exciting nationwide property mangement company in Odgen, Utah.  He's been able to restructure some things and get the company poised for a lot more growth.  He's really enjoying this new adventure.
Weekend Adventures: 
For the first half of the year, we filled our Saturdays with hiking and biking.  We all made it to the top of Zion's Angel's Landing, enjoyed doing the Narrows again, and the whole family had some great times mountain biking (the twins got rid of their training wheels and rapidly became pretty amazing little bikers).  Then starting in August, we spent our weekends traveling to be with each other while Jared worked in Odgen and Saren and the kids were still in St George.
Surgery Adventure:
Sadly, as Jared enjoyed one last mountain bike ride before moving, he took a bad fall and shattered his elbow.  Two weeks after having a surgeon wire bits of bone back together and staple up his arm, he somehow managed the feat of moving his family to a new home using only one arm (with lots of help from dear friends).  His arm is healing nicely and we're so grateful it wasn't worse!
House Hunting and Moving Adventures:
We spent lots of time researching options and ultimatey decided to rent our house in St George and buy a new house (well actually, quite an old house - built in 1896 but completely restored) in Odgen.  As is often the case, everything was way more complicated than anticipated but ultimately we found some great renters, negotiated a decent price on the new house, packed up our house in St George, drove through a horrendous snow storm with our moving truck, and arrived in Odgen only to find that we couldn't close on our new house in the timeframe promised.  But we fanagled a way into the house and finally got all the last details taken care of.
After a couple months of serious stress and packing and unpacking and working on tons of house-related projects, we're now quite comfortably and happily settled. We've gone from rural to urban, from new to old, from known to unknown.  We're embracing change and counting our blessings that we can be back together again as a family.
Traveling Adventures: 
This year's trips included attending the big bull sale at the Loosli farm in Ashton (the kids got to watch a baby calf get born and loved the excitement of the cattle auction), spring break in the LA area (beach trips and museums combined with synergistic business meetings), a trip to New England for Saren and Eliza (we promised all the kids a trip to our old stomping grounds when they get to be 7 or 8 so it was Eliza's turn this year), and our regular summer vacations including great times with scores of relatives at Bear Lake and at the Loosli Farm.
Business-Building Adventures:
Saren spent pretty much every non-kid-focused and non-moving-focused minute working on The Power of Moms (in tandem with her partner, April Perry and with tons of help from Jared) and was able to conduct three weekend Retreats for mothers (in St George, in Boston and in California), recruit and train a great group of moms to help run the site and help conduct trainings around the country, see the Learning Circles program take off, spearhead the writing of a compilation of essays for mothers (to be published fall 2011), help start a new column/blog for the Deseret News, and see the Power of Moms website grow to 40,000 users. She's loved connecting with and learning from other mothers and helping them learn from each other - but she's hoping that 2011 will bring lots more exciting growth for The Power of Moms without requiring so much of her time and energy!
Kids' Adventures:
The kids are all really enjoying their new school and the adventures involved in making new friends.  They had a wonderful first 1/2 of the school year at their beloved school in St George where they were blessed with great friends and excellent teachers.  We'll all miss the Spanish immersion program (especially Eliza who is the most fluent) and the music program at the kids' school in St George but we're excited that the new school offers some Spanish instruction every day and we'll seek out some good music lessons.  The kids are all great climbers, bikers and hikers and we've been so proud of the way they've jumped right into to make new friends and participate in new things at their new church and school.  Here are some individual highlights (sure, there were plenty of issues but we'll just share the good stuff here...):

• Ashton (10): Inventor, musician, resident technology expert.  Worked HARD to earn $300 to buy a Lego Mindstorm and then spent every free moment building and programming some pretty amazing robots.  Taught himself some great songs on the keyboard and won the school talent contest.  Read all the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books (and about 100 other books - got in trouble for reading too much at school and at home...).  Created an arrangement of the song "What I've Done" by Linkin Park for xylophones and played it with a friend at a school concert.
• Isaac (9): Hard-worker, friend to everyone (especially babies), always helpful.  Took first in the school science fair for his project on friction.  Finally decided that reading can be fun thanks to the beautiful book Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. Won a state-wide poetry contest and had his poem featured in an anthology.  Did a great job in the school choir and orffestra plus enjoyed playing violin.
• Eliza (7): Artist, writer, teacher, lover of all things beautiful.  Produced about 1000 works of art and wrote 100's of pages of stories, essays and journal entries in both English and Spanish.  Taught the twins to read and explains things so well to them.  Adored her visit to Wellesley College and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as well as every other part of her much-anticipated Boston trip.
• Oliver (5): Dog-lover, puzzle-lover, reader, builder.  Loves to build with magnets and with K'nex.  Can do a 150-piece puzzle in just a few minutes.  Knows all about different dog breeds and insists on petting every dog we encounter.  Loves reading and being read to (like Silas).  Loves kindergarten.
• Silas (5): Panda-lover, transformer-lover, reader, artist.  Loves to play with transformers.  Plays imaginative games all day with Oliver.  Loves to learn about everything from how cars are made to the habits of panda via YouTube videos.  Gives me about 200 hugs a day.  Loves kindergarten.

If you've made it this far, thanks for caring.  We wish you all the best for the coming year!
May 2011 bring us all less stress and more joy (a Power of Moms tagline) - alongside plenty of adventures!
Love, The Looslis