The Haynes 'Happenings': Our little girl grows up, new places and familiar faces and thanksgiving.

So this November update is a little late but we are still here and hope you are all doing well.

We started the month with Emma's 12th Birthday. It is hard to believe our little girl is now a young woman but she is a joy and delight to us and we are so proud to have her in our family. We made a special trip to Salt Lake City and the Temple on her birthday and she enjoyed eating at the Lion House cafe for dinner.

We are now a little busier with activities and other fun stuff that comes with growing up and entering Young Women's.

We saw dramatic changes in the leave colours during November and our first serious snows. The variety of colours and white of snow do make it beautiful but could do without the wet dirty slush you get after the fun is had and there is nothing that would make me miss clearing the ice/snow off the windshield in the mornings but plenty of people warned us about that morning ritual.

I made a one-day trip out to New York to visit with American Express and had a great time there meeting some great people. Saw the Statue of Liberty (if you squint hard enough at the photo below you can see the statue in the background) and the AMEX office is literally across the road from Ground Zero so that was a somber experience but good to see the construction there in full swing. I got an internship offer from Dell and also had many other info interviews and great contacts so the job search is going really well.

The CIS scholarship students had a great trip visiting a number of key sites in Salt Lake City, be hosted wonderfully by Church Hosting services, lunch with Elder Neil A Anderson and some great counsel from Elder Richard Cook. It was inspiring and a great experience.

Thanksgiving is a big deal here (and we should always be thankful) and we were lucky enough to be invited to Thanksgiving dinner at one of the Marriott School professor's home in Provo. It was great to be part of their tradition and spend extra time remembering what we are thankful for. It was good to have the long weekend break and we even got out of town and took a quick trip down to Manti to see the sights. Not much to see except for the scenery as we were reminded of how little many of the towns are here.

Finally we had some more good snow and real cold weather in time to welcome Daniel and Janelle McLean here and help send Daniel off into MTC in preparation for his service in the Canada Montreal (French) mission. It was great to see them and be part of their experience. We shared a great meal the night before he entered MTC and enjoyed catching up with Janelle as well.

We finished the month with another enjoyable Choir Concert at Centennial Middle School listening to Emma perform and ready for the last weeks of school and final exams. Time is going so quick!