Baton Rouge Week 40

Hi there. We are having a youth fireside tonight. I am trying to write this letter while Dana is gone visiting teaching and before eating lunch.

I had a giant project. I had to finish a book chapter and it was hard to get started. I ended up writing a pretty chapter. Dana has finished a paper from her dissertation that she is having proof reading this week.

We found out on Thursday that LSU is undergoing some reorganizing. For example, the math department has been in the college of Arts and Sciences, where English is, but it is moving to the College of science. Then Arts and Science will be getting the department of economics and some other things and then it becomes the college of Humanities and Social Sciences. The college of Education has been a small college with two pretty large departments and will now had several schools and other departments and be the College of Education and Human Professions. Anyway, many things are up in the air. We don’t even know if our dean will stay the same. It is a little confusing. We don’t know what that will mean for Dana’s job. Many things are up in the air.

We had a nice talk with Amelia last Sunday. It was nice to hear from her. We have been trying to make the little camera work. Well, the camera kind of works, but our sound quality is bad. Sometimes, the connection also goes out. It is fun to see Miriam and Evie. Okay, it is good to see Amelia and Raymond as well.

We love hearing from everyone else as well. Abbey is good at keeping in touch too. I also found that if I write Walker a separate letter, he writes me back. Have any of you found that to be true as well? We also heard from Sophia this week. It is going to be fun to have them here. We are looking forward to the whole event.

We had some major landscaping done this week. The plants grow like crazy. We had them trim some trees, clear out some over grown flower beds, cut back tropical plants, and clean up a lot of dead fall. We celebrated by planting some flower yesterday. We went to the temple in the morning and then browsed some plant stores. We had to find stuff that will stand the heat, grow in the shade, and still stay in bloom all summer. We planted some caladiums and some impatiens. The caladiums are a bulb that grow like crazy during the spring and summer and then die back. We never saw them in Utah. They would actually grow inside there. I don’t think I have ever grown impatiens either. We have another flower bed to plant next week. We hope these do well so that we can plant some more. We also cleaned out two planters along our patio in the back. Stay tuned you might get some pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I only got one comment, from Amelia, who wanted a picture of our owl. Well, it is an owl and they are unpredictable. I will try to get a picture of “our” owl. The picture on our blog does look exactly like ours, but ours is cooler because it is ours! More comments on the great pictures please.

We now have blinds, some curtains, flowers and we also hung a picture. It looks like we are moving in. Who knows by the time Curtis and Sophia get here we might have even a couple of more pictures throughout the house.

Conference is next week. I have been looking forward to it. I hope all of you are also getting ready for a great week end. Those of you in Utah might even start to hope for descent weather.

Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana.