THE SPECIAL EDITION 2008 WILLES CHRISTMAS LETTER

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hello everyone and thank you for logging on to find out more about our little family. This is your SPECIAL EDITION CHRISTMAS LETTER. It's one-of-a-kind and will only be available as an archive folder in 30 short days! Wow. Aren't you lucky?! So let's get started, shall we?!

As we said this year has been loads of fun. We'll divide it up by month so it's easier to keep track of. Oh, heck, we'll go week-by-week and tell you every little detail about our lives...just kidding. If I don't mention the month then re-read the month before. Same thing...different month.

January: We headed up to Flagstaff for a bit of snow tubing with the kids. We went to our regular spot near the fair grounds, but the kids are getting bigger and making the slopes seem smaller so it looks like we'll be finding a new spot next year. Katie, Emma, and Cousin Haylee joined Running Club and did very well in their races. Katie participated in a Choral Festival at the Chandler Center For the Arts. Emma continued Piano lessons.

Zach enjoys the snow.

March: Troy got to travel to California with work this month and spent some time with Grant and his family. During Spring Break, Mom took each of the girls out indivdually for a date. The girl picked the activity and resturant. Within one week Rachel ate at 3 different resturants and went to Border's Books, Ross Dress 4 Less, Micheal's, and Target. Whew. A great time was had by all.

April: All of Katie's hard work for the past 8 months finally came to fruition when Shumway Elementary School presented "The Sound of Music" to an excited audience. Katie, one of the few 4th graders to get a speaking part, played Marta VonTrapp. She had a blast but was so tired. She plans on signing up for the next Drama Club event. She's been bit!

May: Rachel and sister-in-law Tana worked on Memory Books for cousin Haylee's Kindergarten Class. Each one is an individual piece of art and done scrapbook style. It takes FOREVER, but Rachel tends to get too involved in making it "rock!" Rachel did Emma's Memory Books last year and agreed to help Tana this year. Next year she plans on doing Claire's Memory Books and two years after that, Zach's and Haydn's. We're submitting paperwork to Guiness World Records to see if we can get the "Most Kinder Memory Books Made" award or at least the "Most Stupid Thing To Keep Volunteering For" award. She's got a good shot at both. Katie also had a concert for her singing group, Chirping Crickets Chorus. She was, of course, fantastic. Totally heard her above the other 60 kids...

June: Summer vacation started and Troy again went off to California. This time he got to go to San Francisco over Rachel's birthday. We tried to figure out a way to get Rachel there to, but finding someone willing to babysit 4 kids for 3 days is understandably kinda tough. We did swim lessons for Claire and Emma with Mom, Katie and Zach just swimming and soaking up the rays while they waited.

Rachel took an overnight BFF trip with her girlfriends to Scottsdale. They went to dinner and the Showstoppers Live show at the Arizona Casino. It's a big show with impersonaters who perform as Elvis, Neil Diamond, Garth Brooks, etc. The night they went to that den of iniquity the casino was filming a television commercial. They had to sign waivers to agree to appear on tv if they stayed. Of course...they did. Still haven't seen us in the commercials they are showing, but it's the right show. We'll still look for our 15 seconds of fame. They went to a boutique hotel in Scottsdale decorated in early 60's Rat Pack. A good time was had by all.

The family also went on a camping trip in the mountains with the ward. The location was great and the weather beautiful, but the trip's luster was lost when Claire and another little girl got lost up on the hill. We found them within minutes but that was enough time for Rachel to picture all sorts of "Movie of The Week" moments.

July: We took the big Summer Vacation this month up to Boise, Idaho, to visit Troy's family and attend his mom's family reunion. We flew up there and stayed 2 weeks. We did many fun things: zoo, rafting, playing in park, eating out, swimming, going to Idaho City, etc. We also ended up camping at the reunion, where Claire got lost...again. Technically, she didn't get lost as she had gone with Poppa Willes on a hike, but noone knew about it and we started searching. THIS time she was "lost" for a longer amount of time and Rachel ruined her shoes sloshing down the small creek on the site as someone had said they spotted her going down there. Yeah. Rachel has now banned family camping until Claire is older or until we can buy a really long leash...or a shock collar. The whole trip was great, however, and the girls even missed the first 2 days of school. Katie was bummed...Emma & Claire...not so bummed. The girls also week to Kidz Kamp with Gilbert Parks and Rec for a couple weeks for games and crafts galore.

The Gang in Idaho City.

August: This month brought a quiet calm over the house for Rachel...at least between the hours of 8am and 11:00am as school started back up. Claire started Kindergarten and Rachel picked her up when the other kids went off to lunch. Katie began 5th grade and Emma started 2nd grade. All the girls have great teachers. Claire started piano lessons with Emma. Rachel got to spend two Saturdays at the Chandler High School Pool with the Stakes Swimming Merit Badge Day Camp. Nice work if you can get it, I say...

October: Troy traveled to Mexico for work this month, taking a couple extra days for sightseeing. Intel is cracking down on travel and this may be the last "big" trip Troy will get to take. The girls had a two-week break from school and although the first week was the WORST week ever (see post dated Sunday, 5 October) the second week was fun for all. Jackie, Rachel's college roommate and BFF, visited with her family. They stayed here for 3 days and two nights and all got along wonderfully. Jackie has three girls all the same ages as our three girls and they had a blast with the Super Duper Sleepover. Even Jackie's one boy who's 13 enjoyed hanging out with our one boy. Too fun. We did the Trick-or-Treating Blitzkreig again this year, hitting the ward Trunk Or Treat, Intel Cubicle Trick or Treat and regular neighborhood Trick or Treat in fast succession. Much candy was gathered. I think we're still trying to get rid of it.

Zach refused to wear the knight costume he picked out so he became a surfer dude complete with foamboard surfboard. Claire is Supergirl. Emma is a fairy princess and Katie is a Matadora. Troy's wearing his annual "Halloween" shirt...that's not part of his normal wardrobe.


November: This was a big month as Emma was baptized. Great Grammy Reva and Aunt Sarah flew in for the event and Ken and his family drove in from Kingman. Emma had a friend's party AND a family party. Troy auditioned and recieved the only tenor solo for our stake's production of The Messiah. Katie began practice for this year's Shumway Drama Club performance of The Wizard of Oz. She got the part of "Purple." Yeah...it's obviously a different version of the play. Basically, she and two others act as the Greek Chorus and narrate the action of the play. She's excited to have a speaking part but bummed out as the show isn't a musical. Oh well...life isn't always a musical now is it.

Claire started attending Kindergarten all day, as the rest of Arizona now does. Rachel picks her up for lunch and lets her come home and rest for a bit before taking her back. She loves it and is doing great.
As part of the Stake Temple Day, Rachel and Nate had created a Lego version of the Arizona Temple. Rachel wrote a Sharing Time to go with it and then bought a Lego kit of the temple for each ward. She was able to see a couple of the wards do the sharing time. It was a huge hit and Rachel and Nate have had many requests for additional kits. We may have a part-time business heading our way. For more details and photos check out http://rwilles.blogspot.com/ .
December: This month found us prepping for the awesome holiday season of Christmas. Rachel had to calendar every different event on the calendar so that nobody's events, parties or concerts would be overlooked. Katie performed again with the Chirpin' Crickets Chorus. Troy was amazing in The Messiah. He nailed his show opening solo. Many crafts came home from school to decorate our house and help that festive spirit abound. The family performed for the Ward Christmas party. They did a rousing rendition of "Feliz Navidad" with Rachel on guitar, Troy on trumpet, the girls belting it out and Zach on maraca. We wore serapes and sombreros, even! Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay and Ole! Katie also performed a solo, "Mary's Lullabye", and was Mary in the Christmas Pageant. Claire and Emma were angels. After many class parties and gift exchanges and secret santa's, we finally closed out the semester for the year.

Semester report cards were awesome. Everyone has straight A's with Katie reading on a 9th grade level and Emma officially clocking in on a 6th grade level. That's the highest level the 2nd grade test goes. Rachel is going to try to get her to take the 5th grade test and see where she places. Claire is reading all over the place and already has her sight words down pat. Katie flourishes in math and science and Emma is all over the reading and writing. Claire is great with both but prefers to be the center of attention.... heavy sigh. And although Zach didn't receive any report card he shows amazing intelligence as well. (Hey...you willingly came to visit and read our blog so....) He is increasing his vocabulary daily, sometimes with words we would rather he not use. In his defense, it wasn't his fault his version of "truck" came out sounding like it did...

Troy and Rachel are both busy but happy. Troy's gig at work keeps him entertained and he recently upped his status level when he was made manager. So far it's a lot like being Elder's Quorum president, make sure people are following through on things and attend a million meetings. He is starting to get the hang of it and is busy trying to interview people before Intel puts the hiring freeze into place. He took the time to redo our small bathroom upstairs with tile and new paint. It was more of a test to see if he wanted to take on the bigger tile job of the master bathroom. He decided he could wait a while.... He risked his life to climb up on a tall ladder propped in the back of a big truck to put up Christmas lights on the second story of the house. Rachel was grateful for the lights, the effort and the fact he didn't plummet to his death. (She was bracing the ladder, by the way, and would have had a front row seat for that plummet.)

