At The End Of The Summer

Looking back, this was a busier summer than we had supposed it would be. Even though Lauren spent most of her summer in California with 'the aunties', and Rick and Leslie were left to fend for themselves, the summer included a few trips to Southern California, a kayaking trip on the Snake River below Jackson Hole, and a trip to South Dakota that we won't soon forget, but very little time at the ranch. Our time at home was spent on 'projects', which translates to Leslie making quilts, Rick building furniture, and the ongoing development of our patio and outdoor kitchen/family room. We're pretty sure this will one day be completed, it's just hard to guess when that might be though.

Lauren returned home a few weeks ago, just in time to start school at Salt Lake Community College - she's in a program that will allow her to complete her junior and senior years of college at the same time that she works through her freshman and sophmore years of college. Lots of work, but worth it! We just celebrated Lauren's 16th birthday - successfully without teenaged boys!!! It's great to have her home.

Richard checks in each week via email from Australia. He is currently in Armadale, a small town south and east of Perth, and though not remote, it's more outback than downtown. He reports that the missinary work is slow, but he and the other missionaries in his general area spend a lot of time providing service to the locals and spend a lot of thier spare time hiking and chasing wallabies and kangaroos. He seems happy and is having a great experience.

Becca and Justin came down from Logan for Lauren's birthday - it was great to spend a Sunday with them. Work and school continue to move along, and they're both ready to move on to the next phase of life - the 'after college and now what do we do' phase. They'll figure it out - they both enjoy thier jobs and love thier new home.

Jessica, Brandon and Kendall spent time in Yosemite last month and will be taking a few weeks in Cancun soon. Brandon's been hard at it as he's continued to successfully find buyers for Sudweek's Development's office condominiums (tough to do in the CA real estate market). And Jessica will have just taken her LSAT exam a few days before they leave - they'll bring Kendall to stay with Grandma and Grandpa in Utah while Mom and Dad are playing in the sun and sand. Ten days with a toddler in the house will be a real trip - Leslie's excited and Rick's trying to figure out how to keep Kendall safe from the ponds - or keep the koi safe from Kendall - or something like that. It'll be great.

Elder Richard Haskell in Australia

Richard continues to send us updates from Perth, Australia. His weekly emails are brief and rarely give much detail, but they make it clear that he's busy, enjoying the work, and having the kind of experience we all had hoped for. He and his companion, Elder Barff from Tasmnaia, are in Perth with the LDS Temple and Mission Office in their area. They actually live in an flat in Maylands a little east and north of downtown Perth. It must be an interesting place - they awake some nights ago to the sounds of a drug bust in the flat below them Richard reports that Maylands is the drug capital of Western Australia. The local members seem to take good care of them and Richard has commented a few times about the Cullimore family they seem to visit often.

Richard has tried some of the foods unique to Australia and while there are many he likes (Menties and a form of ginger ale) there are others still that aren't likely to show up on his list of favorites. He reports that vegamite is really salty and tastes kind of nasty! You can see his pictures and other posts on elderhaskell.blogspot.com.

Lauren's California Summer

Each of our daughters has taken one of summers while in high school and spent it in California with 'the aunties'. The aunties are Sheri Johnson, Juliana Mahlmann and Beth Bruzzone, Rick's sisters all living in central California - we sometimes refer to them as Flora, Fauna and Merriwether.

This summer is Lauren's turn and she's staying at Lost Horizons with the Johnson family. She'll spend time with the other aunties over long weekends, but for now she's learning to ride horse, clean stalls, look out for rattle snakes, and muck the pasture. She's loving it. Lauren is a good girl, seriously independent, and beautiful!

Lauren took her guitar, ipod, clothes and blow dryer and off she went! She'll return to Utah in mid-August in time to start at Iteneris early College High School where she'll complete her last two years of high school while in her first two years of college.

Jessica as College Graduate!

Jessica graduated from UC Riverside on Sunday, June 15th, Father's Day! She graduated 'cum laud' with her bachelors in Political Science. It was a great day and Jessica worked hard for a lot of years to get to this point. Credit goes to Brandon as well - he's been a great support and has seen to it that Jessica has had time to study and focus on her course work. Jessica now starts to prepare for the LSAT and expects to enter law school in the fall of 2009.

Rick, Leslie, and Lauren, Becca and Justin, and Sheri and Steve Johnson and family made it to the graduation and enjoyed the barbecue we had for Jessica on Sunday afternoon. We're all proud of Jessica and can't wait to see what she does next.

