JANUARY 2025

In Our Family This Month...

* After 2.5 months off for our Winter/Holiday break we started back to school on January 8th with a full load of new classes! It has certainly felt good to get back into a good schedule and be learning together again! All 3 kids are in the Concurrent Enrollment program with BYUI  - Aubrie is taking 3 classes and Nathan and Lexi each have 2 classes. Then they are all taking a Sports PE class through Tech Trep and then we're doing our History, Biology, Current Events, Enrichment and English as our homeschool classes. The college courses have been a big stretching exercise but the kids have all stepped up and are doing amazing so far!

* Rugby has been still doing the off season workouts on Monday and Thursday evenings. The girls have been going to that and Nathan has been diligently going to the gym 4+ days a week with Hunter to get ready for his Rugby season. The girls also took time this month to start in on their fundraising for Nationals. Each girl has to raise $1,500!! That is soooo much! They went around one of the nearby neighborhoods and have each gotten $500 towards their goal! Amazing! Still lots left to do but they're working hard on it! We also had the big Parents/Players meeting that dad organized, planned, prepared and facilitated. He had a great slideshow presentation and we had over 150 people in attendance! The Meridian Club is trying to really grow our Middle School Teams which involves getting a boys MS team up and running. This meeting was for all the MS and HS teams (boys and girls). Mom is the VP for the Booster Club so she was busy that night trying to recruit parent volunteers to help run the different committees. I think it'll be a great year and we're all excited for the season to start here on February 3rd.

* The night finally arrived where Mom and the girls were able to use their Christmas Gift and went to the HAMILTON theater production. We went to dinner at Cafe Ole beforehand and then made our way down to The Morrison Center in Boise and were ready for the show to start! We had a great time and it was really fun to be there with the girls and experience it all together. 

* During the 2nd Act of Hamilton, my (mom's) phone started blowing up with all sorts of texts coming through one after another. Of course it was on silent and it would be rude to check my phone but I discreetly checked my notifications on my watch and saw all of these (miniature) pictures of Nathan all bloody and beat up coming through! Needless to say, I was quite distracted and couldn't imagine what had happened. I eventually found out that while he was the Stake Activity (sledding at Eagle Island) he'd had a major accident and crashed in the ice that busted his nose, glasses and gave him road rash all over the side of his face. He kept up his spirits and has been doing fairly well. We've had to wait for the swelling to go down to take him in to see if his nose is broken or not (which is the plan for this coming week). Moral of the story: Always hold on extra tight with both hands to the tube!

* Aubrie had asked mom last month if she could get a winter/snow photo shoot with Charlie at some point. Well, that point came this month and so we drove out towards Idaho City until we found some snow! Here are a few of our favorites. Lexi came also (as she's a fantastic assistant!) and then we grabbed a few pictures of her as well (and then we had Charlie take a picture of us three girls together)... Aren't they all just the cutest!!

Spiritually Speaking...

Written by dad:

I had quite the experience Monday. I went duck hunting in the morning with my good buddy, Louie Jordao. We got in place in the reeds on the Snake River before sunrise, just downstream from the dam at CJ Strike Reservoir. It has not been a cold winter so all of the Canadian birds have not pushed down yet. We weren’t having much luck and had only shot a few birds so we decided to pack up and scout out a place called Jack’s Creek because we had heard there were a lot of Russian Olive trees along the creek and wood ducks love living around those trees. We scouted out Jack’s Creek but didn’t see much but did eventually stumble across the Jack’s Creek Wildlife Management Area, along the reservoir. We decided to check it out and as we drove along the trail adjacent to the water, we started to see that there were ducks there. Louie and I dismounted and walked along the shore and managed to shoot a few birds and Maggie retrieved them. It was at this point, I spotted what I believed to be a leucitic coot (basically, an almost albino coot). I shot it and Maggie brought it back. Coots are not desirable birds. They do not taste good and are not ducks but more like water chickens. They are really bad for duck populations so Fish and Game has set the daily limit at 32 because they will destroy Mallard nests and break all of the eggs. I was excited because with it being leucitic, it was rare.

Louie’s wife works at a taxidermy shop so we called her so I could talk to Steve, the guy who does all of the duck mounts. I told him that I had a rare but not desirable bird and if he wanted it, I would send it home with Louie. He said he would like it and to send pics. I sent them over and also sent pics to our old Bishop, Rob Mortenson, who is an avid bird photographer. Both began to text me back and both said, “That’s not a coot. It looks like you shot a Grebe.  That’s illegal.”