Rachel still loves being the Stake Primary President and had a great time this year planning events. She even added keynote speaker to her resume this year as she spoke at the Stake Girls Activity Day event. She always gets to speak at training stuff, but not ever as a "Special Guest!" She still does part-time accounting for the law firm and babysits her neice and nephew a few times a month. She's been very popular at Shumway as she's gone over a couple time to tell stories to Claire and Emma's class. When she showed up to Emma's class the entire second grade was waiting for her. Unexpected, but still fun. She's scheduled to go back in next semester. She does enjoy having only one child at home during the day. It's been 11 long years in the making.

If you are up for even MORE detail, check out the archives of our blogspot. Troy does a great job of writing out a weekly update and sending it out to his family via email. I don't do as great a job of posting it to the blog, but I do get it there eventually. We thank you for caring enough about us to read this whole thing. We wish you the best of everything this Holiday Season. We express our deep gratitude for the Savior at this time of His birth. He has been extremely kind and loving to us and we are thankful.

ALL OUR LOVE,

The Willes Family: Troy, Rachel, Katie, Emma, Claire, Zach

Happy Thanksgiving!: Week of Nov 24-30

Sunday 30 Nov. 2008 – Thanksgiving week

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We missed our extended family members this weekend, but trust that you had a good holiday wherever you spent it.

This week was nice. Only 3 days of work then 4 days of weekend. Every week should be like that! People at Intel started leaving on vacation on Tuesday, so things slowed down and Troy was able to catch up on a couple of tasks that had been neglected.

Wednesday we got the first rain in the valley since August 30th. Nearly 3 months of dry and sunny. As the sun sank low around 4 or 5pm there was a break in the clouds to the west which created a beautifully bright full rainbow. Troy followed the rainbow most of the way home before the sun set. Very pretty.

Thursday morning was the annual ward Turkey bowl. The Men and Young Men (youth) of the ward met at the Islands park and played flag football. We were afraid that we might have to call the game off due to the rain, but just as we were starting the game, the clouds broke up and the sun came shining through! Troy took the girls down and let them play on the playground. After trying to keep score, Katie even decided to join the game for a little while. There were about 20 people that showed up by the time we were done. We played for nearly two hours – until none of the “old” guys (myself included) could run anymore. Then we broke for juice and donuts. Of note: Tom Pawlak – the most avid football player in the ward was set on coming – even if it was raining a bit, but decided that he better leave about game time to get to his family’s T-giving celebration in Thatcher.

Thursday afternoon was spent cooking, cleaning and setting up for dinner. Grammy and Grandpa Z (Ann and Martin) and Bob and Sarah came over for the evening. After a delicious Turkey dinner, we sat around the table and played Rachel’s homemade Family Memories game. We ended the evening with Zachreson family slides. After watching those slides, Katie decided that we should try to get some of the slides that Papa Willes has of Troy and his family when he was young. Maybe we can have Grammy Willes bring a few rolls down with her when she comes next time.

Friday was time to clean up the cluttered garage and put up the Christmas lights. While Troy and Rachel cleaned the Garage, the kids setup a table and put some of the items we cleaned out up for sale. In order to “attract” customers, they started doing a little dance and made up a song to go with it. After a few minutes of singing and dancing, but no customers they gave up that Marketing campaign – which is good, because the way they were singing and dancing, we weren’t sure what kind of business they were going to attract. So now they decided to walk to the houses of their friends in the neighborhood to advertise. This brought some of the neighborhood kids down to take a look, and brought in a couple dollars in revenue. After counting it up that afternoon, Emma announced, "We have three dollars and thirty-three cents. If we split that up three ways for Me and Katie and Claire, we will each get one dollar and eleven cents." We thought that was pretty good for a 2nd grader – without a calculator.

Troy and Rachel got most of the outside lights setup. The kids were getting bored that evening, so we even put up the Christmas tree before they went to bed.

Saturday was pretty low-key. Troy made pancakes for breakfast and then did a few chores around the house while Rachel went out shopping – not really Christmas shopping – just for household items. Saturday afternoon Troy took Claire and Emma to the city library to look at books and color. Saturday night we met the Zachresons (including Tana, Haylee and Haydn) at Carls Junior (with playland) for dinner. Instead of letting the leftover pies go to waste (or worse - Troy’s waist) we took them to the restaurant in a little cooler and then pulled them out for dessert. We are regulars at that restaurant and it is never very busy when we are there, so the staff didn’t complain.

Sunday was 5th Sunday. There were no meetings before or after church and no family dinner, so we all enjoyed a relaxing Sabbath.

Zach
Zach’s words of the week are “Awesome!” and “Cool!” He even uses them correctly.

He was pointing at some sea creatures and knew the words for fish, crab and whale. There was a fourth one that he wanted to know the name of so he asked Daddy. Troy didn’t know what it was either, so he told Zach it was a mollusk. After trying to say mollusk a couple times, they decided just to call it another “fish”.

Zach’s motus operandi this week has been to find an interesting looking box of toys, carry it to somewhere in house and then dump the entire contents onto the floor. After playing with some of the toys in the pile for a couple minutes he will walk through them to spread them around a little more. It’s hard for his parents to keep up with the sheer volume of messes this creates. They are working to train him not to dump the whole box out.

Claire
The Claire-ism of the week happened after we put up some of our Christmas tree this weekend.
Claire: “Mommy – how long until Christmas?”
Rachel: “One more month”
Claire: Excited “Hooray only one month!”
then thoughfully “How many days is that?”
Rachel: “Thirty Days”
Claire: Appalled “Thirty Days! That’s a long time!”
Well, it might be a long time in Claire years, but it’s going to be here might quickly I’m afraid.

Emma
Emma and Claire played school and teacher for a good part of the weekend. I guess they live it so much that it’s hard to just stop cold turkey… Ha Ha. get it? Thanksgiving. “Cold Turkey” Ha Ha Ha.

Katie
Katie has been struggling to read as many books as she is supposed to. She has to read nearly one per week. She tested at a 9th grade level, so she has to pick good-size chapter books that are at or above that level.

I think that should do it for now.
Until next time…

Steady as she goes..Nov 17-24, 2008

Sunday 23 Nov. 2008

Steady as she goes for this week...

Rachel

After all the parties of the previous week. Rachel was able to relax just a bit this week. She took care of Haydn on Tuesday, so Rachel and the boys took Great Grandma Willes out to the Airport in the morning and dropped her off so she could catch a plane back to Texas. On their way back, the boys were enjoying seeing the planes so Rachel pulled off the road into a parking lot to watch the planes fly over their heads as they landed. Rachel was expecting the 2 yr olds to be excited by the planes, but they were a little too loud and too close for comfort. As the first plane flew overhead, the Zach covered his ears and ran frightened into the van to watch from a “safer” vantage point. Haydn watched a couple more nervously from outside the van, but then told Rachel he was ready to go. Before going home Rachel took them to the drive-through and the park for a fun lunch (and to wear them out).

Grandma GG had to spend most of the day at the airport before she was able to get a standby flight out. She said she found a quiet corner of the airport and read her book.

The rest of the week Rachel and Zach hung out in a quiet house while the rest of the kids were at school.


The Weekend

The highlight of Troy’s week was Friday date night. On Thursday Rachel noticed in the paper an advertisement for Chris Botti Jazz Trumpet concert. Troy is a fan, and we knew he was coming to town this winter, but the date snuck up on us. Fortunately there were still some tickets available and Uncle Bobby was still free to babysit. The concert was very good. He played a good mixture of some standards and some of his more popular songs and some of his newer songs. His albums are mostly “new age” jazz. If you like trumpet and you like Jazz, you should check him out.

Saturday was Stake Temple Day. Troy went to a morning endowment session. The temple was very busy, all the sessions were packed full. At 11:30 Rachel and the kids met Troy on the temple grounds to walk around and go to the visitors center. The weather has been very nice lately (Sunny and 80 degrees for the highs) and it was nice to be out. We took a few minutes to watch a couple of the brides and grooms pose for pictures and make googly eyes at each other. Once the kids got tired of walking around we went into the visitors center. We spent a few minutes in entry room with the big statue of Christ. Then we watched a new movie about Joseph Smith. The movie was a little over an hour long and told many of famous tales of his life. It was inspirational and moving, but more like a French tragedy than a Hollywood happy-feel-good movie.

As part of the Stake Temple Day activities the stake hosted lunch at a nearby chapel – and it’s a good thing they were, because the kids were starting to get hungry and cranky! We stopped in for a bite of lunch. The kids had a big time getting their own apples and chips and lemonade. Troy enjoyed his barbecue pork sandwich.

Rachel stayed at the temple and did some initiatory work. Her mom was there as a Temple worker that afternoon, so for the last round her mom was able to perform the proxy ordinances. It was a neat experience for both of them.

Katie
Katie is still studying about the human body. Generally she enjoys learning about the body. (See the skeleton story earlier). This week, however, they had to learn about the digestive system and the urinary system (Eeeeuuuwww!) In a few weeks they will also cover the reproductive systems, which she is also not looking forward to. She also had the great experience of seeing "The Film" at school this week. You know, the one about "your body and it's changes." Yes, we've all been there. She went in well-informed as we had had the talk already, but she was still mortified at having to share that moment with her girl buddies. She reported everyone had bright red faces as the lights came on after the film...

Zach
Zach and Haydn had a good time playing together on Tuesday. As noted earlier, Zach and Rachel hung out at home for most of Wed through Friday. By the time his sisters got home from school he was ready to play. His sisters were tired from school by this time, however, and just sat around and watched T.V. Zach quite often wanders around the house aimlessly saying sadly, “I Miss Booey” (his nickname for Haydn). The rest of the time he can be found carrying loads of toys to and fro – leaving a trail of stuff wherever he goes.

Claire
Claire is going to school for the whole day now. That’s a long day for a 5 year old. It wears her out. A couple days last week she took a nap after getting home and then still went to bed on time.

Emma
Emma wasn’t the center of attention this week. That didn’t seem to bother her too much. She was just disappointed that mom and dad didn’t cater to the princess’s requests as readily. Sorry Emma – back to reality.

That should do it for this week. Have a great short work and school week and a Terrific Thanksgiving!

Na-na-na-naa, na-na-na-naa, Emma's World: 9-16 Nov 2008

Sunday 16 Nov. 2008

This week it was Emma’s world and we were just living in it. Starting last Sunday when we had a family birthday party. Haydn’s birthday is Nov. 5th, so we celebrated together for the last couple of years. Emma picked the menu, settling on London Broil, mashed potatoes and corn, and brownies for dessert. After dinner Haydn and Emma had a present opening frenzy and then their brownies and ice cream. It was great!

On Tuesday all of the Kids were on vacation from school due to Veterans Day. Emma had her friends party this day. She invited a couple of friends from school and then her sisters and Cousins attended. Emma chose a dolphin theme, so Rachel hung some Dolphin banners and blue table cloths around the back yard. Rachel came up with an obstacle course relay and some crafts. They finished it all off with ice cream and cake, of course.

Wednesday was Emma’s birthday day, so she got to take some treats to share with her class. Rachel wrapped up some leftover Halloween candy in bags – a good use for all of that candy!

Thursday Great Grandma Willes arrived – and brought a few presents with her. She flew in from Texas to be a part of the baptism events. On Friday she went with Rachel and Zach and Haydn to the Lego store as something fun to do for the afternoon. They all had a good time looking at all of the sets and picking out some Legos to take home.

Saturday was the big baptism day. Everyone got up and got dressed and then went down to the church at about 9:30. Ken and Rhonda’s family drove in from Kingman and were there waiting when we got there. Grammy and Grandpa Z and Bob drove down from Mesa and even Aunt Sarah flew in special from Las Vegas (where she recently started a new job). Preston Scheier conducted the meeting and the rest of his family came to support ours. Sister Archinuk (the primary president) and Sister Misseldine (wife of the Bishop) also came.
The whole event went very well. The Girls sang “I Like to Look for Rainbows”, and Emma and Leslie Hodgson played a duet on the piano, "When Jesus Christ Was Baptized." Grammy Z spoke on Baptism and Uncle Bobby spoke on the Holy Ghost. Troy performed the baptism and the confirmation with other priesthood members supporting.
After the baptism, Rachel’s family came over to the house for lunch and socializing. As usual the kids had fun playing together and the adults had fun talking – until nearly dinner time. The weather is very nice this time of year so we set up tables outside, and let the kids run in and out as they pleased. Legos are also a big draw whenever Kyler comes over. The boys make trucks and airplanes, and even the girls get involved making Lego houses complete with furniture for the Lego people.

Back Row: (L-R) Ken, Rhonda (Ken), Rachel, Troy (Rachel), Zach (Rachel), Bob, Nate, Sarah, Dad Zachreson

2nd Row: Kyler (Ken), Grammy Reva, Katie (Rachel), Tana (Nate), Ashlyn (Ken), Mom Zachreson

Front Row: Claire (Rachel), Emma (Rachel), Bryn (Ken), Haydn (Nate), Haylee (Nate)

Sunday the parties continued. The family came back over for dinner and a special family home evening that Grandma GG prepared. She talked to the group about Ensign Israel Stocking and his adventures as a Mormon Pioneer.
Troy is practicing with a Stake choir to sing selections from Handel’s Messiah. He sang in a similar choir a couple years ago, so this time is a little easier to pick up the music. The music is challenging and fun to sing. The director has done Messiah choirs a number of times in his career, so he knows what it takes to get the choir to sound good.
After a week of parties Rachel was worn out and ready to relax for a couple days.

Zach
Zach likes to carry around a little basket of cars. This week he took it to a new level by filling up a small rolling suitcase of cars and toys and wheeling that around the house with him. Whenever Rachel took him anywhere he had to get his suitcase of toys and he wheeled it out to the garage to go with him in the van. Zach’s words of the week are Orange and Robot – which come out more like “Hoshange Obot”

That should do for this week. Tune in next time for more updates on Katie and Claire.

Let the Holidays Commence: November 1-8, 2008

Sunday 9 November

Katie
Katie started Drama Club this week. This year the Drama Club will be performing the Wizard of Oz. Somewhat to Katie’s disappointment, It’s not a musical this time. She got a part in the Greek narrative chorus. Each member of the chorus is a different color. Katie is “Purple” – her favorite color!
Katie is studying the body in 5th grade this week. She put together a paper cutout skeleton. She says they ran out of grommets, however, so her skeleton couldn’t bend his legs. Poor guy.

Emma
This is Emma’s favorite time of year. Lots of candy at Halloween and lots of presents for her birthday. Emma’s birthday is this coming Wednesday. She is having big parties this whole week! Today is the family party here at our house. On Tuesday all of the kids get Veteran’s day off of school and she will have a party with her school friends here. Yeah more presents! Finally, next Saturday she will be baptized and we’ll all celebrate with Ken and Rhonda’s family who are planning to come down from Kingman. Great Grandma (GG) Willes will fly in on Tuesday for the festivities. I’ll write all about it next week.

Claire
Claire started attending Kindergarten for the whole day, and is doing just fine now. She was the only one in her class left doing a half day schedule. Rachel picks her up for lunch at home, but then takes her back to finish the school day. The little time at home seems to give her a little mid-day pick-me-up.
Claire and Rachel went to do some toy research surveys on Saturday and got $15 and a free Polly Pocket toy for their time.

Zach
Now that Claire stays at school longer, Zach now has to entertain himself for most of the day. Rachel says that he plays well on his own for about an hour or so and then has to come get some wrestling or other attention from her a little while. After a little play time with Mommy he’ll go back and play on his own. Recently he has discovered that he can play some of the Toddler computer games that we have. He has also learned that it is important to reserve Mommy’s computer by calling out “I play Mommy’s!” whenever people are heading upstairs to play.

Rachel
Now that her big Stake Primary activities are over for the year, Rachel has been busy planning all of the upcoming family parties. She went to 4 or 5 different stores yesterday getting all of the supplies she needed.
Rachel contracted a cold from the kids, so she stayed home from church today. She didn't get a lot of rest as Zach stayed home with her...

Troy
Troy attended a New Manager Training class for most of the work week. He learned some useful tips in dealing with and managing people. He manages 3 people now; 1 more is due to start in November. He phone interviewed a number of people and arranged for 5 people to come onsite for an interview next week. Unfortunately Intel decided on Friday to close all external job postings – meaning that all that work will likely go to waste. Due to the economic slowdown Intel decided to keep total headcount flat for now – meaning no new people will be hired. As you know there are many other companies that are laying people off right now. At the moment, Intel hasn’t had to go that far.
Troy played flag football with the ward on Saturday and then spent most of the rest of the day cleaning up the yard in preparation for the parties to be held out there this week.

This Week - The ENTIRE month of October

Allright, as you know, it has been nearly a month now since I took the time to write. It is very easy to fall off the wagon. I’ll try to hit some of the October highlights. Enjoy.

Friday, October 3
Rachel and her Stake Primary staff organized a “Pennies for Primary” fundraiser for the local children’s hospital. On this Friday they took a few kids from the stake and all of the money they collected (over $550, $370 in coins) and bought some toys and gifts. They got a warm reception at the children’s hospital, and then went out to lunch at Wendy’s. All of the kids involved (including the Willes kids) enjoyed the outing.

Thurs Oct 9 to Sat. Oct. 11
I (Troy) flew out early on Thursday to Guadalajara, Mexico for an Embedded Electronics trade show that was down there. I woke up in a panic, realizing that I left my passport at the office. Fortunately it wasn’t too far out of the way, and all of the traffic lights and parking shuttles and security lines cooperated, so I made it to the gate with time to spare.The whole country between here and there was mostly mountains, and as we flew further south the mountains grew gradually more green and lush. Guadalajara is about 1 mile in elevation, so even though it is farther south, the climate is fairly mild. The weather was warm and humid, but still comfortable.Transportation during my trip was by Taxi. Nissan’s are very popular down there - maybe there is a local plant – so most of the cabs were little Nissan Sentras. The freeways were not maintained very well, so the shocks and springs in all the cabs were pretty much shot, so the ride around town was rather bumpy.Upon arrival I went to the local Intel site and talked to some of the employees there about the embedded group and our products, then one of the managers gave me and the other two guys I traveled with a tour of the facilities. The site was in a large warehouse and had several large rooms with rows and rows of assembled computer systems that were running tests. It was pretty impressive.I got to stay at the Hilton, which was very nice and right across the street from the convention center where they were holding the trade show.On Friday I presented for a couple hours in the morning. There was about 20 people in the room – a few people in the industry and then a few college professors. I presented in English because they said that would be better than Japanese J. (Regrettably I only studied French in Junior High). I let Marcos (the native Spanish speaker) do the networking.That afternoon my other traveling companion (Robin) and I went to the old city center and visited some of the colonial buildings and a nice museum. That night after another seminar, my buddies and took a cab over to Tlaquepaque – an old touristy part of town. There was a lively party at one of the churches on the square – complete with a Mariachi band. Very cool.The food was good too. I had some Mexican food back in Arizona once or twice since returning, and it doesn’t even compare. Overall it was a nice trip.Side note - Rachel was stuck at home while all the kids were on Fall break, so the timing wasn’t very good.

