Fast Sunday Family Fireside

On August 7th Mom gave the fireside. It was about her grandmother, Margaret Mariah Terry Mendenhall Cloward. We learned about the many places that Grandma Cloward lived in her life-time. I counted 28 places that she had lived. I read the story that Grandma wrote about the year they had Christmas in a stable. When I think about all that they went through just to make a living, and that they still had faith and raised a large family, it makes me very grateful for the heritage we have been blessed with.

After the lesson we enjoyed the many desserts that were served.

I hope that everyone will come to the Mendenhall Family reunion on September 2 in Payson to get to know more about this branch of our family!

Our next Fireside will be September 4th @6:30.

From the Pitts

Kyle's saying 38+ words, sounds of a dog, horse, cow & duck. He says star and knows what a star is and is learning other shapes! My favorite is when I ask him to say grandma he says "mama".

Here is some late news-- Jared and I bought a house this year in February and moved in on April 1st! ( no kidding!)

It's my 25th birthday on August 19th:)

Love,

Keeley, Jared and Kyle

REUNION TIME!!

We'll see you all June 23-25, 2011 at Teton Valley Cabins!!

There are about 65 members of the Meldrum Family going to the reunion next week. It will be a great time to build family bonds and get reaquainted with more distant cousins.

Our Family is doing breakfast Friday morning with the Blad family. Bill and Paula have stuff for an Easter egg hunt, and Blads are organizing a program.

There will be lots of fun things to do together while we celebrate Halloween and do trick-or-treating (have a trick to do!), and a gift exchange for Christmas.

Plan on helping with the activities we have planned because you will be asked to help!

Come and have Fun with the Family!!!

Davis Doings

Well, as most of you know this month has been a very busy one in our household.


Spencer is home from Germany! :)

Bill, Christian and I had a wonderful time going there to pick him up. I especially liked meeting the mission president and his wife, Pres. and Sister Thompson. You could really feel the spirit in their home. They have definitely been a help for the work of these missionaries. They will be released in July when the Hamburg Mission will be closed and divided between the Berlin and Frankfurt missions. :(

We had such a great time travelling and getting to see many of the areas where Spencer served. I learned that taking German in school 25 years ago did not prepare me to speak and understand much while I was there. We were glad to have Spencer to help us out.

Spencer gave a wonderful testimony in sacrament meeting on April 18th, and then gave more of his experiences at the Family Fireside this month. We also participated in our Stake Cultural Fair where we displayed things from Germany and made some German foods to share.

Spencer is now back to working in the office and will be going to school soon. This promises to be a full summer for all of our family.

We love you all!

News Needed....Where's Yours?

Scott says.......
I just want to say a thank you to Paula and Mom especially for doing a newsletter! We have kept every one since it started. In a way it is part of our family history. I get excited to see it. It is our main connection to our family in America. Sure it is nice seeing people's Blogs or catching up on facebook and I love talking to Paula's family and Mom on skype (I still need more people to use this free service by the way), but the newsletter is like the Reader's Digest of our family news. (That means it is a real good read when you are on the throne.) I appreciate Paula and Mom for their dedicated effort. I know I couldn't do what they do. And so I hope I can at least support them by getting some timely news in on a regular basis.

I also know that these newsletters get out to our missionaries and that they enjoy them. That doesn't excuse us from writing to our missionary(ies) personally, but lets face it our family is terrible at writing letters. I can prove it, I have a spreadsheet from my mission showing who wrote me and who I wrote and when. I have had more information about and from David and Mark the last two years through the newsletter than I did during my mission (when we didn't have a newsletter). So if you are going to write send something into the news letter.

In the past year it has slowly been losing momentum as Mom and Paula has stopped trying to remind everyone and every one is too lazy.. I mean busy.. to set a time to have their articles in once every month or two. Please, we should have at least nine articles in the newsletter plus Mom's. That's a pretty small number considering Margaret's kids usually put a couple of articles in wether or not Margaret does.

English Meldrum's

Hi All,
Here is some of our news. March saw Kamyla turning two (though she has been in her terrible twos since she was 18mo). I also got older too.

Jared had replaced Rachelle in the bruise department as he comes home from school with new bruises and scrapes almost every day and sometimes returns to school with some he loves wrestling. I don't know where he gets that from.

Rachelle is more settled into Senior school now. It is always hard to be in the youngest grade in the school there is no one to pick on!

Krystal is doing very well in school and is above average in most of her subjects I've never had a child that I had to threaten with grounding her for doing her homework!

