The Willes Family-Arizona Edition

The Annual Holiday Update

2010-12-17T10:56:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE!

The Willes Family has had a very eventful year in 2010. It would take much more blog space than I'm allowed to use to completely chronicle everything that has happened. I have tried to condense it so that it will only take you about 45 minutes to read. Just kidding.

As part of their Christmas present in 2009, we signed up Katie, Emma and Claire for a circus school. A travelling circus, Zoppe Italian Circus, visits Chandler Center For the Arts each year and this year they offered a circus class. It ran the week of New Year's for all day. On the final day we bought tickets to the circus and the girls were part of the opening acts. They juggled scarves, spun the chinese yoyo and created their Willes Sisters Pyramid. They had a great time and the circus was delightful.

Katie turned the big 1-2 this year and we through her a big ol' party. She invited the entire sixth grade at her elementary school and some extra friends. She had about 40 kids plus parents show up. We served pizza and had a candy bar plus cake, decorated by her Grandma Willes. Katie had kids donate used blankets for animal shelters instead of buying gifts. We ended the evening with a dance under a canopy of Christmas lights. I think it was a success. Katie agrees.

Some of the crazy kids at the birthday party.

During the weekends of a very warm February the neighborhood kids set up a stand in front of our house. They sold donuts, milk, soda, cookies, whatever they could get. They made enough money each week to buy stock for the next week. After three booming weeks of business they had a profit of $42. Not bad.

We took a very warm trip to the zoo during spring break.

We also visited a local candy company. They all got to make and decorate candy. Unfortunately, you had to be 12 and under to participate. I had to buy my own candy. Dang it.

I took my vacation this year to see my sister Sarah, who teaches high school in Las Vegas, Nevada. We visited the pawn store that's featured in the TLC show "Pawn Stars." We saw Chum and Corey. We also saw "Viva Elvis" a Cirque de Soliel show at a new casino there. We had fun on the strip but I had to come home and bathe after the experience.

In late March Chandler had its Ostrich Festival. We watched Ostrich races, rode some rides and met the guy who plays Justin on Wizards of Waverly Place. The girls liked that last thing the best. I entered a parent's dance contest at the Disney Tent and won a dvd for the kids. Yes, I am that kind of mom.

As part of a stake service project our family was able to go with other primary kids to the Mesa Temple early one Saturday morning and clean the grounds. They had us dig weeds from trees, wipe down signs, sweep and clean the handrails. It was a super cool thing.

At Shumway Elementary, a student is selected to win a bike based on grades and behavior. Claire won. She got a bike and got to be on the school's televised announcements.

During Katie's last year at grade school her "Battle of the Books" team won so they advanced to district. They didn't place but had a great time. She was also chosen to present her essay at the D.A.R.E. graduation and participated in the school plan, Peter Pan, and the school chorus.

This year we found an awesome professional photographer who gave us a great price on photos for the entire Zachreson clan. We spent a whole morning feeling like supermodels. The photos on our Christmas card came from that session. To check out more of his work go to www.benchristensenphoto.com. Zach made the website but I don't know if he's still up. I'll add another post with some of the photos.

We traveled to Kingman, AZ, in June for my brother Ken's daughter, Bryn's, baptism. We hiked up Hualapai Mountain the first day. It's about 5000 feet up at the top and you can see the desert floor below you for miles. Pretty cool.

We stayed at a Springhill Suites by Marriott thanks to a coupon from my old friend, Gwen, and it soon became our favorite hotel. So stylish. And such yummy food.

