Hello again!
We hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's because we sure did. It was so refreshing to visit our friends and family. I really believe that it helped "wean" us from our old home/life, and as a result, help us embrace our new life here.
While we were listening to the beautiful testimony meeting in Highland, we realized how much we've been blessed to belong to such strong ward families, and how much we want to bring that to the people here. The gospel is a blessing that we should never take for granted, and I pray that my family can share our blessing in our examples, testimonies, and love to all that we have the pleasure of knowing here.
We finally have a house! In all the times we've moved, I don't remember ever feeling so grateful for our new house as I do now. My family joins me in saying THANK YOU to all those who helped us (in our crazy two-month journey of being "homeless") by letting us stay with them, eat at their home, ect. We are trying to unpack quickly, and knowing my mother, our house will look absolutely lovely in no more than two weeks :)
Well, the furniture man is back to unload more. My muscles are needed! ;) Cheers!

This post is from Brian - A lot has happened since our last post.  
We received a phone call with the news that my Mother had a severe stroke the 16th of December and that has created a whole series of events that changed what we thought we would be doing during the Holidays.  Once we realized the seriousness of the situation (the expectation was that she would not last more than 4 - 5 days) we quickly had a family counsel with my siblings and I began looking to fly our family back to the States for the funeral.  We were able to get a flight out of Ireland on Christmas Eve which we booked.  My mother ended up passing away that Friday night, less than 2 full days from experiencing her stroke.  It was a peaceful passing and we are grateful that the Lord mercifully allowed her to go in dignity and without pain.  

Because of the quick changes in plans Lareen and I quickly decided that Santa needed to make his visit a full week early - and so we arranged (very quickly) for that to happen and we had Christmas a week early on Saturday morning.  It was the first time for us having Christmas in a hotel and a week early, but the kids were great sports about everything given the circumstances.

The following week we had our hands full, we had decided NOT to rent the original house that we were waiting to get finished (it had too many issues and we didn't want to live in a partially finished house for the next few years with a Landlord we didn't feel we could trust).  So, we went back to a house we had looked at before and liked and decided to go with it but it had some issues that needed fixing and we needed to get that in order so it could be done when we got back from the States.  Thankfully we have a good friend and fellow member of our Church who is a General Contractor who took the lead on getting these things done.  We simply negotiated a rent credit with the Landlord for the stuff we needed to do.  We will be living in an old Farm House on 100 acres right behind the horse racing track.  Our address is:  Touchwood Stables, Dooneen, Crecora, Co. Limerick, Ireland.  Again = there are no numbers.  I know it's weird.

We also had the issue of getting our container of furniture and goods worked out.  It was due to arrive while we would be in the States.  So we worked it out to have it collected by the logistics company we are working with in Ireland, they would empty the container, then reload it into smaller trucks with lift gates to lower stuff to the ground (much easier than the way we loaded the container - brute strength).  Then they will take our stuff to the house and some friends and church members will help get it into the house in various staging rooms.

So, we flew to the States on the 24th made some surprise visits to friends in Utah on Christmas Day, picked up Logan's friend Ashley to spend the next 10 days with us and on Sunday Morning we went to Music and the Spoken Word in SLC and then drove to Idaho Falls for the viewing.  It was great to see my family and the viewing and especially the time we spent afterwards sharing memories of my Mother, as a family, was great.

The funeral also went well the next day - great speakers and musical numbers.  A real tribute to one of the most Christlike people I've ever known.
We were able to visit family and friends in Western Idaho for the next few days, including New Year's Eve with all of Lareen's family.  

We're back in Utah to get some things wrapped up before we take off on Wednesday.  It was so great to be attend our Ward in Utah and visit all of our friends here today, we went to lunch and dinner with good friends here who invited us to eat with them and we filled our buckets with love and we are ready to go back to Ireland, live in a home that we can invite people over.

Hannah's Post :)

Hi everyone this is Hannah and i am going to brief you on my first day of school which was Friday, December 10th. We were actually going to start in January but the Principal of Cresent Comprehensive College, which is the school we are going to, had us start before we had
planned so that we could get a feel for the school and have a start at making some friends. :) So we dropped Emma off at her school at 9:30a.m. and then we went to the Cresent. We got there at around 11:00a.m. dressed in our School uniform attire feeling a lot like Hogwarts students we went into the Principals office. He gave us our classes that we were going to be in and the Group also. The Group is the same 30 kids that you are going to go around to all your classes with. So all of the grades have like 5 different Groups of 30 kids. I was in the group of kids called Suarez. Then he had us meet a few people and then he had some teachers show us to our the class that our Group was in. I followed a teacher outside and onto a field where they were having a "double period" with another Group for P.E. The teacher introduced me to a girl named Kira and she took me around the school and showed me everything. Then we went back to P.E. and got there just as it was finishing. The next period that they have is German, i really don't know how that is going to work because i have never had one German class! :) Well anyway i went to German and i didn't understand anything! Then i remembered that the Principal only wanted us there for 2 hours so i told everyone i had to go. I walked over to the front office and i waited there for Jarom and Logan. While i was waiting some more girls my age came over and asked if they could wait
with me until my parents got there. I said sure and so we talked for a while and then i saw Jarom coming. All the girls said that we looked exactly the same. :D hehe Dad came in and we found Logan in a room talking to five girls her age. Then we went to pick up Emma at her school and went back to the hotel. Over all it was a very successful day, i met a lot of new people and friends! YEAH! :)

