April 5, 2002
Happy Spring to all our family and friends! And congratulations to everyone who got their Christmas cards and letters into the mail before December 23, 2001 We thoroughly enjoyed your cards and letters and smiled and smiled as each one came in. We placed them on the logs in the ceiling, as we have done for years, and looked at them many many times and thought of you with great love. Family and friends are such a precious part of life. How bland and pale life would be without you all.
Below you will find the Crossett Family Notes for the year 2001.
JEC -In March Jonathan returned home from his mission in the Belgium, Brussels mission. Shorfly after his return he started working at DHMC in User Support as a computer resource person where he had been before his mission. In June, he and Charlie King and friends went to NYC to see a musical on Broadway and then on to P A for trip to visit friends of Charlie’s from college. Charlie and Jon drove the white Celica to Idaho to start fall semester at BYU Idaho -former Ricks College where the two of them were roommates in a small apartment in a large apartment complex.
MAC -Megan is continuing her studies at USU studying to be family and consumer science (home teacher). During the summer she worked in the Logan Deseret Industries and. at Blimpies(a sandwich shop)- In June she came home for a week to participate in the Boston Temple wedding activities of a friend from Dartmouth College. While here, she and her mother went quilt fabric shopping, a source of delight to them, but not so delightful to the bill-payer!
CGC – Christopher is continuing to work at Hertz sales division in Ogden, Utah, and started work on his MBA at Phoenix University. He has also been taking training for volunteer work during the Salt Lake City Olympics where he will be working with the broadcasters in Ogden. He loved his work on Utah Public Radio some years ago when he was at Utah State University. At Christmas time he purchased tickets for himself, as well as for Megan and Jonathan, to come home for the holidays. His generosity and constant consideration of his siblings is a source of joy to his parents.
JWC -Janus had moved in October 2000 to Vermont and was working as Office Assistant at the Facilities Management Group at the New England Historic sites of the Church. During the fall and winter he worked on renovating the south end of the 200 year old Corwin family residence in South Royalton and moved in late in March. There was lots of work to do from November to March – now a beautifully renovated home with exposed original beams, new windows and improved floor plan. The house has been in the family for generations and Pattie is still in process of doing the “genealogy” of the house. So far she has found that it has been in some branch of the family since about 1832. In December Janus landed a Facilities Manager job in Scranton, PA with 26 church buildings and one historical site – the Aaronic Priesthood restoration site– to take keep in good order. Janus, Laura and Grace moved to Clark’s Summit, Pennsylvania on December 30th. None of the local people in South Royalton who had previously volunteered to help them load their truck came through, but when they got to Pennsylvania, the Elders’ Quorum was there and it took them 45 minutes to unload the truck and place the ftirniture. (Loading the truck in South Royalton had taken Janus twelve hours … ) Someone brought them pizza for supper; someone else brought them groceries for their refrigerator, and the next night yet another family invited them to dinner to meet several other couples. We are so pleased for them, but will miss them terribly. Grace will be five in February 2002 and is a dynamo who has a very strong grip on her grandparents’ hearts. While here, Laura performed in several concerts at the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial, as well as in the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Choir for the fall season.
RJC2 -Robbie graduated from Thetford Academy in June 2001 (remember the movie 200 1, A Space Odyssey and how far away 2001 seemed?!!), receiving scholarships that would pay for his tuition and books for his year at Brigham Young University-Idaho where he was accepted for the Winter Semester. He spent the summer working at Dartmouth College in Residential Life as he had done the previous two summers, and as in the previous two summers~ spent his substance in riotous living and computer hardware. When that job finished at the end of August he moved on to get a job working at DHMC in the computer user support department after Jonathan left. He even had the same pager number. It was good experience for Robbie to work with adults and learn more about PCs and Windows administration. On January 3, 2002 Robbie flew out to BYU-I for the winter and summer terms, flying to Salt Lake City via Hartford, Connecticut and Newark, New Jersey. During the trip he was frisked five times…a result of renewed security due to the disastrous terrorist attacks on September 11.
