Jason & Becky

It's a bad sign when you can't remember the last time you wrote a Lingo entry. Of course, I can hardly remember what I ate for breakfast, so maybe that's a bad gauge. A quick update on the Jason Tomlinson family. We had a nice summer, a little busy we thought, with Jason taking some classes and Becky in charge of Young Women's camp. Little did we know what was lurking in September...The last week of August marked the beginning of new adventures: Jason started his first semester as a part-time graduate student in the Masters of Accounting program at USU. He took some prerequisites this summer, but they were one-semester-covered-in-one-week kind of classes. Now we have the whole entourage of school stresses: big books to carry around, nightly homework, and worst of all group projects!

At the same time Jason began rehearsals for another play (wait, don't let your eyes glaze over, this is different!). There is no music, no costume changes, no dancing, and NO WOMEN! The play is called "Twelve Angry Men" and is the story of a jury deliberating over the verdict in a murder trial. It is the first drama ever to be done at the Old Barn Community Theater. A historic event! The show runs every Friday, Saturday and Monday in October (www.oldbarn.org for more info!). Jason's character is the only man to vote "not guilty" in the first scene and the rest of the show develops around his arguments for doing so.

We have spent a lot of time this summer planning to redo some landscaping on our grass-obsessed yard. (We have .25 acres of thirsty lawn!) So maybe by the time the next Lingo rolls around we will be able to report that 2,000 square feet of that lawn has been removed and replaced with trees, perennial flowers and bushes, along with some attractive xeriscaping. How come no one told us that owning a house changes your perspective on everything! I never thought I'd find myself reading landscaping books and flipping through seed catalogs. Speaking of the yard, we've enjoyed our first year as gardeners. Jason picked (and picked, and picked) raspberries. Some were eaten, some were frozen and many were made into freezer jam. Becky also made a batch of applesauce with apples from one of our trees. The sunflowers were big and beautiful. Now we are waiting for them to dry so we can harvest the seeds. We had two exciting squash volunteers: one pumpkin and uh....squash/pumpkin/zucchini hybrid...the SQUMKINI. It looks like a bumpy, green-bottomed pumpkin. We've picked a few beets and carrots, but the caterpillars ate all the cabbage, the onions never grew and we're not sure the corn's going to make it. We could do pretty good as grasshopper farmers though!

And, last but not least, we would like to announce that our family is growing (actually, just Becky's belly for now). We are expecting a new baby in February of 2009! Becky is having nightmares about growing a third arm to try and keep up with a third kid. Meanwhile, Katherine has told us she is naming the baby. When she was told "usually that is Mommy and Daddy's job" she said "Okay. But if you pick a dumb one, I'll pick a better one." Last check, Boots, Dora and John were on the list, along with a few names I'm sure can't be found in any baby books.

Lots of love, Jason and Becky