Wed Oct 15 – Fri Oct 17
This week Rachel’s friend from college came down to visit from Rexburg Idaho. Jackie and Rob Webster and their 4 kids stayed two nights with us that week. They were on their way around the country – they went through Las Vegas and then to Universal Studios theme park and Disneyland and then to Arizona and back up through Utah to Rexburg Idaho again.They have a boy that is 12, and then 3 girls that are nearly exactly the same ages as the 3 Willes girls. As they arrived, we introduced the 3 pairs of girls to their playmates and within minutes they were out in the backyard playing and making up games with each other.On Thursday they all went to the Arizona Mills mall (Troy went to work) and had a grand time shopping. That night we invited the Zachreson clan over for a bit spaghetti dinner. Everyone had a good time visiting. Thursday was Rob’s birthday and Friday was Jackie’s so Rachel made a birthday cake and we sang to them celebrated with them.On Friday we loaded up the van and took off towards the Grand Canyon. We were all excited to do a little sight seeing and hiking there together. Before we even got to the freeway, however, Rachel noticed the gauges on the van were acting a little funny and then things started to get hot and smelly. We pulled over and notice a lot of fluid leaking out onto the road. With much sadness, we had to call off the trip, and send our friends off without us. Troy dropped everyone off at home and then took the van to the repair shop. We had the van’s brakes worked on earlier in the week, so we suspect the repair man moved a water cooling hose slightly and then put it in the path of the fan – which then wore a hole in the hose. They repaired it for free – but we missed the chance to go on our little trip.As a consolation, Troy took the three girls to a fun swimming pool with a water slide and fountains at Lifetime Fitness. Rachel and Zach stayed home and tried to recover from the busy week.

Fri. Oct 24 & Sun. Oct 26
The girls had Primary Program practice in the afternoon. They practiced the singing and talks and then had Pizza. The program was on Sunday. Grammy and Grandpa Z. and Bob and even Tana and kids came to our ward to see them. Everyone did a fine job with their little parts.

Sat Oct. 25
Saturday morning Rachel helped organize AND was a keynote speaker at the stake 11 year old girls activity. 15 of the 21 girls in the stake participated, so they were pleased with the turnout. Rachel spoke on making good choices and staying true to values.Saturday night we took the kids to the local park for a big ward party. There hasn’t been a ward party for a while due to the activities committee people moving out. This was the first one that the newly reorganized activity put together – and they packed 3 parties into one night! The young women charged admission and held an auction to raise money (belatedly) for their summer camp. The activities committee organized some games and festival contests for the kids (Claire won some brownies and all three girls won goldfish-2 of which have already joined their fishy friends in the big ocean in the sky). AND at the end of the night, people sat at their cars and handed out candy as the kids went around and did a “Trunk-or-Treat”. The kids all came home and crashed.

Wed Oct 29
The kids went to Intel this afternoon for the annual office trick or treat. People have candy in their cubes and the kids get to go around and trick or treat. With the cubes being so close together, the kids are able to collect a lot of candy in a very short time! Zach refused to go anywhere that had Halloween decorations, or men handing out candy. (He was OK with the women, as long as they weren’t in costume.) The kids favorite cubes were the ones where the occupant had escaped the noisy office and left a bowl of candy for the kids to help themselves. They still only got one piece, but they didn’t even have to say “Trick or Treat”. Zach was always pleasantly surprised about finding candy left in a cube and would tell the rest of us “It(s) not (s)carry. It(s) not (s)carry. ” As is tradition now, we took the kids out to Souper Salad after event – where they munched on candy while eating their dinner and ice cream.

Thurs Oct 30
The kids had “Fall Parties” in their classes. No costumes allowed – but cookies, cakes and candies were plentiful. Claire usually goes to morning kindergarten, but she even went back to school after lunch for the festivities.

Fri Oct 31
On Halloween night Troy took the kids trick or treating around to the neighborhood homes. This was now their third trick-or-treat outing of the season. Emma was a princess with fairy wings – a.k.a. a fairy princess. Katie found a Matadora costume, and Claire was Super Girl. Zach willingly stayed home with Mom. He wasn’t brave enough to go out. Katie’s friend Kristin came over to accompany us, and everyone came back with sore feet and lots of candy, so I think the evening was a success.Side Note Claire’s Super Girl costume was worth every penny spent (on sale at Wal-Mart). A couple times during the week, she put the costume on and then ran up to Rachel to ask if there was any “trouble” that might need Super Girl’s help. Rachel was able to get her to clean up quite a few little messes. Rachel: “Quick Super Girl! Mommy really needs some help cleaning up those dirty socks and putting away those shoes! Can you help me?” Super Girl: “You bet mommy!” and off she’d “fly” to put away the socks and shoes.

Sat Nov 1
In addition to all of the Halloween preparations during the week, Rachel spent many many hours preparing for the stake Primary Music workshop held this morning. She was up late most nights writing up sharing times designed to teach the primary kids one of the songs for the fall program next year. At the workshop, she gave out the sharing time kits to all of the wards in the stake. Again a successful event.
Looking Forward November and December are looking to just as fun and busy as our October was. We have Emma’s friend Birthday Party, Emma’s Baptism and family party, Stake Temple Day and Thanksgiving all packed in there. I’ll try to keep on top of the updates, so you can hear how things are going.

Finally, I’ll leave you with one funny exchange between Zach and his mom.Rachel: (after getting a whiff of Zach’s dirty diaper) “Zachy are you stinky P.U.?”Zach: (in denial) “No, not Pee Me, Pee You!”
Take care everyone – and have a great week!

As Emma's World Turns - Week of November 9, 2008

Sunday 16 Nov. 2008

This past week it was Emma’s world and we were just living in it. Starting last Sunday when we had a family birthday party. Haydn’s birthday is Nov. 5th, so we celebrated together for the last couple of years. Emma picked the menu, settling on London Broil, mashed potatoes and corn, and brownies for dessert. After dinner Haydn and Emma had a present opening frenzy and then their brownies and ice cream. It was great!

On Tuesday all of the Kids were on vacation from school due to Veterans Day. Emma had her friends party this day. She invited a couple of friends from school and then her sisters and Cousins attended. Emma chose a dolphin theme, so Rachel hung some Dolphin banners and blue table cloths around the back yard. Rachel came up with an obstacle course relay and some crafts. They finished it all off with ice cream and cake, of course.

Wednesday was Emma’s birthday day, so she got to take some treats to share with her class. Rachel wrapped up some leftover Halloween candy in bags – a good use for all of that candy!
Thursday Great Grandma Willes arrived – and brought a few presents with her. She flew in from Texas to be a part of the baptism events. On Friday she went with Rachel and Zach and Haydn to the Lego store as something fun to do for the afternoon. They all had a good time looking at all of the sets and picking out some Legos to take home.

Saturday was the big baptism day. Everyone got up and got dressed and then went down to the church at about 9:30. Ken and Rhonda’s family drove in from Kingman and were there waiting when we got there. Grammy and Grandpa Z and Bob drove down from Mesa and even Aunt Sarah flew in special from Las Vegas (where she recently started a new job). Preston Scheier conducted the meeting and the rest of his family came to support ours. Sister Archinuk (the primary president) and Sister Misseldine (wife of the Bishop) also came.

The whole event went very well. The Girls sang “I Like to Look for Rainbows”, and Emma and Leslie Hodgson played a duet. Grammy Z spoke on Baptism and Uncle Bobby spoke on the Holy Ghost. Troy performed the baptism and the confirmation with other priesthood members supporting.

After the baptism, Rachel’s family came over to the house for lunch and socializing. As usual the kids had fun playing together and the adults had fun talking – until nearly dinner time. The weather is very nice this time of year so we set up tables outside, and let the kids run in and out as they pleased. Legos are also a big draw whenever Kyler comes over. The boys make trucks and airplanes, and even the girls get involved making Lego houses complete with furniture for the Lego people.

Sunday the parties continued. The family is came back over for dinner and a special family home evening that Grandma GG prepared. She talked to the group about Ensign Israel Stocking and his adventures as a Mormon Pioneer.

Troy is practicing with a Stake choir to sing selections from Handel’s Messiah. He sang in a similar choir a couple years ago, so this time is a little easier to pick up the music. The music is challenging and fun to sing. The director has done Messiah choirs a number of times in his career, so he knows what it takes to get the choir to sound good.