In July we took a mammoth road trip up to the Rogers Family Reunion in Preston, ID. We planned numerous stops along the way. We visited Rachel's college roommate, Jackie Webster and her family in Rexburg, we went to Yellowstone National Park and saw Old Faithful, we toured BYU, we met up with Great Gramma Willes in Thayne, WY, where we rode horses and hiked to waterfalls and we looked through antique stores in Afton, WY. What we didn't plan was that Clifford, our big red van, would break down in Page, AZ, stranding us there for the first night of our trip. We luckily found a rental van and headed out the next day. Stopping in SLC we looked at cars and found a van. The rest of the trip via cellphone and email we arranged to purchase the van, install a hitch and rent a vehicle trailer. We left the reunion a day early, bought the van in Bountiful, drove both vans to Page where we returned the rental and loaded Clifford onto the trailer. We towed Clifford home behind us because no Van gets left behind in this family! It was a fun trip that I never ever want to take again. I need to go curl up in a ball somewhere and sing happy songs just from reliving it all.

Rogers Family Reunion, Preston, Idaho. Hi Grammy Willes in the background!

Afton, Wyoming. Claire just wants ice cream.

Taking a cooling break in the stream by Intermittent Spring near Afton.

Zach, getting in touch with his inner cowboy in Thayne, WY.

Troy riding the range in Thayne, WY. When I die I want to go to Thayne. GORGEOUS!

Katie and Zach in the barn at the horse ranch.

After our session with the professional photographer I became interested in seeing what I could do. I have some pretty good shots which I'll be selling online for millions of dollars someday. Mark my words. Of course, most of them feature my family, but whatever.

I nearly had a panic attack as I watched a man hoist my 4-year-old onto a huge horse and swat the horse's hiney, sending said horse out into the corral. Zach, however, did great.

The kids had to feed and groom their horse before they could ride him. The horse's name was Scotty and he was was a gentle giant.

Waiting for Old Faithful to blow. Just so you know, there is no set schedule or time as to when Old Faithful erupts. I heard this explained over and over by the poor ranger who was manning the area we were in. I wanted to make him a sign.

Who knew Cosmo the Cougar could show you the stairway to heaven right there at the BYU bookstore?

"Rise and Shine the cougars are out. They're on their way to......" Yeah, okay, Troy. We got it. You know the BYU fight song by heart....

And this is how we ended our lovely two week vacation; pulling our wounded van home with our new 11-passenger Ford F-350 Econoline, baby. Yes, it's huge. Clifford would need a whole new engine so we sold him on Craig's List as is for $300. We actually had a lot of calls on the ad for a dead Astro Van. One guy called and said, "I have the engine, just not the van." Okay. We're sure Clifford is currently running packages across the Mexican border right now. Oh well. He'll finally get some excitement and not be just another family minivan. GO CLIFFORD! Oh, by the way, our new van is named Bruce, after the great white shark in Finding Nemo. We welcome Bruce to the family.

We saw some funky weather in August when we had hailstorms for a few days in a row. Everything was pelted by huge hail stones. Every news channel filled about 20 minutes of its 30 minute broadcast with stories of the storms. Hey, any kind of weather is a big deal here in Arizona, especially if it's hail!

During fall break the girls, cousin Haylee, and neighbor Sierra created a band called The Retro Gurlz and wrote a song. I put guitar to it and we recorded it. Of course, then we had to film a video. Check it out at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xESvx1DbG8 . They are working on a second song as you read this. It'll hit the internet soon!

Katie made it into the Advanced Chorus at Willis Junior High. She has a proper chorus dress and gets to perform at the Chandler Center for the Arts. She really likes it.

During Fall break we took a day trip to Globe-Miami area for yummy Mexican food. We then drove to Kenneworth Mine, a HUGE hole in the ground. It was pretty amazing. All the mountains around it are from the tailings of the digging. This pictures doesn't do it justice.

For our road trip to Idaho I bought the first season of "CHiPs" on DVD. The kids loved it! Zach, especially, grew to love those motorcycle cops and insited on being Ponch for Halloween. He didn't want to be Jon, although he looks more like him. I made the costume for him. Surprisingly, you can't buy a CHiPs costume anymore. Hmmmm. He made us spray paint his hair black for the role.

