2008 Christmas Letter

Our year this year started off with a lot of excitement. I was pregnant with our first child and James had just put in for a job in Montana. Time flew by as we finished up the improvements on our house and went to the many doctor appointments. In February James was able to come up to Montana for a Buffalo hunt and look at the area that we were planning to move to. In April we received a phone call saying that James had his choice of going to Bonners Ferry, ID, Whitefish, Sweetgrass, or Shelby, MT. We settled on Shelby and called our friend up there to see which city was the best place to live. He told us Conrad was the best town around. So we started looking at houses online trying to see if we could find anything we liked. I found the house I wanted which had been on the market for a while; it was still there when we got to Conrad I was very excited. We lucked out with our house in Benson; there was an agent at the Tucson station that was looking for a place for him and his family. James happened to hear the conversation and told them about our house. Our house problem had been solved, now came the task of packing all our stuff. We finally managed to get all packed by 9:00pm the night before we were leaving. We never would have been ready if not for the help of our ward and family. We started out (me 7 ½ months pregnant) on our 1500 mile drive and broke down in Tucson, we sure didn’t get very far. One quick stop at the Border Patrol station and at U-Haul and we were on our way. We made it to Wickiup, AZ and blew a tire on the U-Haul. 4 hours later someone was there to fix the tire (we weren’t allowed to do it ourselves). Good thing it was only 115 that day. We were lucky to find a BBQ restaurant that we could eat and wait at. The rest of the trip went smoothly; we made it to Montana in 3 days. When we crossed the border we had yet another surprise. It was snowing! At least it wasn’t hot. We made it to Conrad and found a place to rent, made a couple of phone calls and had a couple of people from the ward come and help us move in. It rained on us for the next 3 weeks and snowing 8” in June, quite a change from our warm and sunny Arizona. We welcomed our first baby girl Araya Lee Stanley on July 29th. She was 5lbs 4oz and now is 5 months and almost 15lbs. She is sitting up by herself, babbling, laughing, and has just found her feet. They are her new favorite toy. James was able to go on a hunting trip to Africa at the end of August. If he didn’t have Araya and me in his life he probably wouldn’t have come back anytime soon, he enjoyed it that much. In October we were able to introduce Araya to all her relatives and friends back in Arizona. The trip went by so fast and we were on our way back to Montana. December has been quite a month for us up here. We are setting record low temperatures and they haven’t seen this much snow in 15 years. It didn’t get above zero for almost two weeks with lows and wind chills of -45 degrees, and we have had 2 ½ feet of snow (most of it still in our front yard). We are finally starting to warm up with highs in the 30’s we are so excited to be able to go out and play in the snow. James and I plan to build a huge snowman in our front yard. We love and miss everyone and hope you had a wonderful year and are enjoying the Christmas Season.

James, Tammy, and Araya Stanley