The Holiday season is upon us already and all is well with the Ryan family. With each passing year we become more aware of the many blessings the Lord has blessed us with. We are enjoying good health and we have a many wonderful friends and a loving family. We enjoy so much hearing from each of you at this time of year and though also send out a news letter.
This past year has been very eventful for us and our country.
We have had the opportunity to do some traveling this past year. Last Dec/Jan while I was still working in Iraq, Jeanie and I vacationed in Thailand and Cambodia. I flew from Baghdad/Dubai and Jeanie flew from Salt Lake City, we met at the airport in Thailand. We had a wonderful time visiting Bangkok, Chiang Mai and the small island of Koh Tao while in Thailand. While on Koh Tao we went scuba diving a couple of times. Then we went to the city of Siem Reap in Cambodia to see the ruins of Angkor Wat. In all we spent 16 days there and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. In May Jeanie and I took Holly to her home in California and then went up to Yosemite National Park for a few days. Even though we had been traveling back and forth to California for the past 36 years to visit family we had never taking the side trip to the park. We enjoyed seeing all the waterfalls and other beautiful sites in the park. We also went to Island Park, Idaho to visit our neighbor’s at their cabin and to Gunnison, Colorado to attend the funeral of my aunt Elma.
After twenty nine months I finally returned home from Iraq the end of April. I had many interesting experiences, saw many interesting things and met many interesting people while there. Although I generally enjoyed my time there and I liked my job, I didn’t like being away from home. A pillow to hug at night is a poor replacement for a loving wife. I missed Jeanie and the family terribly. My job there was a maintenance supervisor, in other words he managed 4 to 5 maintenance shops that performed most of the maintenance on the military vehicles and equipment there on the base in Kirkuk, Iraq. I came home with the idea that I had a job pretty much lined up with one of the car dealerships but didn’t happen so I went to work trying to find a decent job, so far though that hasn’t happened either. In August after a number of good interviews I finally took a truck driving job to tide us over until something better comes along. But from the looks of the economy it might be longer than expected.
Jeanie is still working part time at Riverton High School in the Special Education Department as a Transitional Aid. She enjoys her job and has many friends she works with. While I was in Iraq she had a group of women she regularly went to movie with, but since I’ve returned she doesn’t do that as much. She is also the secretary for the Relief Society in our Ward which keeps her busy. But her most enjoyable title is that of Grandma to two delightful children, Brandon and Bailey (Chris’ kids).
Mark and Helen live in Harwood, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. Mark works for a company that is a defense contractor and his office is at Andrews Air Force Base where he is a Counter Intelligence Analyst. Helen works at a retail nursery near there home. They don’t have any kids yet (tap, tap, tap…this is Jeanie and I tapping our feet) but they do have a golden retriever name Finnegan which they love like a child and they recently bought a new Mini Cooper which make them feel like kids again. I can see them know zooming around the streets of Maryland and DC with Finn’s head stuck out the rear window, his tongue wagging in the wind. Mark told us on Christmas Day that, unbeknownst to us, he had been working on his bachelor’s degree in communications at the University of Maryland and is graduating this December.
Chris is a union Electrician currently working as a foreman for Pine Valley Electric at Kennecott copper mine. He and JoDee have two children; Brandon age 6 and Bailey age 4. Fortunately, they live close by in Draper so we see them often. They all live in Draper, Utah.. Chris works a lot of hours so JoDee no longer works at Albertson’s but she does stay busy shuttling Brandon to kindergarten and Bailey to preschool. Brandon loves baseball and soccer and Bailey is in gymnastics.
Chad works at UPS for about 20 hours a week and handles the calls from the garage door business. He has a couple of motorcycles and an old truck he is working on. He lives a home with us here in Bluffdale and was a huge help to his mother while I was away in Iraq.
Holly recently moved back home from San Diego, California. I can’t imagine why anyone would move to Utah the in December from San Diego but we are glad to have her home. She got a job at a Draper branch of Wells Fargo Bank, the same bank she has worked for while down in SoCal, she the Customer Service Manager. She is planning on going back to school soon, in fact that is the main reason she came back home.
Marci and her husband live in Draper too. They sold there house in South Salt Lake just prior to the housing crisis and they are renting a basement apartment. Marci works at Zion’s Bank and Jason works a company that manages commercial property. They have a border collie named Scout (named after the main character in Marci’s favorite book, “To Kill a Mocking Bird”)
.
This past year has been very eventful for us and our country.
We have had the opportunity to do some traveling this past year. Last Dec/Jan while I was still working in Iraq, Jeanie and I vacationed in Thailand and Cambodia. I flew from Baghdad/Dubai and Jeanie flew from Salt Lake City, we met at the airport in Thailand. We had a wonderful time visiting Bangkok, Chiang Mai and the small island of Koh Tao while in Thailand. While on Koh Tao we went scuba diving a couple of times. Then we went to the city of Siem Reap in Cambodia to see the ruins of Angkor Wat. In all we spent 16 days there and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. In May Jeanie and I took Holly to her home in California and then went up to Yosemite National Park for a few days. Even though we had been traveling back and forth to California for the past 36 years to visit family we had never taking the side trip to the park. We enjoyed seeing all the waterfalls and other beautiful sites in the park. We also went to Island Park, Idaho to visit our neighbor’s at their cabin and to Gunnison, Colorado to attend the funeral of my aunt Elma.
After twenty nine months I finally returned home from Iraq the end of April. I had many interesting experiences, saw many interesting things and met many interesting people while there. Although I generally enjoyed my time there and I liked my job, I didn’t like being away from home. A pillow to hug at night is a poor replacement for a loving wife. I missed Jeanie and the family terribly. My job there was a maintenance supervisor, in other words he managed 4 to 5 maintenance shops that performed most of the maintenance on the military vehicles and equipment there on the base in Kirkuk, Iraq. I came home with the idea that I had a job pretty much lined up with one of the car dealerships but didn’t happen so I went to work trying to find a decent job, so far though that hasn’t happened either. In August after a number of good interviews I finally took a truck driving job to tide us over until something better comes along. But from the looks of the economy it might be longer than expected.
Jeanie is still working part time at Riverton High School in the Special Education Department as a Transitional Aid. She enjoys her job and has many friends she works with. While I was in Iraq she had a group of women she regularly went to movie with, but since I’ve returned she doesn’t do that as much. She is also the secretary for the Relief Society in our Ward which keeps her busy. But her most enjoyable title is that of Grandma to two delightful children, Brandon and Bailey (Chris’ kids).
Mark and Helen live in Harwood, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. Mark works for a company that is a defense contractor and his office is at Andrews Air Force Base where he is a Counter Intelligence Analyst. Helen works at a retail nursery near there home. They don’t have any kids yet (tap, tap, tap…this is Jeanie and I tapping our feet) but they do have a golden retriever name Finnegan which they love like a child and they recently bought a new Mini Cooper which make them feel like kids again. I can see them know zooming around the streets of Maryland and DC with Finn’s head stuck out the rear window, his tongue wagging in the wind. Mark told us on Christmas Day that, unbeknownst to us, he had been working on his bachelor’s degree in communications at the University of Maryland and is graduating this December.
Chris is a union Electrician currently working as a foreman for Pine Valley Electric at Kennecott copper mine. He and JoDee have two children; Brandon age 6 and Bailey age 4. Fortunately, they live close by in Draper so we see them often. They all live in Draper, Utah.. Chris works a lot of hours so JoDee no longer works at Albertson’s but she does stay busy shuttling Brandon to kindergarten and Bailey to preschool. Brandon loves baseball and soccer and Bailey is in gymnastics.
Chad works at UPS for about 20 hours a week and handles the calls from the garage door business. He has a couple of motorcycles and an old truck he is working on. He lives a home with us here in Bluffdale and was a huge help to his mother while I was away in Iraq.
Holly recently moved back home from San Diego, California. I can’t imagine why anyone would move to Utah the in December from San Diego but we are glad to have her home. She got a job at a Draper branch of Wells Fargo Bank, the same bank she has worked for while down in SoCal, she the Customer Service Manager. She is planning on going back to school soon, in fact that is the main reason she came back home.
Marci and her husband live in Draper too. They sold there house in South Salt Lake just prior to the housing crisis and they are renting a basement apartment. Marci works at Zion’s Bank and Jason works a company that manages commercial property. They have a border collie named Scout (named after the main character in Marci’s favorite book, “To Kill a Mocking Bird”)
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