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.