cc: file, Mom, Sara and Des, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Charles and Diane Cluff, and Claude and Katherine Warner, Forest and Amy Warner, Ivan and Chell Warner, and Eric and Renee Miner
"As we left Paul at the Missionary Training Center and prepared to head to Salt Lake Thursday evening, everyone seemed to be saying `Why do we have to stay another day, I want to go home.' I'm not sure how we ended up with airplane tickets returning a day after dropping Paul off, but we did. It was really nice of Debra and Steve to allow us to come and share Cory's 21st birthday with them and to feed us dinner. However, I think everyone was releaved with the ticket agent said, `I'm not suspose to change these tickets without a $50 per ticket surcharge, but there are 22 empty seats on this flight. Oh, screw the rules, it will hard for them to figure out who made the change anyway.' So we got to Houston Thursday night about midnight, and got home about 1:30 Friday morning. Everyone was wiped out, but everyone was glad to be home.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about home lately. My home will always be the farm by Cedar City. Guess the dirt gets in your veins when you play and work in it your whole youth. I have tried my best to provide a consistant place for all of you kids to feel is home. We have been in this house on Emerald Green for over 12 years now. One of the things I have come to understand about myself is that I have a strong sense of place. I am a spatial thinker, which is why I enjoy geology and geophysics so much. And I become deeply rooted to a place, finding it very hard to move on and to leave. When I took Paul to the temple a few weeks ago, we were later than anticipated leaving and I wanted to fly back to Houston to go to the Energy Innovations Christmas Party. Still, Paul and Kristina (Paul's girl friend that was just baptized a couple of months ago and was at the temple doing baptisms while Paul took out his endowments) were in the car and I took the time to drive past our first `home' in Dallas (not counting the apartment on Webbs Chapel) on the way to the airport. Just barely made the airplane, but we saw the cute little cottage on Hanover Street. A few minutes ago I read the song I wrote about our `home' at the University of Utah, and was amazed at the wisdom in the words of a 23 year old newly wed, basically saying home is where you put in a lot of effort.
There have been several times this past week when family members have said `I just want to go home.' Tonight Rob and Sara and Melanie and I took down the Chirstmas decorations, and I could not stop thinking about our home. I even spent some time letting my melancholy thoughts run out my tear ducts. In fact, I spend a lot of time these days playing scenarios in my mind about what my home will be like in the future, and I wanted to write this thoughtlet to share my simple insight.
Home is the environment we make each day. I won't take everyone's time to apologize for my mistakes or try to recount every wonderful time we have ever had. But I do want to promise to always have a home for anyone in my immediate family (and our extended family that wants to come and visit, e.g. Steve Wood might come duck hunting here next fall). There might be some tears of joy and some tears of pain, there might be some fun and there will probably be some work, but all in all I will strive to have a positive environment for you to visit and hope you will all take advantage of the offer as often as you possibly can. I hope you kids will learn from the environments we have provided you and will improve on them when you each start to build your own homes."