My heart sunk. It turns out, I had shot a Horned Grebe hen which are a threatened species and illegal to hunt. I hadn’t accidentally shot it. I purposely shot it but I did misidentify what it was.

We drove home, Louie hopped in his truck and left, and I walked in to tell Shandy what had happened.

The maximum penalty for killing something on the threatened or endangered species list is a $15,000 fine and up to five years in prison. I had looked up several accounts of people who had shot Grebes in some online forums and saw where one guy had gotten a $1000 fine and had his hunting license taken from him for three years.

We discussed what happened. Shandy asked me what I was going to do and I said, “I have to go and turn myself in.”

I have always told my kids and the kids on our team that you need to have integrity. Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. You’ve got to choose the hard right over the easy wrong.

I could have thrown the bird in the trash and covered up what I did but that wouldn’t have been the honest thing to do. I couldn’t have honestly answered all of the temple interview questions if I did that. Shandy agreed and said that she supported me. We prayed that the Fish and Game Department guys would have their hearts softened and that they would find it in their hearts to go easy on me. She asked if I wanted her to come with me but I declined and said that it was something I needed to do on my own.

I drove down into Boise and was very solemn. I felt awful about what had happened. I thought about the Prophet when he left to go to Carthage Jail. Now obviously, two totally different situations but I felt like I could kind of relate. I thought about the money that we were potentially about to lose in fines. I didn’t think I was going to go to jail but I thought that if I was charged with anything, it would ruin any chance I had at being named the next Meridian Head Coach.

I parked my truck and walked into F&G’s headquarters building. I approached the front desk and the gentlemen behind the counter said, “How are you today?” I told him I had been better. I then explained what had happened and told him I needed to chat with someone. He directed me to sit down and said he’d have someone come out to talk to me.

A gentlemen named, Brian came out and listened to my account. He asked if I still had the bird. I told him that I did and that it was in the bed of my truck. We walked out so he could see it. He wasn’t quite sure which species of Grebe it was but asked me to stay put and that he needed to go inside and chat with some guys from enforcement. He was really nice and pleasant and not at all stern, condemning, or judgmental. After what seemed like forever but was probably only five minutes, he came back and asked what I had going on the rest of the day. I told him that I had something at 5:00pm (off-season weight lifting for the team) but I was pretty flexible prior to that. He asked me to drive out to Nampa to their other office so I could meet with a guy named Josh who oversaw incidents like that. I asked what usually happens in cases like this and he told me the best news I could have imagined.

Brian explained, “Since you did the right thing and self-reported, we usually confiscate the bird and then issue you a written warning. You were honest, you didn’t waste the bird by throwing it in the bushes or in a dumpster and you came forward on your own. We appreciate that and we know that sometimes, mistakes happen.” I felt such a relief and such a huge weight lift off of me. I thanked Brian and headed out to Nampa to meet with Josh.

When I arrived, Josh and his new trainee, Connor, met me in the lobby and then we headed out to the parking lot to look at the bird and confirm what it was. Josh was a seasoned veteran and made Connor and I determine what the species was in google after I had shared my story. Again, no judgement, no scolding, just thanks for doing the right thing and coming forward. After Connor and I had decided that it was, indeed, a Horned Grebe hen, I was issued a written warning that I had to sign and they confiscated the bird. They told me to not be too hard on myself and that sometimes mistakes happen. They thanked me again and I was on my way. No fine. No forfeiture of my license. Best of all, no jail time or charges!

I drove home and was extremely grateful and relieved!

As I pondered all of this, I saw the similarities between my experience and what it’s like when we sin and need to repent.

I could have thrown the bird away and probably, no one would have ever turned me in. I, however, would have carried that knowledge and guilt with me that I had illegally killed a bird on the threatened list. It always would have hung with me. That’s how it is with sin. A lot of our sins are not out in the open and only we, and Heavenly Father, know about them. Carrying sin around with us can weigh so heavily on us.

Just like the Fish and Game guys I confessed to, the Bishop and Heavenly Father are not angry with us. They are not judgmental. They are not condemning. They thank us for doing the right thing, they are understanding and supportive and then Heavenly Father forgives us. Our sins are forgiven, we are washed clean, and it is as though it never happened.

I am so grateful for the gift of repentance. As President Nelson has admonished us - repent daily! Don’t let sin pile up and weigh you down. Forgiveness is there for all of us and and our Savior has paid for all of those sins that we can be made clean again and can return to live with our Heavenly Parents and our eternal families.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen!