1998 Christmas Letter

John(Great-Grandpa), Marjorie(Great-Grammie), Janus, Laura, Grace, Pattie(Grammie), Bob(Grandpa) Front: Jonathan, Robbie, Megan Missing: Christopher

Dear Family and Friends,

Again we greet you from Vermont, with joy in our hearts for another year, for a wonderful family, and for loving friends. We wish you all the very best of everything throughout this glorious time of year, and in the year to come.

This year has been rather eventful for all of us Crossetts!

Robbie: In the spring Robbie was selected, as a freshman, to sing bass in the All-State Music Festival in May. He loved preparing for it, and thoroughly enjoyed his three days up north staying with family in the town where they were singing. He also performed in the Thetford Academy musical, Me and My Girl, in May. Summer found his working intermittently for a local truck garden. He enjoyed the money and would have loved to have worked more. He enjoyed a week at Boy Scout camp, and was selected by his troop for the Order of the Arrow and went to his ordeal in August. This year he earned both Star and Life Rank in Scouts. In the fall he played soccer on the JV team and was once again chosen for the Winooski Valley Music Festival which performed in November. He is also singing a duet in the church Christmas program. Academically he is enjoying himself less than in his outside pursuits.

Jonathan: This was Jonathan’s freshman year at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah. He loved it. He was very active in select musical groups, singing with both the A Capella choir and the Ascensions performing group who had several concert tours in the spring term. He indulged his love of computers by working at the computer help desk there throughout the year, gaining experience which will help his career plans in computer science. He returned home in June and worked again at the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial during the summer, helping finish construction of the new Camp Joseph. He also began work creating a brochure publicizing Camp Joseph. At the end of August he and Daniel Hudnor took the 1985 Ford Thunderbird, which we had put in good order for Christopher, and they drove out to Utah to deliver the car. Unfortunately, the transmission failed while in Colorado Springs. After lots of phone calls, shelling out of moderate to big bucks, and frustration, the boys got the car to Utah in the back of a U-haul truck. What an adventure! In September he took a job at the computer help desk at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) which he really enjoys. He has become a sort of casual consultant for his father and Thetford Academy as well. His missionary papers went to Salt Lake City December 1st and he just received his mission call to the Belgium Brussels Mission (the same mission in which his older brother served just six years earlier!).

Megan: Winter and spring were spent at Vermont Country Bread where Megan worked the previous summer. She did all kinds of work at the bakery including deliveries using the Corolla station wagon. She had an interesting experience one Sunday morning during the late winter when she was attempting to keep an item from falling off the dashboard of the Corolla wagon but lost controll and ended up off the road on Interstate 91. Her former music teacher came by and brought her to Hanover where she got a wrecker to pull her out and she then continued on her way to church. The Corolla sustained minor damage and Megan none at all except to her nerves and driving reputation among the family! Her missionary papers went in to Salt Lake City in late spring and she received her call to serve in the Venezuela Caracas mission going to the Missionary Training Center in Prove, Utah July 1st, where she learned missionary service and the Spanish language. In September she flew to Caracas and has, at this point now in December, had three companions. Recently she was transferred from Caracas to a city called Cua which is two hours south of Caracas. She loves the work and finds it challenging to live and work with a companion. She will continue serving until the end of December 1999. We are so pleased with her hard work in preparing for this mission and now serving well, even though it is difficult.

Christopher: Christopher finished his associate’s degree and graduated from Ricks College in April then enjoyed the hospitality of his brother and sister-in-law Janus and Laura while he worked at Coca-Cola warehouse in Salt Lake City loading Coke trucks from 6 PM until well into the morning each day. Janus and Christopher shared Janus’s car, our former Canary station wagon. It took a fair amount of cooperation to make that work! In the fall Christopher matriculated at Utah State University in Logan, Utah for his junior year where he is studying accounting. He has enjoyed Logan and school there and has had a heavy load of classes during the fall. He is flying home for Christmas and the family is looking forward to three weeks in his company.

Janus: Janus continues to work for Auto-Soft in Salt Lake City, Utah, but during the late spring he decided to go back to school full time to finish his degree in Facilities Management, so in June he started coursework at Utah Valley State College as a junior. He works at Auto-Soft on Monday and Friday afternoons handling asset management chores. He and Laura and Grace moved to Orem and are just minutes away from school, which makes transportation much easier. He got a bike at a yard sale and made some major repairs and often rides the bike to school. The fall term he took a 10 credit(4 hours 5 days a week!!!) air conditioning class which he very much enjoyed, along with his other classes. The home the family moved to in Orem belongs to Laura’s uncle and includes a very productive backyard fruit orchard. They get a water turn on Fridays and because of the way the lawn is landscaped, it fills with repairs and often rides the bike to school. The fall term he took a 10 credit(4 hours 5 days a week!!!) air conditioning class which he very much enjoyed, along with his other classes. The home the family moved to in Orem belongs to Laura’s uncle and includes a very productive backyard fruit orchard. They get a water turn on Fridays and because of the way the lawn is landscaped, it fills with about a foot of water so Grace gets to go out and splash around in the water, which she really enjoys. She is growing up fast�very busy little girl, and she is beginning to talk�well, she always had a lot to say, but now normal people can understand her language, too! She is just a delight. In May Laura performed the role of Barbara in My Turn On Earth, a musical depicting the purpose of life. She has also had a number of engagements singing for various groups throughout the year. Janus and Laura and Grace journeyed to Vermont for ten days in June to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and to share in Megan’s missionary farewell. Janus, Jonathan and Robbie sang “Ye Elders of Israel” and Laura sang a wonderful missionary song “I’ll Find You, My Friend”.

Pattie: This has been another year spent at home for Pattie. She continues to teach Institute at Dartmouth College, a religion class for college-age members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In August she was fortunate to attend the annual Symposium for Seminary and Institute teachers in Provo, Utah at Brigham Young University. She found the college much different–many more buildings�than when she graduated in 1972. The Symposium was magnificent with speakers every hour on a different gospel topic to assist in teaching Institute and Seminary classes during the coming academic year. She was able to spend a few days with Janus, Laura and Grace, and Chris, who was also living with them at the time. It was a wonderful joyful time. When she returned from Utah her doctor told her he suspected that she had chronic Lyme disease complicated by the fibromyalgia and referred her to an infectious disease specialist in Lyme disease, so in October she drove to the Boston University Medical Group and had active chronic Lyme disease confirmed. She is now on an 18-month regime of antibiotics to try to kill the Lyme bacteria. So far the result has been a somewhat worsening of the pain and fatigue, supposedly a good sign as it may mean that the bacteria are dying. We are looking forward to an end of all symptoms by the end of 2000! Even so, as far as disease and other problems go, Pattie prefers her problems to those she sees all around her.

Bob: Another busy year for Bob. He and Pattie continued their service in the Washington, D.C. temple as ordinance workers, Bob making six trips to the temple during the year. While we were in Washington for a youth temple trip in April, we received a call from Vermont telling us to come home since Bob’s father was admitted into the hospital for shortness of breath and shortly after transferred to DHMC with congestive heart failure. Bob’s sister was able to get back to Vermont from Florida to help before we got back from Washington. Bob’s father remained in ICU for several days in an unconscious state with a ventilator. He was transferred to the cardiac wing to gain strength to prepare for a valve replacement and bypass surgery. The surgery was successful, but Bob’s father’s macular degeneration went untreated during this time and resulted near blindness after returning home. As of this writing, Bob’s father is in good health with the exception of his hearing and vision. All of this required many hours of family time – which is what families are all about. School was hectic, with lots of extracurricular work on the computer network evenings and Saturdays. He set up the network so that Thetford Academy, Thetford Elementary School and the Latham Library are on the network together now. The library card catalogs are being computerized so they will be accessible more easily to the students in town. In the winter/spring Bob took a Spanish class at Lebanon College and wants to have Megan “really” teach him when she returns from her mission next winter. During the summer Bob went on a weeklong hike in the White Mountains with Tom Norton. During his “free” time during the summer he and Jonathan and Robbie changed our shed into a three car garage�well, two bay garage and * breezeway for the Corolla. Bob had found a white 1990 Toyota Celica GTS in Springfield, Massachusetts and decided it was a ; worthwhile buy since Toyotas generally last for many many thousand miles…the 1989 Corolla has 217,000 miles on it and still going strong. During the fall, a friend let us use his wood splitter and Bob and the boys split up a huge pile of wood.

Here is a fun recipe some of you might enjoy, from “Home Grown Cooking” with Paul James on the Home and Garden TV channel.

(Since I am unwell a great percentage of the time and am unable to even hold a book for long, I see more tv than I ever imagined I would! Some of it has been useful.) .

Medium Combination Candy Pizza
3 Tablespoons butter
10 ounces marshmallows
6 cups Rice Krispies
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1 1/2 cups assorted candies

Preparation:

In a large pot, melt the butter. Stir in marshmallows until completely melted. Remove pot from heat, and stir in cereal until well coated. Spread onto a lightly greased pizza pan. Place the another pizza pan over the top, and press down to make the crust. You may want to use a greased piece of wax paper between the cereal layer and the top pizza pan to prevent the mixture from sticking.

Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler or microwave oven. Stir chocolate until creamy. Spread melted chocolate on top of cereal crust. Sprinkle assorted candies on top of chocolate. When cereal and chocolate have set, after approximately 15 to 30 minutes, cut and serve in pizza slices.