The kids had many opportunities to trick or treat this year. One of them was at Intel where they set it up cubicle to cubicle. They get A LOT of candy in a very short amount of time. Katie went as a Punk Rock Fairy. Zach was Ponch and Emma and Claire were Thunder and Lightning. Emma sprayed people with the water bottle after telling them what she was. The costumes were Emma's idea. I just made them. Seriously.

Troy and I finally broke down and bought a trampoline over fall break as an early Christmas present for the kids. They have had nonstop fun on it ever since. One day the cool air was particularly dry and the kids had fun with static electricity experiments. Who said trampolines couldn't be educational!?

We had concerts and plays and parties to attend all December and now wait for the fun of Christmas.

We hope you are all well and doing wonderfully in your part of the world. We are grateful for our friendship with you. Thanks for taking the time to read about our past year.

Wow! What a January!

2010-02-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

We started off the brand spankin' new year by having a mini-Willes Family Reunion. Troy's sister, Anna, and her family and Troy's Brother, Grant, and his family, all traveled to our humble home on December 31, 2009, from California for a week of good times and happy chaos. And yes, all those people stayed at our house. Willes Manor may be small but it is mighty!

For Christmas Katie, Emma and Claire were signed up for a the Zoppe Family Circus school, which ran from Dec 27-Dec 30, from 10a-2pm. They learned how to juggle, walk on tightropes, work the chinese yo-yo (AKA The Diablo), hang from trapeze and swing and spin on hanging ropes. They had a BLAST! On the last day of class they performed in a mini-show for parents. The Willes Girls had their own act where the build a human pyramid! The next day, New Year's Eve Day, we had bought tickets for all the visitors plus Grammy/Grampa Z, Bob Z, and Sarah Z (18 in all) and we went to the Zoppe Family Circus. The girls had a part in the pre-show and the cute circus ring leaders hyped them up. They were definitely teacher's pets. The circus was a good, ol' fashioned circus. Hanging from ceilings, clowns, storytelling, dog acts, tightrope, juggling, balancing, etc. It was a GREAT evening. We all went to Carl's Jr afterwards where all the kids terrified their parents by trying to recreate the acts of skill on the Playland....

Katie, Emma & Claire doing their big finale in the Circus School show.

Katie was really good at the Diablo and had everyone in the audience clapping for her during the pre-show.

The benches were a tad uncomfortable but the Circus was delightful. All the kids, grown-up and adolescent, had a great time.

That week we also hit a place called "Jumpstreet." You can see why, although I looked everywhere and couldn't find Johnny Depp ANYWHERE! I think Troy and Grant had as much, if not more fun, then the little kids!

On Sunday night we had all the Willes' and all the Zachresons over for dinner and The Wonderful World of Willes, where family members performed an act of their choosing. The Arizona Willes' performed their amazing Ward Christmas Party act. Troy dressed up as the Christmas tree that the girls were rockin' around. Zach provided the beat box to my electric guitar accompaniment. Yeah, we rock....

Lots of time was spent at the park and luckily we had LOTS of sunshine and boy cousins to play with for Zach.

Grammy Willes couldn't make it to the Mini-Family Reunion but did make it up on Jan 12. Just in time to help out with Katie's Big 12th Birthday Party. Great Gramma Reva Willes also flew in from Texas for the party and to hang out. Katie had handed out about 50 invitations and between kids and parents who came to hang out we had about 55 people jumping around our backyard. It was awesome. We had a candy bar, cake, pizza, soda, professional cake by Grammy W, games (Blindfolded Musical Chairs and Pictionary), and a groovy photo op. We strung lights and when the sun went down we ended the party with a fun dance (no slow songs....hey, they're only 12!). Everyone had a grand time!

The kid attendees at the big bash.

Just before people started to arrive Gramma clicked this photo of the food stations. The Candy Bar, set up on the far right under the window was a confirmed success! We had about 20 bowls of different kinds of candy and the kids got to fill their own cellophane bags with whatever they wanted. Yummy! Katie requested that the kids bring blankets for the Maricopa County Animal Shelter instead of presents. She and her aunt Tana delivered them last week. She's now the darling of the shelter volunteers.

Katie had wanted a Groovy party theme: peace symbols; flowers; etc. My how everything comes back into style! All the kids got to have a pic taken and we handed these out as Thank you cards.

Doing the Cha-Cha Slide. If you don't know what that is ask your kid or google it. I'm ahead of you. I not only knew what it was but had it downloaded on my computer already!

Katie's awesome, tie-dyed, three-layer birthday cake. (Thanks, Grammy Willes!)

Our kitchen was finally completed back on December 23 and we threw it into action quickly with Christmas morning brunch for the Zachresons and as food central for all the Willes' the following week. It's awesome! For more pictures and details check out http://www.rwilles.blogspot.com/ .

The last two Saturdays of January the neighbor kids got together and made some cash. The first Saturday they raided the left over soda from Katie's party (the weekend before) and sold it with water and lemonade. They made 23 BUCKS! The next week they used they're cash and bought milk and donuts and sold them. They made $43! They are going to branch out to chili dogs next Saturday. Look for them on the cover of Time Magazine as Entrepeneurs of the Year for 2010. I think I'm going to start charging them rent. The funny thing is they are all business about it and had it all thought out: profit sharing; captial investments; advertising; etc. They even made Emma the manager, since it had been her idea. Her office is behind them on the front porch. She even has a nametag!

Neighbor Kids Productions, PC (pretty cool)

Emma, manager.

Zach also started preschool this January leaving Rachel with nearly 5 hours a weeks without any kids at home! HAPPY DAY! On January 28, Rachel went with the kids to the fire station for a field trip. Zach was more than a little excited. When they opened the side of the truck where they keep the axe, shovels, etc. they asked if anyone knew what was in this part of the truck. "TOOLS!" yelled Zach. Tool, big trucks and loud noises = Zach Heaven.

They got to go inside the cab and he was ....STOKED!

To wrap up the month Rachel organized and hosted an ice cream social for about 200 kids and parents at the Stake Center for the Articles of Faith Reception. Any child who memorized and passed off all 13 Articles of Faith got to come and be honored. They received a certificate but most importantly they got to build their own ice cream sundae! What fun! Both Emma and Katie got to come and receive recognition. Way to go, girls! This is Katie's last visit to the reception as she turned 12 and moved up to Young Women. Wow.

And that's our January, people. You can see why it's taken me til February to post anything! We hope all is well in your worlds! Thanks for reading!

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-12T13:59:00.001-08:00

Hello, everyone and Merry Christmas! We thank you for taking the time to visit our blog and catch up with us. Here are a few pictures showing the highlights of 2009 for the Willes family.

We were able to travel to Southern California over Spring Break in March for Cousin Kevin's baptism in Huntington Beach. We had fun freezing on the beach, visiting with family, and even travelled down to San Diego to visit Sea World. It was a great time!
For more details and photos check out our archive: http://willesfamilyarizona.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

Summertime was spent close to home as the addition to our home began. We managed to fill the time with trips to the mall and Target, crafts and relaxing in our luxurious backyard pools. Yes, we have two pools in our backyard. Fancy.

Here is the back of our house at the start of the project. The contractor had ripped out the concrete slab a couple of weeks before. We didn't get a picture of that so this is our official BEFORE picture:

And here is our official AFTER picture. Looks like a part of the original house, eh? We love it.

We did a lot of the finish work inside. We painted, put in the floor and desks, cabinets, etc. Whew. Sweat equity is properly named because we did this in September before the air conditioning was put in. Very warm without a/c in that office.

Our amazing office addition was completed in early October, just in time for Fall Break. The kids used it extensively those two weeks. The kids now think we need to buy more computers to go with the increased space. Ahhhh. No. I can look out my big windows and watch my kids yell at each other as they play in the backyard.

