Monday, June 24, 2013

bit of News :)

May 5, 2013 Dear family and friends! I hope that this letter finds everyone doing well. The first several months of the year have gone by quite fast for us. January was a relatively quiet month for us. The weather is usually rainy and so we tend to stay indoors quite a bit. Ingrid did manage to make it up to Central Oregon at the end of the month for a weekend getaway with some of her friends. She stayed at Black Butte Ranch. While she was away Christopher, Alexandro, and I hung out at the house watching movies and eating popcorn. Our movie them for the weekend was Clint Eastwood movies, so it was a lot of fun. In February we celebrated Ingrid's birthday. We went out to eat at Outback Steakhouse, our traditional birthday dinner restaurant. Other than that, we just had a small party for Ingrid. The remainder of the month was relatively low-key. In the month of March we took a spring break trip to Florida. Since it is Christopher senior year of high school, we let him pick the location. He decided that we would go to Harry Potter World in Orlando Florida as a family. We had a great time. We left Oregon and the temperature was about 60° in Oregon and a little rainy. When we got to Florida, the temperature was about the same. During our week there they had some record cold temperatures, however, it wasn't too bad since it was sunny every day and there was no rain. We had a really great time. It was neat to see all the Harry Potter themed buildings and rides. They also had a Harry Potter themed restaurant. It was interesting to see that a lot of the visitors were from England, flying all the way from England to Florida to visit Harry Potter World, which ironically is set in rural England in the books. We also got to ride a lot of the other Rides. It is actually combination of two parks. There is Universal Studios and next to it is “islands of Adventure” which contains Harry Potter World. All in all, it was a great trip and we had a fun time as a family. One of the highlights of the trip was eating out at a Brazilian Churrascaria (Brazilian Steakhouse – all you can eat)(Translated to “Schloss Korea” by Seri on my Iphone – I don’t thinks she is familiar with Portuguese!! The steak was fantastic and we ate too much, as always. In the month of April the kids got back to school work after spring break. This was a nervous month for Christopher. He received responses back from his college applications. He was very excited to be accepted to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In order to help him make his final decision as to where he wanted to attend college, we made a trip out to Chicago to visit the campus of Northwestern University. Christopher and I flew out on a Sunday and returned on a Tuesday evening. On Monday they had a program for prospective freshman to show them around campus. He really enjoyed his visit and felt right at home at the campus there. We were also able to spend some time in downtown Chicago visiting the sites in going to the Art Institute of Chicago. It is a very interesting city with a lot of things to do. Evanston, where the university is located, is in a northern suburb of Chicago and a nice safe city to live in. It is located 30 minutes from downtown Chicago if you ride the elevated train. Needless to say, Christopher has decided to attend Northwestern University this fall and we are very excited for him. It should be a great experience and he is anxious to get to know the city of Chicago and experience college life. Now, I will tell you little bit about what each person is doing along with the previous itinerary of activities of the last couple of months. Alexandro continues to work hard in school and is doing quite well. One of his favorite classes is computer-assisted design. He gets to work with computers as well as drawing, two things that he enjoys. He's also keeps busy in his church calling. He is first counselor in the teacher’s quorum. He also just started his Eagle project and will be finishing up at the end of May. He is collecting donations for local charity, Family Building Blocks. They help at risk children and families break the cycle of poverty and child abuse. He already has all the merit badges that he needs for his Eagle Scout award, so he just needs to finish his Eagle project. He is pretty excited about getting this award and finishing up the scouting requirements. We are quite excited as his parents as well. It takes a lot of effort and work from all involved. Christopher has been very busy these last several months applying to colleges around the country. We took a couple of visits to different schools. I think that Northwestern University will be a very good fit for him. Sorry to those of you who are BYU fans, I don't think that BYU was in the cards. He has been quite busy with his schoolwork as well, since he is taking numerous AP classes which require him to do a lot of studying. However, he has done well keeping his grades up and was named Academic All-Star at his high school. This award goes to the top ranked senior at the high school, academically. We are very proud of him for earning this award. Ingrid continues to stay busy teaching her fitness classes as well as doing training in Stott Pilates. She has to travel to Portland quite often to take training classes. She is also second counselor in the young women's presidency in our ward and is in charge of the beehives, young girls ages 12 And 13. She enjoys the calling and has a fun time interacting with young women. Leon continues to keep busy with work, his church calling and trying to keep track of everyone else in the family. We look forward to reading all your letters and see how everyone is doing. Take care and hope that we will see most of you at the family reunion this summer. It should be a great time. Love, The Oregon Burrows Clan.

2 comments:

Jacki's travels said...

Hooray! - A blog post.

Audrey said...

Enjoyed the letter & a new post on your blog :)