THE END

Emma's Post :)

hi this is Emma and here's how the 1st day of my school went. well i got there a little late(on purpose) so we went to the principal office and there she told my teacher Mrs. Ryan to come down to her office we asked if I could start that day right then. Mrs. Ryan walked down and told me some comforting info. I walked into the classroom and EVERYONE was talking. I sat down and got started on some spelling pages. after that we had snack time after about 10 to 15 min. of that we had sauce witch is pretty much like resess but with no lunch before that. so me and tons of followers everyone were like magnets I could hardly breath. when sauce was over we went back to class did more work but half of the time she was speaking in Irish, gaelic and man its confusing. our uniforms are a white shirt, sweat pants, and slippers. well that was my day bye!


by: Emma Packer

Jaroms First Day of School

This is Jarom Packer now talking. So I guess I was supposed to talk about my first day of school at the Cresent College.

So we all woke up in the hotel which we have been living in for 3 weeks. :/ And started getting ready for school. But we weren't going till 11 since the principal didn't want to overwhelm us. He probably had good reasons. Anyway, we finally got out of the door and headed over to the school. I was joking that as we were pulling up to the school, this was the point of no return return. We could easily drive off and find a place to live in China. Ok probably not going to go that far but it is a plan B. But we walked in with our uniforms and all. And the first moment we walked in everyone is looking at us. Its was really weird I have to tell ya. The principal came out and brought us in his office. He talked to us about how the day was going to go. Then we rapped it up and we were out of there heading off to our destinations. The PE teacher took me to my first class which was Business. Fun stuff :/. And he assigned me with my buddy named... well everyone just calls him Sully. They talked so fast that I couldn't catch his name. So they brought me in the class and once again everyone was looking at me. We then sat down and the class just went on with its normal schedule. Me and sully talked for a bit because the class was drop dead boring. Thankfully the classes are like 45 minutes so we were out of there. Whats cool about this school is you stay with your classmates for every class. So as we were going to geology everyone was asking me questions, but I couldn't answer because they were talking so fast. I was doing my best but most of the time I would just smile and laugh. They must have fell for it because they just kept talking. We then made it to geology and I was starting to feel a bit more comfortable now with the the kids in the class.

So geology went by and the boys told me lunch was starting. I just followed them to the cafeteria. When we got there is was this circle of boys around me asking me questions. They thought is was cool I was a quarterback in America. Constantly they kept asking questions one over the other. I didn't have time to answer them. I would try to answer one question while someone else asked another question. This went on for about 15-30 min till they were done eating and we went outside. They introduced me to more of there friends, including girls. And we talked for a while once again they asked tons of questions. We then headed back in the school because I was leaving soon. I told them good bye and I met with my sisters who all had a great experience like me. My dad found us and when we went in the car they surprised us with some smoothies. So they must have must have liked me because they have added me as a friend on facebook.

Well that wraps everything up. I think my school experience at school will be great. Love ya!

Sight Seeing

Logan- Ok so these next few posts are going to be from all the family about different aspects of our time here so far. I'm going to give an overview of our sight seeing we did yesterday, Saturday the 11th. We woke up "early," for us anyway, and took off to explore our part of Ireland.
We first went to the Bunratty Castle. I hope I spelled that right. Here's a couple pictures, and we'll put up more on Facebook later.
After we toured the multiple stories, winding up and down, around and around, all the extremely steep staircases, drove just across the street to Durty Nelly's, an adorable little pub that's older than the United States. Oh yes, I spelled Durty like that on purpose :)
We hurried from there to find the Cliffs of Moher, but ended up getting a bit lost, and decided with the limited daylight we had left to go to a Christmas market going on nearby instead. Oh and while we were on the road we stopped by the ocean. If you've ever seen Anne of Green Gables, it looks exactly like their beaches. The long grass, wet sand, and gray sky is a gorgeous combination. Hopefully we'll be able to visit it again soon and show you all some pictures.
To continue my story, we arrived at dusk (around 3 or 4 pm) at the market. Lots of booths were set up, with turf fires lighting up the night and providing the much appreciated heat for the market-goers. We bought some cute little angels from a booth called Sticks and Stones. The bodies are made from driftwood, round stones for the heads, and steel wings on the back. We all chose one to represent us. The booth worker was laughing awfully hard at our fussing over who would be who :)
Anywho... that was our Saturday. Cheers!

This top one is the real London Bridge, kinda a let down. Don't get too discouraged if you can't see it in the picture. I can't either.

Our first trip on a Double Decker Bus!

The Tower Bridge right down the river from the London Bridge. Personally I think this should be the London Bridge :) So beautiful and HUGE.

And this last one of the carnival. Supposed to be on the last post but I messed up.