BRENT AND TINA: We are grateful to know and love you. If you get our Christmas letter that means that you are people that have touched our lives and are special to us. We hope and pray that we and you will be able to HEAR our SAVIOR’S voice and make it through all the challenges that life brings and continue to have JOY! With love-The Vernon Family
Reunion after Emily had Covid, Devil’s Kitchen at the Colorado National Monument
ELLAINA: I started off this year enjoying the college experience at BYU-Idaho. I had a lot of fun in the snow with friends and shoveling snow as my job for the school. I am in my junior year studying Elementary Education with a minor in mathematics.
When everything shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic I went home to Fort Collins Colorado and have been living with my parents since then. I have had a lot of fun with them and I am grateful for all the extra time we have had together. I will be going back to BYU-Idaho in January. I did 1 ½ semesters online and maintained my good grades. I took and passed all my praxis exams while in Colorado. Praxis exams are tests I have to pass before I can student teach.
With my parents and sometimes brothers I have explored the outdoors a lot this year. We have gone hiking, biking, and kayaking regularly. Hiking is one of my favorite things to do. Some of my favorite hikes we did are Mt. Democrat (14,154 ft), Medicine Bow Peak (12,014 ft), Crag Crest, Twin Sisters (11,427 ft), and Lake Emmeline. We went to Rocky Mountain, Arches, and Canyonlands National Parks and the Colorado National Monument and Natural Bridges. There have been a lot of big forest fires in Colorado this year. The Cameron Peak fire started when we were hiking to Lake Emmeline and we got evacuated from our camping spot.
I have been tutoring a kindergartner named Noah and helping him learn how to read. It has been fun to help him.
I am officially grown up now since I bought my first car this year a white 2009 Subaru Forester. I wanted to wait to buy a car, but I will have classes that will require me to travel outside of Rexburg so I got one. I like it a lot and hope it will last a long time.
On our way to Lake Emmaline Crag Crest on the Grand Mesa Mount Democrat-very windy
Medicine Bow Peak (we had our own Halloween party with Ellaina’s Niece and Nephew-Pat Bagley provided Tina, Ellaina and Brent’s costumes)
CORY: This year I have continued to stay in the mindset of a poor college student, thus I enjoy Little Caesar’s Pizza on a regular basis. Yum. Yum. Yum. It is a good staple food for a single guy. I will be graduating BYU with my BS in Chemical Engineering this December. After March covid hit, I enjoyed family time with my parents and sister in CO until heading off to my last internship in MT at the oil refinery. It will be fun to start full-time work with Evonik as a Process Engineer based out of Mobile, AL (working with specialty chemicals) come January. Despite avidly searching for buffalo in Yellowstone, the only ones I saw were the buffalo burger I ate afterwards and a statue of a buffalo with a mask on. When with family at the Canyonlands’ Needles, my niece learned the joys of eating Doritos when her grandma illicitly fed her the chips.
CHAD, AMBER and ALICE: This year has been exciting for our Family. We are still living in Blanding Utah and we enjoy it here, nice weather, nice people, and lots of less traffic! Chad has been enjoying his job as a Occupational Therapist at a skilled nursing facility. Due to Covid 19 work has been full of surprises with him having to wear full protective armor each day to work. Amber has been busy with church activities and going on walks with Alice, who is almost 1 ½ years old. Alice continues to be a joy in our lives and enjoys snuggling with her stuffed animals and learning words, among her favorite words to say are hi, meow, peek-a-boo, no, thank you, and wow.
AARON, EMILY, GABE and KATE: Aaron and Emily are enjoying living in Cheyenne, Wyoming and bought their first house in March. Aaron is working as a PT and just switched to doing home health. Emily is busy in nursing school. Gabriel is 5 and has started kindergarten and loves it. He enjoys drawing and wants to be an artist when he grows up. Kate is a busy 3 year old and loves experiments and adventures. In our free time we enjoy watching family movies and enjoying the outdoors at Curt Gowdy state park and Vedauwoo.
ARLEE, TUAWANA and KAEDEN: Seasons Greetings from the Vegas Vernons. We were able to pull off a trip to Colorado for three weeks during Summer. We drove due to the pandemic and saw my Brother Chad in Blanding Utah. In Colorado I enjoyed visiting the family and had fun learning to Kayak. I am still working at Las Vegas High School teaching World History. The School year ended early last year and the kids didn’t have to do anything so it was like Summer started 3 months early. In the fall we went back to online learning. So I have been working from home. I love the commute. It is nice.
Tuawana took up sewing and made her own Tricot blanket, it is a great material, our family loves them. Kaeden does too, he will feel them, and play peek a boo with them. Tuawana wrote a poetry book and self published it. Tuawana continues to keep family updated through her blog. Tuawana often does service projects for others and she loves spending and shopping for Kaeden.
Kaeden is a big boy weighing in at 27 pounds at 18 months old. Kaeden has learned to walk. He loves walking laps around our Ottoman and playing at the screen door. Kaeden loves trucks, cars and says vroom, vroom when he plays with them. He loves balls and wheels. He Loves to read and will bring books over to us to read. He is the cutest thing ever. We are making the best of this crazy year and staying safe and hunkering down.
TINA: This year has definitely been different than others with the Pandemic. I am very grateful for the time we have with our college kids that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Two family members have had Covid, it is a very real and scary sickness. We are thankful that so far everyone who has had it didn’t get it too bad and they are back to normal. In March when the Pandemic started I moved my whole piano studio online. It was a challenge. Now I do some in person and some Zoom lessons and so far we are keeping well. It is definitely easier to teach older students online than younger students! Technology has been a huge blessing, and has made it possible to see our family online when we can’t see them in person and to keep my business going safely. We have changed lots of plans to try to keep everyone as safe as possible. Currently, I am getting to play the organ at church, since the organist is older and has health issues. I served in the Fort Collins Temple until the Pandemic. Now I have been trying to do family history regularly and need to focus on it more in the coming year. I love having 2 of my grandkids close and totally love having them come stay with us and their parents too!
BRENT: I continue in my church calling as the 1st Counselor in the Bishopric. I have been serving in that calling for six years straight. I have served under two Bishops and am now serving under one of those Bishops for the second time. I am very comfortable in my calling. My retirement job as a school bus driver is going great as I work four days a week and only average one student riding per run due to the COVID pandemic. Due to the pandemic I have been able to enjoy having Cory live with us for three months, and Ellaina for 9 months as they have attended college on-line. We have done a lot of hiking, cycling, and kayaking, and watched a lot of movies. Tina, Ellaina, and I went on two trips this year. The first trip we visited Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah. (We had planned to see Chad on this trip but he had Covid) After which we hiked the Crag Crest trail at Grand Mesa in Colorado and hiked a 14er called Mount Democrat. The second trip we visited Chad’s family in Blanding, Utah. We saw Natural Bridges and Colorado National Monuments and enjoyed cycling in Breckenridge, Colorado.
