Hello Family! We hope you are all doing great! We are doing wonderful and have had a busy and fun past 6 months! We have reached our year anniversary for being in this home now! So much has happened! Jared has served as the ward organist and recently received a calling as the Sunday School President. I (Nicki) was released from the Ward Preparedness Committee and now serve on the Relief Society Enrichment. This ward has been so fun and full of great friends. We really love Chandler!
Jared still works for University of Phoenix and is having a lot of overtime and success there. Jared and I both are still going to school full-time there. In fact, we both just doubled our schedule, possibly an insane thing to do, but next newsletter we’ll be able to say that graduation is very near! So work and school keeps us very busy! Our main projects this past summer has been organizing and building a food storage. I’ve learned how to can, which has been really exciting, and Jared has built us a cabinet for the 3-month storage. This weekend we finally finished building grow boxes and will get to plant our winter garden. It’s been such a wonderful and spiritual experience for us as we have learned to store food and water. Our testimony’s have grown so much and we’ve felt the spirit so strong. Storing food began as we tried to obey the prophet’s council, but now we realize the importance of us doing our part to learn to be self-reliant and prepare for the Savior’s return. We’ve experienced the promise that if we just do our part and just try, Heavenly Father pours down the blessings!
Jared Jr and Connor are growing so fast! We’ve started preschool. I’ve teamed up with my good friend with preschooling our kids, and so Jared Jr. and Connor both get to go to preschool Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s been really fun and I marvel at how fast these boys learn! The weather has drastically cooled off leaving us crisp and chilly mornings and evenings. The boys never want to come inside now, they LOVE to play outside. All summer I heard ‘it’s too hot mom’ and so it’s great to see them be boys and get dirty! Little Rachel will be a year old next month already! Time really does go too fast- it doesn’t matter how tight I hug them they just keep growing! She’s all over the place just trying to keep up with her brothers. She sits at the back door yelling for them and watching them play. She’s actually been able to sneak outside a couple of times, she loves the outdoors too! She’s at the stage of pulling herself up and scooting along furniture, eating non-mashed foods and says ‘dadda’ ‘mamma’ and ‘wow’. She’s such a doll! All of the kids have just been so fun!
With school and everything we haven’t been able to do many vacations this past summer. We try to take breaks on weekends by going to the splash parks, having BBQ’s and of course there’s always a family function between our family’s to go to. We are so blessed to have both of our family’s around us! We did get to take a break last month and headed up to Sedona. That’s been our favorite get-a-way place. It’s so beautiful up there and that was a much needed break. The most exciting event for us this past summer was the ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ show that came to town. That was an amazing experience that the boys still talk about! Other than that we’ve just been trying to keep up with things. We’re SO looking forward to the holidays! The cooler weather has brought in the holiday cheer in our house. I can’t help but put Christmas music on sometimes already! I know, it’s not even Halloween yet- some people would call that crazy but it brings such a fun spirit in the home we can’t help it! We look forward to seeing most of you with upcoming holiday events! Until then…
Love~
Jared, Nicki, Jared Jr., Connor & Rachel 
Jared & Nicole Haws Family