PACC -Pattie is still on disability from Dartmouth College due to fibromyalgia, and Lyme disease. She is busy doing genealogy for our families and other people. She continues to teach institute at Dartmouth College and is the stake family history consultant. She attended the Institute Symposium in Provo, UT again and was able to visit many friends and do genealogical research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City for several days, Cbristopher loaned her his beautiful jeep for the duration of her stay and she spent two nights with him, then a wonderful night with David and Rachelle Ostler, renewing bonds of friendship and catching up, then on to spend a few days with Megan in Logan, which a was another real treat, then finally home again and about two weeks of bed rest and worth every moment!
RJC – Bob is in his 33rd year of teaching at Theford Academy and is looking forward to retirement in a few years. He continues to serve as an ordinance worker in the Boston temple and as a high councilor. He has been less active in the running and hiking departments due to a pinched nerve in his neck and a fall off from his 270 miles on the Long Trail the previous summer. In April, Bob’s mother went to Florida to help some friends and shortly after arriving found herself in the hospital with a ruptured appendix. The surgery was a success, but the recovery was long and slow. On Memorial Day weekend, Bob took time off from school to be with his mother. The same day he arrived in Florida, Bob and his sister went to Daytona where his mother was in the hospital and brought her home to Ginny’s house near Orlando. His mother began convalescing, but was very weak and had trouble eating.
After Bob left, she had problems with low blood sugar and had to have 911 calls to get her going. After the second 911 call, she was admitted to the hospital and gradually regained her strength. In July (nearly three months later) Bob flew to Florida to help her in her return to Vermont. At her home, she had health care nurses stay with her until she was fully recovered. Everything has gone well for her, except that recently she fell on a rug and broke her wrist in several places. Her hands were swollen and it made preparations for Christmas dinner more difficult – everyone pitched in and the day went well.
HOUSE -The house received badly needed renovation to the back roof – we replaced the bad roof with a shed dormer which gives us much more space on the second floor and added light. Christopher took a week off from work over the Fourth of July to come and help on the project of removing the old roof and building the new dormer. Jonathan spent a week with Bob and Robbie removing the old roof in preparation for Christopher’s arrival. Janus, Chris, Bob and Robbie worked on building the dormer for the next week. After Chris went back to Utah, the others worked to close the dorm; at which point the pace of the work slowed remarkably – due to exhaustion and reduction in work force and the start of school. Pattie worked very hard going through 28 years of accumulated STUFF – most of wgich had been stored too long and needed to be tossed or donated to others. For a while we had half of the upstairs in the living room and the other half of the upstairs piled out of the way of construction and rain. Fortunately, we had nearly no rain during the construction. In December, after some frigid months without insulation in the renovated space, everyone came home for Christmas break. The day after Christmas major interior work and wiring was begun in preparation for lighting, phone, and insulation. Our home is much warmer with the added insulation and is much brighter with the added lighting, not to mention a ceiling fan for the master bedroom.
CAR – In June we realized there were going to be car problems, with the Corolla on its last legs and Jonathan likely to take the Celica to school at the end of the summer. Pattie complained about the discomfort of riding in the tiny car so Bob went looking on the internet for a used Camry, and ended up going to Texas to buy a 1995 used Lexus. from Akmal. It is a very comfortable car. The only glitch has been realizing this fall that the engine has not been well-cared for, so we are trying to go overboard on keeping oil changed and hope the car will stay happy for another 100-200,000 miles. It has about 142,000 on it now, a real baby as far as our car purchases go! The Corolla went to that great car lot in the sky (or some other place a bit closer) when we donated it to the Kidney Foundation after repeatedly repairing the muffler system only to have it be roaring again a few days later.. Even having the system bolted and welded only prolonged the inevitable an extra couple of months.
With much love and the very best of wishes to all of you.
Bob and Pattie
Janus, Laura and Grace
Christopher
Megan
Jonathan
Robbie