A Newsy Letter

Everyone,
We are all doing well for the most part. Ellie is starting school Wednesday. We have her in a private school, due to disagreements with the public school system, and so it is a little more complicated as we have to drive her to a bus 20 minutes away. The complication is mostly because I have broken my right ankle and while I have avoided surgery, it has been 2 months in casts and now another 6 weeks in a boot before I start physical therapy. So, no driving for me. Still, the result is I have improved my balance, seriously improved my upper body strength, and my left leg is really strong. Mom says I need to start sculpting in stone again, I definitely have the muscle for it.
I am working on college classes home study and am working on getting an associate degree in art and a bachelors in writing. BYU has a program for the bachelors and I am taking the art at the local community college. I hope to start back on the regular art classes when my ankle is better. One class I really love is printmaking and I am working toward setting up my own shop. The shop at the community college across the street may be the best in the state and I will use it when I can stand again. I even got to do lithographs, printing on stone, which is amazing.
Ellie is nervous and excited about school. She went to field hockey camp last week and made some friends, so that helped. She loves field hockey and her coach said she was like a brick wall, nothing gets by her. She is one of the co-captains of the team--mostly because she is an eighth grader and has played before, but she can be very likable. At home she can be moody, but then she can be great. 13 is a tough age that way. The school has learning support so that will help with the dyslexia and the deafness. (She still has 100% hearing in the right ear, so its only the left she is deaf in. No way to fix, as she is missing the nerve, but unilateral deafness can be quite a problem. )
Steve is enjoying work at ICES. He left SAIC a year ago. He works nearby in Herndon and that makes things easier, especially on transportation. He was recently discovered to have a partially collapsed vertebra in his neck (the discs are fine) and they were considering surgery, but they wanted to run another test and then we will find out this week what they suggest. The initial suggestion involved cutting away the bad part of the vertebra and inserting a cage which would leave him "not stable" for two months--no working, etc. So it kind of has to wait until I can drive again. Right now he is being careful in his activities, head motion, etc. and walking a lot to keep in shape.
All the older kids seem to be fine. I will let them fill you all in on any details. Suffice to say that we like our son and daughters in law and we think all our grandkids are amazingly cute and clever.
Hope all is well with all of you and look forward hearing about any interesting things going on in your lives.
Sheryl