We were able to take a Mini Stay-Cation to North Scottsdale during our Fall Break. We stayed at a lovely new Residence Inn and shopped at Desert Ridge Marketplace and went to the Arizona State Fair and eating out at yummy places like Islands Burgers. That was Rachel's favorite part. Oh, little did she know.... It was pretty fun and the 20 minute ride home was a huge bonus. "Are we there yet?" "Ah, yes, actually, we are!"

On Thursday, October 29, Troy awoke at 2:15am to the rushing sounds of water. He raced downstairs to find our kitchen flooded from a broken compression hose under the sink. We spent almost two hours mopping it all up. The insurance company came in later, determined we had a level three catastrophe (I'm glad the adjuster didn't check out the rest of the house!) and within 24 hours we had no kitchen cabinets, no sink or no flooring. Because of a variety of things we have lived with this as our kitchen for the past 8 weeks. We got sick of eating out that first week, but making anything more than grilled cheese sandwiches and soup was a big undertaking. We hosted Thanksgiving dinner for the Zachresons and felt very pilgrim-like with the meager accommodations. (Hey, that's as pilgrim as I'm willing to get, my friends.) As I am typing this my kitchen cabinets are being installed and tile is being laid. The end is in sight.

Yep, a utility sink, 4-foot camping table, a dishwasher and a stove. It's going to be hard to give up this high-society way of life, I tell ya. When the house is finally restored to at least a semblance of order I'll post the photos.

Now, normally, I feel awkward rambling on and on about how wonderful our family and children are and therefore I keep the bragging to a minimum in the letter that goes out with the card. After all, you were just an innocent bystander in a holiday game of greetings and merely opened a card from an old friend. HOWEVER, if you are reading this now you obviously wanted to know more about each family member since you took the time to find a computer, turn it on, wait for internet connection (a hassle for some of you), type in our blog address and have read the letter all the way down to...here. SO I'm gonna get my braggin' on now.

Here's a little info for each family member:

Troy attended his 2oth Year High School Reunion in Denver, CO, in June. He and Rachel took a little weekend trip after importing his mom to babysit. They had a fun time taking the Troy Willes Nostalgia Tour. He only had to travel to Northern California a couple of times but did get a trip to San Francisco for a conference. Rachel was unfortunately left behind. Dang it. Troy tried his hand at managing his Technical Marketing Engineer group until Intel found a permanent person for the job. He was glad to give up the title for the quieter life of team member. He is still serving as Elders Quorum president and grows a variety of vegetables in his garden which none of his family will eat. Sorry.

Rachel celebrated her 4oth birthday in style by hiring a hearse to bring her to her Big 40th Birthday Bash. She partied with a bunch of her friends and even lived out her Rock Star Dream by performing two songs with the band that entertained everyone. For the video of the show click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0_HSxdqVyI. She also visited her high school friend, Gwen, in New York City early in the year. The rest of the year was spent knee-deep in home renovation. She is starting her 5th year as Stake Primary President and still does bookkeeping for the old law firm. She also added recapper to her list of titles. She recaps episodes of House, MD for SpoilerTV.com. Like she had any free time to begin with. For even MORE info on her life and thoughts try out: http://www.rwilles.blogspot.com/ .

Katie is a 6th grader, top dog, at Shumway Elementary. She is receiving awesome grades but more importantly is well-liked and respected by both students and teachers. She loves the science projects at school because it combines two of her favorite things: science and crafts. She'll turn 12 in January and is very excited to be going to Young Women. She's already talking about the Pioneer Trek and Girls Camp and doing baptisms at the temple. Her Young Women agenda is already full. She sings in the ward choir and is enjoying her own room. Although it took her a while to get used to being alone. She still loves drawing and won a bookmark designing contest at school earlier this year. Her future still involves taking care of animals and saving the environment.