Kendall has a new bedroom!

Actually she's had her own bedroom for a long time, but her mom and dad bought a new house in Lake Elsinore, California and if you know the Sudweeks' then you know it's all about Kendall! It took a few weeks for them to finish their move and they spent a lot of that time painting, putting in carpeting, shelves and electrical fixtures, and working in the yard. The place looks great!

The neighborhood is just north of Lake Elsinore and right at the base of the Ortega Mountains. They have an unusually big back yard for a southern California home and they're going to have their hands full transforming it into the yard and home they'll love. Leslie and I have been down there twice and helped out with a few projects. The first morning of our most recent trip started early as we woke up to the sound of Brandon putting in a flower bed in the front yard. He was out there digging out grass and getting things ready for border stones and day-lillies. When he outlined to me what projects he had planned for the day I realized that Brandon's going to be obsessive about his yard - we're so proud! It looks great!

Becca & Justin Ashby's 1st home

Becca and Justin just moved into their new home in Logan last week. The home is a new townhouse next to Logan' River golf course. Leslie and I went up to help them move and start to get settled. It's kind of fun to see your kids getting settled into their lives and buying a home is one of those big steps.


Becca is working at a local day care center and loves it. Of the various jobs Becca's had over the years she really hasn't had one that she loved. It's great to see her talk about what she's doing now - she loves working with these little kids - she plays her guitar, sings to them, and just shares with them the joy that is Becca. Becca just finished her junior year at Utah State and should graduate next year in early childhood education.


Justin recently took a position at West Liberty in Tremonton. He's only been there a little over three months and has been promoted twice, so he's pretty pleased. Right now he's working swing shift and that's a keeping he and Becca from seeing each other as much as they'd like, but that should change sometime soon. Justin continues to take college courses online and looks to graduate in a few years.

Elder Haskell sets off for Perth Australia

Richard left the Provo MTC on Monday, April 21st. His flight to Perth routed through Los Angeles, non-stop to Sydney, Australia and then on to Perth, lasting over 24 hours. He called us from both the Salt Lake and Sydney airports and we can't tell you how great it was to talk with him.

As we spoke to him from the Salt Lake airport, he sounded confident, excited and ready to take on the world. He told us that the MTC had turned out to be a good experience, though he was glad to be on his pay to Perth. He was assigned to be a district leader while in the MTC over a small distric of elders headed to New Zealnad and Australia. At first the MTC was difficult for him, the sitting and listening, studying and having to pay attention all of the time about bored him to tears. But by the end, the other experiences there outwieghed the tedium. He had a lot of fun with some of the elders in his district, met up with Travis Schoenfeld (a childhood friend from South Jordan headed for South America), Janis Richardson (a beautiful young woman from our ward in Sandy that entetred the MTC last wednesday bound for Ohio) and Diane Morrow (a friend of Rick and Leslie from our BYU days who runs the food services group at the MTC) He got lots of letters and emails, a big package of chips, queso and other goodies from Rick so he could have a send off party at the MTC the night before he left and cookies and cupcakes from Jessica - we're pretty sure he felt well cared for - or at least well fed!

We asked him about the most important lessons he had learned while at the MTC. His first response had to do with the scriptures. Even though our family has read scriptures together each morning for his entire life and has read the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price from cover to cover several times, and even though Richard attended LDS seminary for four years, Richard finally felt as though he was learning things through the scriptures. He was willing to admit that this was the first time he felt like paying attention - go figure. He also admitted that he had learned to just do what he is told when given instructions from those he trusts or those whose authority he respects - without questioning everything - I have to admit that I about fainted when he said this and I did everything I could to restrain myself. It just felt good that our son was evidencing that he's growing up and becoming the man we had hoped he would.

When Richard called from Sydney he was pretty wiped out after such a long trip. He still had several hours to go before boarding the flight to Perth and then another 4-5 hours in the air before he would arrive in Perth. Perth is 14 hours ahead of Utah time (13 hours ahead of California), so he left Utah on Monday evening and arrived in Perth on Wednesday at about noon. That still seems strange to me, because while he was arriving in Perth on Wednesday we were laying in bed talking about him on Tuesday night - intellectually we get it, but intuitively it still seems off.

So now Richard is on the other side of the world - he's off to a great adventure that will yield tremendous benefits and blessings for those he teaches there, for his family here in the US and mostly for Richard himself. We already miss him, but the upstairs bathroom has been clean for three weeks now and the refrigerator has never been so full for so long. We'll get used to it.