After a week of parties Rachel was worn out and ready to relax for a couple days.
Zach Zach likes to carry around a little basket of cars. This week he took it to a new level by filling up a small rolling suitcase of cars and toys and wheeling that around the house with him. Whenever Rachel took him anywhere he had to get his suitcase of toys and he wheeled it out to the garage to go with him in the van. Zach’s words of the week are Orange and Robot – which come out more like “Hoshange Obot.”

That should do for this week. Tune in next time for more updates on Katie and Claire.

First week of Fall Break or "This is the worst week EVER!" Week of Sept 29-Oct 4

Sunday 5 Oct. 2008

Katie
Tuesday was a lot of fun for Katie. (Not so much for mom). Everyone (and Haydn and Haylee) went out to lunch at Carls’ Jr, and then to the splash park nearby. Later that afternoon Katie was invited by Laura to see Kung Fu Panda at the dollar movies.
Thursday was the worst day ever. It was soooo sooo boring around home. Finally in the late afternoon she got ahold of her friend Laura and was able to go to her house for a sleepover. Suddenly the worst day ever turned into the best night ever. (It’s all about the drama…)

Emma
Emma’s says that the highlights of her week included lots of coloring pictures and lots of computer online games. Her favorite online games this week are Playhouse Disney, Club Penguin and Disney Channel Fairies. (The ones with wings, not Clay Aiken). Dad made everyone go outside for a while on Saturday, but our kids tend to gain weight during school breaks. The food-input to activity-ouput ratio leans more to the food side.

Claire
Troy is trying to take each one of the girls out for a daddy-daughter date while they are on break. Claire got to go to Der Wienerschnitzel and a local indoor amusement center called Amazing Jake’s on Friday. She and Troy had a good time playing air hockey and riding the bumper cars. Claire was barely big enough to drive her own car. Claire told Rachel that dad got kind of hyper at Amazing Jake’s. She’s more accustomed to seeing her dad enforce chore time, than enjoying himself.

Zach
Haydn came over only on Tuesday this week, so by Saturday Zach was asking if Haydn could come “play blocks, play toys at Hack Hack’s House.” Haydn is coming over tonight for dinner. Zach will be happy to have his buddy back for a bit.

Troy
This week at work, Troy went down to Raytheon in Tucson. Raytheon uses Intel components in their computer boards that go in their missiles. Their designs have to be small, and more importantly, start up in less than ½ a second.
Troy needs to get his presentation ready and luggage packed this week before he goes to Mexico on Thursday.
In the midst of that Troy is trying to figure out all of the things that a good manager is supposed to do. Hiring and interviewing efforts are ongoing, but fortunately the another TME manager is doing a lot of the work.

Rachel
Rachel made it (barely) through her first week of fall break. She took the kids out to Carls’ Jr. and McDonalds a couple times this week and let them play on the playland for a while. She also hit the water park and Dollar Store with everyone. It is a good thing that this weekend was conference weekend, so there was less work to do on Sunday. She got a nice nap in on Sunday afternoon before family came over for dinner.
Rachel is babysitting Haydn and Haylee only one day a week. Tana’s sister is taking another day each week.
Rachel’s also looking forward to a visit from her friend, Jackie, and her family from Canada in two weeks. We’re planning to take a Friday off and travel with them up to the Grand Canyon.

We are baptizing Emma on Saturday, November 15 at 10am at the Chandler Stake Center on Ray and McQueen in Chandler. ALL are invited to attend this wonderful event.

Yes, we missed a week. No, you didn't miss anything. Week of September 14-21

Sunday 21 Sept.
Time flies when you’re having fun – or when you’re too busy to have fun. We’ve had some of both times lately.

This weekend Nate and Tana were finishing new tile in their house, so Haylee spent Friday night and all day Saturday and Sunday with her cousins here. Somehow having one more girl means there are twice as many toys out and little messes all over the place. I’m not sure how that math works. We spent some time cleaning on Saturday, so before they got more toys out, Troy took them all outside and setup the backyard pools for them.

With the excitement and fun of spending the night on the downstairs couches and hide-a-bed, the kids have not been getting to sleep very early. Then they wake each other up at the crack of dawn, so there have been a few more than normal over-tired-meltdowns the last couple days -- but otherwise they have all had a good time. Hayden is with us tonight as well, but once we got him a spot on the couch, he was the first one to sleep.

Here’s some other highlights from the last couple weeks…

Emma
As the middle child, Emma gets grief from above and below and all sides. Usually she deals with it pretty well. Emma is often the best at being helpful and cooperative – even when its time to clean.
After spending all weekend fixing meals for kids, Troy still can’t believe how few things Emma eats. We had leftovers a couple nights this week. Even if she liked the original meal, Emma’s tastes are much to “discerning” for anything leftover. To Troy it seemed like most of her lunches and dinners, and even after-dessert snacks consisted of Garlic Toast, microwave bacon and applesauce. (She really did have garlic toast before going to bed a couple nights ago). She is eating more of these three things lately because these are things she can fix herself. (She would probably have cold cereal for every meal if she could reach it) We try to emphasize the importance of a somewhat balanced diet, but are becoming less and less willing to fix something special or different for Emma’s “discerning” tastes. Earning dessert is of course always one underlying reason for eating anything at all for dinner. Why waste too many calories on dinner when there are so many desserts in the world and only 7 nights a week to enjoy them!? Emma’s current favorite is a Chocolate Oreo Milkshake (Vanilla Ice Cream, Chocolate Syrup and Oreo Cookie stirred up in a mug). Emma’s parents dream of a day when they snicker as they watch Emma try to get her kids to eat anything other than garlic toast and microwave bacon. Heavy sigh…
To Emma’s credit – if you invite her over for London Broil, pears, corn on the cob and Mashed Potatoes, you better plan for extra…
As expected, Emma qualified for the gifted program at school again. She's looking forward to the extra, more challenging homework her teacher will send home with her...yeah, she must get that from Troy.

Claire
Claire swings between impossibly stubborn, ornery and contrary, to polite, obedient and helpful. She was growing weary and putting up a fight about going to school in the middle of last week, so we let her take a day off on Thursday. When Rachel called in to the school to excuse her, the message asked her to state the child’s name, teacher and reason for missing school. Rachel couldn’t help herself, and left a message something like this: “Claire Willes in Mrs T’s Kindergarten class will not be attending school today due to ornery stubbornness and a hard head. We do not expect her to recover from this condition, but she will nevertheless be attending tomorrow.”
Claire is an expert crayon artist and likes to color. She's very careful about staying in the lines and has picked up some techniques from her older sister when it comes to shading with a darker crayon. Watch out Monet! She is also practicing reading words out of some of her favorite books, and is coming along with quite a few that she recognizes now. Also, Katie and Rachel decided that piano was one too many things for Katie to be fitting into her schedule so now Claire is taking her lesson slot. So far so good, although we're still only 2 weeks in and it's all still a novelty.

Zach
Zach is trying out new words all the time now. He’s at the age where you can ask him to try to say something and he’ll give most any word a try. He’s still struggling with beginning consonant sounds, so he pronounces his name “Hack”. Zach’s new words of late include Monkey, which he says more like “Hunky” and Orange, which comes out something like “Owits”.
Last week Rachel asked him if he was her cute baby. He answered politely but firmly, shaking his head: “No, Hack not cute baby, I Big Boy!” His answer was cute enough that his sisters picked up on this and now they ask him every couple of minutes if he is a cute baby. Surprisingly Zach never tires of responding nearly that same way every time. “No, Hack not cute baby, I Big Boy”.

Troy
Troy is in a transition phase at work – still doing some Tech Marketing work, and some Tech Marketing Management. The latest in a wave of newly hired people arrived early Sept. It takes a lot of time initially to get people moving and contributing, so that is where he has been spending time the last couple weeks. He is supposed to get busy and interview some December Graduates in hopes of finding one that is a good fit for the group. Hiring is another one of those things that takes a lot of time.
Despite the banking problems and economic downturn, Intel still has big plans for 2009-2010. We’ll see if last week’s banking problems and stock market downturn affects those plans.

Rachel
In her second month of dance class now. Rachel has learned which hip-hop moves cause pain latter, and avoids those. She is getting better at the wave. Last week she came home and did a whole Brittany Spears video dance routine for us. Many of the hip hop songs are lacking in morals, however, so she doesn’t play the music for us – she just shows us the dance moves.
Rachel has been keeping busy with Stake Primary activities and coordination. She was in charge of stake leadership training meeting for primary teachers last Sunday and was thrilled to have 40+ teachers there. Quite the turnout. She also led another training session for building Lego Temples, a sharing time she put together for Stake Temple day where the kids build the Mesa temple out of white Lego bricks. Also, last week she and the Stake Primary presidents from neighboring stakes found a good excuse to get out of the house and have dinner together at Chili's. I think they did get a bit of scout day camp business in, but after all day with kids in the house, she deserves whatever breaks she can get.

Katie
Katie’s oral report and song about Amerigo Vespucci went well. She is a good public speaker, and had no problem getting an “A”. Rachel helped her come up with some new lyrics to “America the Beautiful” and got a karaoke CD for her to sing along to. She had to include 10 facts in the song about Amerigo, those are the words in bold. She was the only one to actually have music accompianment AND sing it for the class. We look for extra credit points wherever we can get them! We'll try to get a photo of her in her Amerigo outfit out to all soon. Ok...Here we go – sing along with me now! –

“Amerigo the Explorer”
(Sung to the tune of “America the Beautiful”)

Amerigo the Explorer,
A man who sailed the seas.
Who wanted proof that Columbus found
A route to the Indies.

Amerigo, Amerigo Vespucci was his name.
Though he was born in Italy
He died a hero in Spain.

Amerigo refined the maps
That every sailor used.
And formed a way of measurement
That was completely new.

Amerigo, Amerigo Vespucci was his name.
Though he was born in Italy
He died a hero in Spain.

He sailed a ship for Portugal
And found the Amazon-a
He lived with natives from diff’rent tribes
And saw the fish called Pirahna!

Amerigo, Amerigo Vespucci was his name.
Though he was born of humble birth
He rose to earn great fame!

Busy...But Ordinary Week of August 31-Sept 7

Sunday 7 Aug
Last Monday was Labor Day. We celebrated with Rachel’s Family here at our home. Ken’s family came down from Kingman for the day, so the cousins had a good time playing together. Ann brought her famous homemade spaghetti sauce and we all enjoyed dinner and getting caught up on the happenings in the families. We also had the missionaries joining us for dinner. It made for quite the busy house. 22 people in 2000 square feet of living space. We did just fine. I think we're ready to move to a one-bedroom log cabin.....

Kyler found the Legos – one of the few boy toys we have - and got his girl cousins involved in creating things. Kyler made the spaceships and cars while the girls worked on little houses and lego trees. Later on, they all got their swimsuits on and went out to play in the kiddie pools and the slip-n-slide.

Next time will be our turn to visit Kingman. We will try to make it up there in October during the kids’ school break.

Rachel created a costume this weekend for Katie to wear as she gives her report on Amerigo Vespucci. She sewed a vest and a pair of pants that looked a lot like "Hammer pants." Who knew that 15th century explorers were such trend setters. We’ll post a picture later.

We did get Zach to stay in nursery the last two weeks using a somewhat unorthodox method. Rachel had watched a show on Animal Planet that is like Nanny 911 for dogs. This dog had huge anxiety attacks when his owners would leave. The dog would wig out, pee on things, destroy things, etc. Well, the dog trainer had the owners say goodbye to the dog, put their coats on, leave through the front door and then immediately come back. After about 5 times the dog stopped wiggin' when they'd leave. Well, unbeknownst to Rachel, Troy had heard on the radio talk show about a man using dog training techniques for kids, like the leaving the kid in a room and coming right back. Troy put it into use last Sunday and little Zachy stayed in nursery for the whole last hour by himself. Today, Rachel was on duty and did the same thing only she left just once and came right back. Little Zachy had no wig out and stayed the rest of the time. Good Zachy. I think we're going to try to teach him to roll over and stay off the furniture next!

Other than that, this week was fairly routine.

Same ol'...same ol'... Week of August 24-31

Sunday 31 August 2008

We’ll go youngest to oldest this time.

Zach
Zach enjoyed having Haydn over to play with on Tuesday and Thursday this week. Zach and Haydn enjoyed taking toys out of the toy boxes in his bedroom. Rachel said the toys kept them occupied for quite a long time. She heard toys hitting the walls occasionally, so who knows what they were really doing in there. By the time the weekend arrived, it looked like someone had stirred all of the toys randomly together on the floor. Sorting it all back out into buckets was one of Troy’s projects on Saturday.
Zach caught a cold late in the week, so he stayed home from church today. Rachel stayed with him.

Claire
Claire had Green Eggs and Ham Day at school this week. She said she tried a little bit of the green eggs, and had a big piece of Ham. Claire is generally enjoying school. It is fairly easy to get her up and going in the morning.

Emma
With Emma on the other hand, we still get a whole lot of drama and/or trauma every morning. Here’s the morning ritual: First, Emma comes in to snuggle with her mom in bed for a few minutes. Then, mommy must get her clothes for her. After getting dressed mommy must come downstairs with her and fix her lunch while she gets breakfast. After breakfast mommy must put the princess’ socks and shoes on. Once everyone is ready to go, mommy must walk out to the car with her and kiss her forehead as she gets into the car. As we drive away, mommy needs to blow her kisses for Emma to catch. Emma usually pouts and whines a bit on the 8/10 mile to the school. Sometimes the pouting continues on the walk from the car to the classroom. As school starts and the rest of the kids gather she gradually finds her smile. Wait 24 hours, repeat. (Note from the "mommy:" I don't cater to her like this EVERY morning. I don't always put her socks and shoes on.....)
We predict that Emma will be the one living at home when she’s 32. Our one hope is that Emma finds her prince charming before then. Of course knowing Emma, she’ll talk prince charming into moving into our house with her!
Emma was the “Star of the Week” at school. She made a little descriptive poster about herself, and they did a little spotlight on her on Friday. Also on Friday, she got to attend a special pizza lunch with another 12 or 15 kids. She earned the chance to get her name drawn for the lunch by good deeds at school. She enjoyed the pizza and the extra attention.

Katie
Katie is reveling in her “Tween-ness”. A couple of times this week when asked why she was doing something, she informed her Dad that it is “Because I am a tweener”. Katie talked Rachel into making a trip to the store next week to find a training bra. “Because I am a tweener now, Dad!”.
Katie spent the night at Laura Pang’s house on Friday and reportedly had a good time.
Katie has been taking piano lessons, but with all of the homework this year, plus a couple of after school activities, she hasn’t had much time, or will to practice. She might not last much longer.

Troy
After the ward boundary re-alignment, Troy and the Elder’s quorum presidency have visited most of the new members of the Quorum now. We lost a few, and were especially sad to see our Secretary Jimmy Parent and his wife Tasha go, but we also gained some good Elders. It will probably take a few months and a couple of activities for people to get to know each other.
Troy took the girls over to the Pang’s house to swim on Saturday. Because of the three day weekend, he didn’t have to get all of his usual chores all done on Saturday, therefore he had a little extra time to spend. Part of the point was to wear out the kids so they wouldn’t make more messes and wouldn’t fight as much. Sure enough, they sat and watched a movie for most of the rest of the afternoon.
At work, Troy has been invited to do some training at a conference in Guadalajara Mexico on the 9th of October. One of his co-workers speaks Spanish, but he is fairly new, so he wouldn’t quite be able to do the job – so Troy gets to go. Troy might take an extra ½ day for some sight seeing while there. (Rachel's comment: This is during our Fall Break from school so I'll be getting all the kids all day all by myself. So, if there is anyone who enjoys the laughter of children and long hours of rewarding labor please get in touch with me and I'll fly you to Gilbert!)

Rachel
The usual busy-ness this week. Kid care, Rachel’s day care, Mom's homework and special assignment Service, Udall and Smith billing, Stake Primary coordination, making dinners, doing laundry, cleaning, etc etc… A mom’s work is never done. With kids and messes it’s like the old Doritos commercials with Jay Leno: “Clean all you want! We’ll make more.”
Rachel started a hip-hop dance class. The first week the teacher worked them pretty hard and she ended up with sore muscles. The second week wasn’t quite as strenuous. She comes home and shows the kids some of her new moves and then they have fun practicing them all together.
Rachel stayed home from church with Zach and Claire today. No extended family dinner today either. It was nice to have a day off.
Rachel’s brother Ken and his family are traveling down from Kingman, AZ tomorrow to spend some time with us. We will host cousin play time and spaghetti dinner.

Finally...an update! Week of August 17-24

Sunday 24 Aug

Troy
Wed the 13th was Troy’s birthday. We try to string out birthday celebrations as long as possible around here. On the day of, Rachel and the Girls made some crafts and a cake. They sang Happy Birthday and we had cake and ice cream for dessert. On Friday night Rachel and Troy went up to Mesa. We ate at Mango’s Mexican café and then went over to a new city theater in Mesa for a concert by David Sandborn. He has been around for a long time and has a large repertoire. He probably doesn’t have to play the same songs two nights in a row. It was good music.
Sunday the celebration continued with the Zachresons coming over for dinner and dessert. We also celebrated Ann’s birthday and exchanged gifts and sang Happy Birthday for her too.

Rachel
Rachel caught a cold from the kids and didn’t feel well for a few days. It’s hard to avoid passing colds around – even in the summer time.
Rachel was the guest story teller for Emma’s 2nd grade class this week. Emma’s class is studying the human body, so her teacher requested a story with that theme. Rachel decided to split the groups of students into a couple different groups and give them different super powers. She said the students were very well behaved, and everyone liked the story. They caught the bad guy with their super powers. She also told a story to Claire's Kindergarten class about a hungry dragon. Claire was "Star of the Week" and requested the presentation. The Kinders loved it. Mrs. Tegtmeyer, the Kinder teacher, then requested that Rachel come back and tell another story based on the different themes the kids will be doing. Katie has requested Rachel to come tell a story as well, but Rachel is a bit leary of entertaining 5th graders. She doesn't want to ruin Katie's rep.
For the last two Saturdays Rachel was helping to put on a swimming merit badge day for the 11-year-old scouts that are under her purview in the Primary. The stake rented Chandler High School Pool. The first weekend they helped the boys get the prerequisite swim tests out of the way. The second week they covered most of the requirements for the merit badge. She has a nice tan now, but she is still recovering from the sun and heat today.
The boundaries of the wards in the stake changed, so Rachel had to spend some time training new Ward Primary presidencies. Our ward also lost our Primary president, but we gained 15 new kids – nearly doubling the size of the primary.