Britainy is doing briliantly at college dispite her cronic fatigue she is getting an A* in maths which I worried about earlier in the year as she had transfered out of an easy class into a harder class. wow she's smart! (too bad she can't wash the dishes with such enthusiasm)

We have taken up calling Kamyla Shirley Temple because of all the curles in her hair and the way she makes us smile.

Kim is just wonderful and certainly the glue that keeps our family together.

I finally got my English Drivers licence it is too long a story for here but suffice it to say it was long overdue.

I would say that over the past year our greatest blessings have come through setbacks and dissapointments. That is usually the hardest way to recognise your blessings but they are still there.

One thing that has been on my mind is the european area presidencies vision for the next ten years. Spencer probably is familiar with it since Germany is part of the Area. They plan to double the active membership in ten years our stake has set similar goals for continued sustainable growth. This excites me alot to be a part of it. Can it be done? We did that in Swindon ward in the last five years! So yes it can be done. we are now being audited to see about extending our five year old chaple to make more needed space (see Isaiah 49:19-20).

It was May Day weekend so we had a long weekend. We went camping, stupid!! Two words cold, wet. Ok it wasn't all bad but it did take a day to thaw out. the actuall place was nice. Brixham is part of the English Riviara where I had served part of my mission. Mom might recall staying in Torquay one night with the Bezwicks. we were camping on the opposit side of the bay. It was beautiful. too bad it was cold. I was excited to see they had their own chaple about two hundred yards from the beach front! wonder what their Ward activities are like?

Love you all

Scott Meldrum
TechnoServ/Hydrolutions
Phone: 01793 347277

MELDRUM FAMILY NEWS

MOM'S MESSAGE

Dear Family,
This last couple of months I have been reading and thinking a lot of our pioneer ancestors. It really helps when you think your life is hard. Just having a nice bed with clean sheets and a soft pillow is a lot to be thankful for.
The Christmas season was really nice with parties with my children and grandchildren and brothers and sisters and Ross’ brother’s and sister’s. Lois and Merlin brought their foreign exchange student from Germany. He was really fun to play games with. I can’t remember his name.
Mark and Andrew and Marianne and John and their two foreign exchange students, Vegard and Nico were here for Christmas. It was really nice not to be alone. Julie was in Washington with Candace and her new baby. The New Year’s party at Marianne’s was super! I went down with Kathy and girls. We checked into a Motel along with Margaret and Dale and Amy and Brian and their kids. We then went to Marianne’s and had a three day party! Jeremy and Krystal and kids, Rick and Melinda and kids stayed at Marianne’s. Matt, Melissa, Dayna and Alison, and Keeley and Jared and Mark were there from St. George. We had a great time eating and playing games. Marianne’s friend, Connie and her husband came for a little while and played Mark’s game, the one he made that Margaret got for Christmas. He made some extras and it was a big hit, everyone loved it and he got a few orders to make more. We should have a tournament at Camp! (June 20-26 @ Duck Creek)
Saturday we went over to Matt and Melissa’s to see their apartment and play “Ticket to Ride”. Melissa was so sweet and caring as she showed us around and made sure everyone was comfortable and had something to eat and drink. I will always remember her that way.
On the way home on Sunday we stopped in Ephraim at Penny’s and picked up a car for Kathy. It’s the nicest one she has had for quite some time. It belonged to Penny’s father. He died a few months ago.
I would just like to go back and erase January from the calendar, but of course I can’t. We just have to go on from here. We can’t bring Melissa back, but we can remember her goodness, her vitality, her joy in her family, and her love of life. Goodbye, Melissa. I will always remember you.
Love,
Grandma
PS-- I haven’t forgotten about my missionaries! Adam and Spencer, I pray for you every day. I would like to hear more from you. I hear about Spencer every week, but not much about Adam. I can only assume you are having a terrific time and will have a lot to tell us when you get home.


Check out pg. 5 for information on the Fireside in March!

DID YOU KNOW?
*Spencer only has one transfer left on his mission!
*There are 113 descendants in the Meldrum line. (unless I’ve left someone out)
*There are 19 family members whose first name starts with J

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!!
February
1--Allyson (2001)
4--William (1987)
5--Britainy (1992)
7--Hyrum (2002)
10--Jordyn (2005)
12--Lyndi (2008)
14--Ameri (1990)
18--Charity (1995)
John
19--Paula (1963)
Ross (1981-2005)