Greetings!

Workin' hard!

The boys LOVE the four wheeler!

Family picture

Great Grandpa and Grandma Lane

Max enjoying our fishing trip and his jerky!

The guys!

Wow, it’s been just over two months since we left England and BUSY could not quite explain how we’ve been. It has been amazing to be a part of our family again. We’ve welcomed a new nephew into the family and gotten to know all the other little addition we missed over 7 years. We also welcome Justin’s youngest sister home from her mission. We have been so blessed since the day we landed. Finding vehicles went smooth and exceeded what we thought we would find for our budget. Justin found a nice 4Runner down in Provo for cheap. After some polish and wax it looks brand new. We spent a week at Flaming Gorge helping Dad out with the new place. It was nice for Justin to practice his trade again. It was like riding a bike, everything came back to him. We visited Grandpa and Judy in Nampa, Idaho for Memorial Day. Like I said, we’ve been busy having a good time. It’s already time for an oil change in our van we’ve been getting around so much.

Justin is back in school, just one class for the summer. He’ll be full time again in the fall, which isn’t really helpful for finding a job when you’re leaving in a couple months for school, but we knew that would be the deal. For now we’re still living at Justin’s parent’s house. There are a lot of homes on the market, and we’re working with the mortgage companies to see what we can do with the Post-9/11 Bill. Limbo would be the other word—along with busy—to describe things for us right now. Definitely worth the career change…no regrets!

We’re getting our tans back in all this sunshine. It has rained a little, but nothing like in Japan or England. The mountains are so beautiful and still snow capped, which is odd for this late in the year. Although we loved our global adventures, the convenience of living here is really, really nice. We’re investigating all the cheep places to shop to make our money stretch. That’s one thing we didn’t have to think about in the military. There are some great stores here with good prices, so we’ll be just fine. Again, it’s just so nice to be here that we’ll take the money sacrifice that comes with being out of the service. It makes us sick to our stomachs to think about being at another duty station after getting this close to the family again. Just goes to prove a prayerful decision is the right decision, even if you have to give up a little.

We hope all our friends all over the world are doing well. We do miss all of you very much. We have had some visitors stop by and it was so good to see you, you know who you are. We wish you could all visit. Well, maybe after we get a place of our own.

We think Sam is just now understanding that we’re not going back to England, or moving away. He does miss England and his friends. He’s anxious to go back to school and we don’t blame him. Sam will be in Kindergarten, which is kind of a step back from where he was in England. We hope Daniel and the Joes’ are doing well back at St. John’s.

I guess the only other news is that we actually got to spend our anniversary together this year. After 7 years of odd work schedules we got to spend our 9 year anniversary together. We had a reservation at our favorite restaurant, but we both caught colds a couple days before. So, this weekend we’ll celebrate our anniversary without the colds and at our favorite restaurant.

We hope you are all well wherever you are. We’re doing great here in Utah. For our LDS friends it really is so nice to be back around SLC. We attended a sealing in the Salt Lake Temple last week. It was such a great experience. Decorating the groom’s truck afterwords was a great experience also, but on a different level. I guess a Mormon in Salt Lake is like a Catholic in Rome; it just feels nice to be home. Well, don’t be strangers and keep us updated on important events. We’ll do the same from here.

Much Love,
Justin, Liz, Sam, Max and Bogart Zimmerman