Katie
Katie is getting a lot more homework in 5th grade. She has also had to bring some home with her because she didn’t finish during class. She also has a report on Amerigo Vespucci that she is working on. For her report on the explorer she gets to dress up like him, and for extra credit she chose to make up a song about him and sing it for the class. Rachel is excited to make up some silly lyrics to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America.” ("His name was Amerigo!")
Katie rode her bike to and from school a few days. She rides with a friend and seems to like it even though it is 110 degrees on the way home.

Emma
Emma has a hard time waking up in the morning for school – but eventually she makes it. She’s more of a night owl. Emma and Claire also have a hard time leaving mommy in the morning as the go to school, but they are able to walk to the playground together before school starts and console each other. I guess sisters can be a good thing sometimes.
Emma took a standard 2nd grader reading placement test last week and was able to read just over 200 words per minute. One of our friends from church also works at the school. After seeing Emma’s scores she had to find Rachel to say that she was amazed. Emma escpecially enjoys reading before going to bed. It’s hard to get her to turn off the light most nights (which in turn contributes to the “hard to wake up in the morning” problem mentioned earlier).

Claire
Claire is one of only two in her class that gets out of jail (a.k.a. Kindergarten) at the half-day mark. All of the other 5 yr olds are there for the full day now. Claire also did very well on her reading comprehension test. Much to our amazement she is the 2nd best reader in the class. She has been practicing lately with One Fish, Two Fish and the Bearenstain Bears’ B Book.

Zach
Zach made it by himself through part of nursery today. Troy tried a new technique to get Zach accustomed to being left for a few minutes, and then eventually Troy was able to leave him for the last 45! After church Zach wandered around singing “I Happy and I Know It” – clap, clap. I think they sang that in nursery for a couple weeks in a row.
Zach has a fetish for salt shakers lately. Over the course last few days, he found all of the salt shakers on the tables and counters and had fun emptying them onto said tables and counters. This morning as Rachel was trying to get breakfast ready for everyone, he grabbed the garlic salt that Emma used last night for her garlic toast and emptied it onto the counter. Then he found some water to mix with it. Even after Rachel got it wiped up, none of his sisters would sit by him because it stunk.

Thanks again for tuning in to our crazy life. We sure do enjoy it....most of the time.

The Party's Over...Week of July 27

Final Days of Boise



Monday 28 July
For our last full day of vacation we took the kids to the Idaho Discovery Center. The Center had a lot of cool science displays and hands-on exhibits and experiments. One of the kids favorite parts was a mini supermarket that was in one corner of the building. The girls spent an hour in there pretending to shop for items on the list and then making Rachel ring them through the checkout. Rachel also got elected to restock the shelves. Grammy, Anna, and her boys went with us and had a good time as well.
Monday night Troy and Rachel left the kids with Grammy for a couple hours and went out to dinner at Flying Pie Pizzaria – a Boise original.



Tuesday, 29 July 2008


The trip back to Boise on Tuesday went pretty well. We arrived at the Boise airport in good time. We got the very back row of the plane for our family of 6. Getting out of Boise was not too bad, but coming over the mountains into Denver was pretty bumpy again, and made Rachel airsick. We only had one hour to change planes in Denver – which gave us just enough time to walk to the other gate and get a sandwich at Quiznos. That wasn’t enough time for Rachel to get over the queasiness, however. Flying out of Denver was bumpy again until we got up above the clouds. By the time we landed in Phoenix (with more turbulance,) Rachel had to race to the restroom. Poor girl. Fortunately, Troy and the kids came through allright. It was good to be back at our house and in our own beds that night.
It is good to be back, but not so good to be back into the normal busy pace of life. The kids went to school Wed through Friday and Troy went to work on Thursday and Friday. It’s a good thing for everyone that the week was short. Everyone was pretty tired after a couple days.



Sunday, 3 August 2008


This week we’ll go back to the old format of people reports instead of day-by-day reports.



Katie
Katie was very concerned that she would not be present for the first couple days of school when the other kids would “organize and label” their supplies. She was even more concerned that she wouldn’t get to go school supply shopping until Wednesday afternoon. We managed to find enough supplies around the house for her to get by with on the first day. Finally, she was a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find the right room.
Fortunately on Wed. morning, Troy and Zach walked her to her classroom, and we found it just fine. It was right next to the room she was in last year. As we were putting her bag down by the door, her two best friends, Laura Pang and Kristin Whitehead came around the corner and they all ran to each other and hugged. After that Troy and Zach said goodbye and good luck, but I don’t think Katie even noticed that they were leaving. Homework for this week was mostly busywork for the first week back.



Emma
Emma wasn’t quite as stressed about having all of the necessary supplies, etc. And she didn’t seem all that stressed about leaving mommy to go to school either. Maybe she found some courage over the summer – plus she was kind of excited to get back to school.



Claire
Claire had big changes this year as she now heads out for Kindergarten every morning. Rachel walked her to the room on Wednesday and waited in line with her as the twenty-two kids went into the classroom. One of the kids in her class, Maya, remembered her from preschool a year ago, and helped her feel welcome. Claire has veteran Kindergarten teacher Mrs Tegtmeyer – who also had Emma a couple years ago. Claire made it to school fairly well on Wed and Thursday, but by Friday she complained that she wanted to stay home. Oddly, she also said that she wanted to go to full-day kindergarten. But I think that was just due to the novelty of school lunch. She was feeling left out in the morning as Katie and Emma packed up their lunches, and she didn’t get one.
Friday and Saturday Claire was a big stinker at home – due partly to the fatigue and stress of going to school.



Zach
Zach was glad to have a buddy his size to play with again. Haydn came over for babysitting on Thursday and Friday this week. In typical 2-yr old fashion they alternated between hitting each other one minute and laughing at each other the next. Monkey-see and monkey-do had a good time together.



Troy and Rachel
Troy and Rachel were both glad that there were only two full days of work this week. They both need another couple days to get his working stamina back up. Rachel had a bunch of Stake primary business and coordination that she had to get cleaned up on Wednesday as soon as we got back. So now we’re back and the vacation is over. Rachel says that now she needs a vacation from her vacation.
That should do it for now. Have a good week.

First day of school. Zach wasn't going to school but refused to be left out!

As requested here is the photo of Idaho's Finest showing us the finer points from the "What To Do When You Lock Your Keys In The Squad Car Class" offered in Idaho City.

Week 2 of our Glorious Idaho Vacation for 6! or Sunday, July 27

Zach continues his father's tradition of being the Willes Family Cat Tormenter.

The crew at Idaho City.

The Troy Willes Family after day at Boise Zoo in Julia Davis Park.


Sunday July 27th -- This week's installment also comes from Boise Idaho -- where the weather is cooler and the home cooking is mighty good.

Monday - July 20th

Monday was the last full day that Grant was in town. After the usual late breakfast and start time, we all went up to Idaho City. It was an overcast day, so that kept the temperatures down just a bit. The drive up was very nice. It follows the Boise river and then some tributary creeks on up into the mountains. Once we got up there we walked down one side of the main street and decided to eat at Calamity Jane's Cafe. Not the prettiest presentation, but pretty tasty grub. Monday is a slow day for tourism, so Idaho City wasn't very busy -- but that was nice because we didn't have to watch the kids quite as closely. We had a good time walking around and reading signs and looking at buildings -- you know, the usual Idaho City activities. We found a Idaho City Musuem that had some interesting exhibits and artifacts.

The funniest Idaho City moment came as we were passing the back side of the Sherriff's Department Building. A couple of Sherrif's SUVs were parked in the back. Beside one of them was a couple rotund deputy's that were looking into the car. As we got closer we realized that they were trying to break into it with a coat hangar! It was obvious that they had locked their keys in the car and were now trying to get in. Todd secretly snapped a photo, and they glanced at us with embarassed looks as we walked past.

After our walk around, we got ice cream at the local parlor. As we got our ice cream and were sitting down, a large, bearded man and his pre-teen daughter came in and started joking with the staff in the ice cream shop. Todd struck up a conversation with him and found out that he is the owner of the local old-time photo shop. Not only that, but he is the winner of the national quick-draw pistol competition that they had in Idaho City last fall. Pretty cool.

On our way home we found a spot by the pretty creek and let the kids wade out and throw rocks into the creek. Katie and Emma rolled up their pants and walked across without getting too wet. Just as katie was coming in to go home, however, she slipped and fell in up to her neck. We didn't bring a change of clothes, so she borrowed some of Kevin's - since Anna came prepared for the kids to get wet. We actually got off kind of easy because Claire and Zach were asleep in the van the whole time we were at the creek. A fun time was had by all. Dinner that night was back at grammy's.

Tuesday - July 21st

Tuesday was Grant's last day. He had to leave early afternoon to fly back to Lodi. Thus we didn't plan any big events for that day. Instead, Troy and Grant took the kids to the local park for a bit in the morning. Just as we came home a big thunder and rainstorm started rolling in from the west. Grammy's neighbor, Tippy Thomas, was concerned about losing the apricots on Grammy's tree to rain and hail, so she brought out some sheets and the guys helped shake apricots into blankets. We collected three large buckets of apricots that way. Not all of them were ripe, but that only takes a day or two anyway. As a side note, a stranger stopped by a couple days later asking if she could pick some apricots from the tree and make jam. In payment, she promised to give Grammy some of the jam. Sounds like a fair trade.

After most of the rain stopped, Grant and Troy took a couple hours to clean up the front yard and bushes. The big yard is a lot for Papa Willes to try to keep up with. Grant and Jason took the rental car back and then flew back to Lodi. The rest of the day was spent getting ready to leave for Grampa Rogers' funeral and camping.

Wednesday - July 22nd

Wednesday was Grampa Rogers' funeral. Rachel and the Willes Girls stayed a little while at Grammy's and packed up the car. Everyone else had to leave early (10:00) in the van and the truck to get to Gooding around noon. We all travelled in our Sunday clothes and made it in good time.

Despite the somber occaision, the Rogers clan had a good time getting re-acquainted before the funeral started. I had to look at some of my cousins two or three times to figure out who they were -- based on my memory of what they looked like a few years ago. As the funeral proceedings started, they invited family into the Relief Society room for the family prayer. There were too many to fit, however, so they had to move the family prayer into the cultural hall instead. Lisa Rogers said the prayer. After that the coffin and family moved into the chapel for the funeral service. Granpa's brother Bob spoke, Aunt Deanne sang. Then Grammy (Kay) spoke and Todd and Anna sang. Finally, the bishop of the ward spoke and then all of the Grandkids and Great Grandkids (of all ages) got up out of the audience and sang 3 verses of I Am a Child of God. There were a lot of people up on the stand. Not everyone sang, but they were all willing to get up and lend their support.

The funeral then proceeded to the cemetary. Uncle Monte dedicated the grave. It was a hot, sunny day in Gooding. The cemetary was well-kept and many of the graves had flowers and mini rose bushes besides the headstones. After everyone left, Grandpa Rogers was buried next to Grandma.

The funeral re-convened back at the church for a meal of Ham and Funeral Potatoes. There were some family that were not able to go to the reunion, but they made it to the funeral, so we got to see even more of the family than the planned reunion would have brought.

After all that wrapped up, we met Rachel and kids at the Twin Falls Best Western. This hotel came recommended by Aunt Lorie Ann. It had a great indoor pool, and a nice breakfast the next morning. The Willes Kids swam for a while and then ordered Pizza for their dinner. After dinner they went back to the pool and were joined by the rest of the cousins that were at the funeral earlier. It's always fun times in the pool. We let them swim until 8:30pm. After that it didn't take them long to fall asleep.

Thursday - July 24th

Nobody, except maybe for Papa Willes, was in a big hurry to get to the campsite, so after a good continental breakfast at the hotel, we all went down to swim until about 10:00. After that we loaded up and went over to the Twin Falls Temple open house that just happened to be going on during July and August. It was a good experience for the kids (and adults). We watched a little intro video in the neighboring chapel, and then went with our guide into the temple. Zach wasn't happy about the white booties they made us wear, so he walked through with just his socks. The temple was of course very nice inside and out. They used nice marble on the floors and light wood (Tiger wood) accents and trim. Emma's favorite part was the huge chandelier in the celestial room. Claire liked the Telestial room with the mural of the Shoshone falls and the snake river valley. Katie said her favorite room was the sealing room with the eternity mirrors. Zach's favorite part were the chaise lounge chairs in the hallway where he climbed up, layed down and pretended to take a nap. (I guess they looked comfortable.)

After the temple they filed everyone back into the neighboring chapel where they had the cultural hall decked out as a reception center with a few exhibits, and even some cookies and punch! It wouldn't be a Mormon function without some "refreshments".

Before leaving for Lava Hot springs we stopped at Perkins for lunch. Not much different than Denny's. Up until now Troy had been driving the van (Moby the great white van) around with the Lassigs and Austin as passengers. Rachel was driving the Buick with the kids and was ready for some adult companionship for the last leg of the trip. We tried to put Troy in with Rachel and let Todd drive the Van, but Moby decided otherwise. The van has a tendency to stall while idle, and decided to really give Todd a workout. After Moby stalled several times while trying to get out of the parking lot, Todd parked it again and gave the keys back to Troy.

The most exciting part of the journey occurred a few miles down the road. As we were getting close to Pocatello there were a couple of loud thumps under the front passenger seat. Troy thought that he ran over a rock that flipped up. When we got to Pocatello we looked under the van at the wheel and found a bungee cord hanging under there, and removed it. Thinking we had found the source of the bumps, we headed out again. As we came down the hill from Pocatello, however, there was suddenly a very loud "thump thump thump" on the wheel well. We pulled over quickly, realizing that our tire was falling apart. Rachel was in the car behind us and pulled over with us. We were able to find a jack and tire iron in the back of the Buick (after unloading everything from the trunk), but the tire iron was the wrong size. After a few minutes, Papa and Grammy circled back around and found the Tire iron for the van in the back of it. In the meantime, Uncle Dan arrived with his truck and trailer - but he didn't have a jack and tire iron that fit either. Anyway, we finally got the old tire off and the spare on, and 45 minutes later continued on our way. Anna and I have "fond" memories of many Willes trips with auto troubles. I think it wouldn't be a true Willes roadtrip without a breakdown of some kind. We arrived at our pretty little campsite above Lava Hot Springs around 8:00 and setup camp just before it got dark. It's a good thing it gets dark so late around here. Also - we owe Uncle Monte for loaning us pads, tents and sleeping bags for the whole Willes crew. The campsites were very nice, and included covered picnic tables, firepits, latrines and running water faucets. There was also a group campsite which we should get ... next time.

Friday - July 25th

Friday was Lava Hot Springs Day. After a hearty breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon, we went back the 7 mile dirt road and 9 mile paved road to check out the town and swimming pool of Lava Hot Springs. (Papa went with us, but Grammy stayed back to relax at camp). There's a short little stretch of minor rapids of the Portneuf river that goes down under main street. There are shops in the town that rent tubes by the hour and then people float down and walk it back up. It's the original natural water slide park. We ate lunch at "Ye Ole Chuckwagon." The girls had authentic western recipe... chicken nuggets, of course. Much better grub than Denny's.

The swimming pool was a lot of fun. They had two big water slides that Emma, Katie, Austin, and Kevin could go down, and a large shallow area where the small kids could play. There were a lot of people there -- some of the Rogers contingent included -- I think we all had a good time. Zach even took a little nap on a pool float for a while near the end. Rachel kept moving him to keep him in the shadow of a nearby lamp. We got back to camp in time for dinner and the reunion auction.

The big dollar items at the auction this year were a hand made patchwork quilt made by Janice that went for $83 and a couple of pies that Deanne made. The shirts that Rachel ordered did not arrive in time, but we still sold 20 of them for $20 each! Todd and Anna donated two parkhopper tickets to disneyland, which Linda bought for $95. Reports are that they made a record $1200. After the auction ended, the girls had fun handing out glow bracelets that Rachel picked up at the Dollar Store. Zach went to bed with his bracelet still on. The second night is always better. Everyone slept a little better on Friday night.

Saturday - July 26th

Saturday morning after breakfast with the clan, we packed up camp. Katie and Emma had fun playing pictionary with their second cousins of similar ages up at Aunt Lorie Ann's campsite. Anna and Todd and boys (including Austin) got up early and drove to Twin Falls for a big air show that happened to be this weekend. (They said it was hot out on the airfield, but they had a lot of fun nonetheless.) Anna gets extra kudos for surviving camping AND the airshow all day Saturday while being big and pregnant. The AZ Willes family boarded Moby and Grammy and Papa drove the pickup to Pocatello Wal-Mart to get a new tire. We ate lunch while the new tire was being put on, but we still had to wander around Wal-Mart for another 45 minutes before they had it ready for us. Next stop was in Gooding where we stopped to get things from Grandpa Rogers' house. We got dinner at Dairy Queen -- where they still strongly believe in Fry Sauce. Rachel said it brought back memories. On our way out of town we drove by Grandpa's farm house and told the girls stories of when their Dad and Aunt Anna were little and went to visit cousins there. We finally made it back to Boise at 9:30 pm. Whew!

Sunday - July 27th

Church with Grammy and Grandpa again. Troy's highlight was making stonehenge out of playdough while in the nursery with Zach :-P Grammy made a yummy roast and pototoes for dinner. That evening the kids helped grammy make snack mix and then played games until it was time to get ready for bed. Postnote: Zach's new word for the day is "What?". Claire called his name and he responded with "What?". Over and over and over again. He even managed to throw in a "godfather/mafia" tone to it near the end of the. "Whuuuutt?"

Shopping at the Great Boise Mall

Peace out for this week, chickadees! Talk to you soon!