Emma is 9 and in the 3rd grade. Last semester she was disappointed to receive an A+ in all her classes except one...math. She only received an A...no plus. She's currently working on correcting that. She's at a ninth grade comprehension reading level, but can read and remember just about anything. Her sisters and her mom are jealous of her photographic memory. Seriously. It's not fair. Her teacher thanked us at her parent conference last semester. She said that she'll often crack a joke or make a reference and Emma will be the only one to laugh. Emma has a sharp sense of humor but still needs to learn to use her powers for good sometimes. She's in her third year of piano lessons and has performed at church with her teacher. She enjoys playing school, drawing and playing on the computer. Webkinz and Barbies still rule her world.

Claire is 6 and in the first grade. She's reading at a fourth grade level and has grasped all the math concepts she should know by the end of first grade. She's pretty much just doing crafts now at school. :-) She is quite the dancer showing some natural moves we wish she'd hide away until she was older. She took a dance class this summer with Emma and her cousin, Haylee, and although Claire was the youngest in the class she was placed front and center because she could remember and perform all the moves. She loves playing school with her sister, Emma. The two of them have set up their own classroom in their bedroom complete with a dry erase board, maps, time chart and other signs. If we ever need to know what "Today is ______" or what "Yesterday was ______" we just go in their room. Her life also is heavily involved in the Webkinz and Barbie worlds.

Zachreson Troy, aka Zach or Zach Attack or Zachy, is three years old and on the verge of attending preschool. He is a total little boy who loves trucks, tools, messes, mud, running, jumping and teasing his sisters. However, he's also quite selective about the clothes he wears. He gets that from me. He's a great helper for his dad during outside chores; more so than his sisters ever were. He'll stay out all day using his Zachy-sized shovel and tools helping dad fix up the yard. He does a pretty mean beatbox and can get down and break dance when he's in the mood. He also just learned how to wink, click his tongue twice and point at you all at the same time and it has become his greeting, mid-coversation and farewell go-to trick. We love having the boy to offset all the drama and we're doing our best to keep him macho...except for the pink hand-me-down bike and scooter he's now riding at full speed. Maybe the lightning speed will blur the actual color of the vehicle.

And so we are at the end of another Christmas letter composed at the end of another year. It's been a great one despite having to breathe in concrete and drywall dust for six months. We are grateful for the amazing lives we have and for the love and friendship of the people that surround us. We thank you all! We also testify of Jesus Christ and his love for all of us.

Have a great Holiday Season!

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

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-12-01T13:43:00.000-08:00

Yes, the greeting may be a bit late, but this cute picture makes up for it. Claire had received her pilgrim duds at school the day before and insisted on wearing them for dinner. She's her mother's daughter. I actually made all the hats as part of the work release program for classroom moms. It took me about 6 hours to trace, cut, fold, tape, staple, hole-punch and tie strings on 35 hats. Yeah. I was tempted to stamp "Made In China" on all of them. Next year.

Claire loves to eat the drumsticks when we go to KFC and insisted on getting it at dinner, but was a little shocked by the size and weight of the turkey drumstick. She said she'd let Troy have it and stuck to cut up bites of turkey breast.

Even though we still don't have much of a kitchen we managed to make do with what we had. Just like the pilgrims did long ago. We had to set up our beef stick and crackers on the dishwasher since we lacked counters. Just like the pilgrims did long ago.

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We thank you for your support and friendship!

It's a MIRACLE! Another post within a week!!

2009-11-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

Wow....even I am amazed that I've got another posting here within only one week of the last one. Of course, it's now 11:01p and I'm a little loopy from lack of sleep, but I promised Halloween pictures and by gum, I make good on my promises.

After finishing the office we transformed the old office into Katie's pre-teen hideaway. She's totally thrilled with the results even though it took her a few nights to get us to being alone. And yes, it is that pink.

This Halloween season we decided that just one candy-gathering frenzy was not enough so we went on THREE such frenzies in the space of one week. The first frenzy was our Ward's Trunk or Treat, and this year I decided to give back instead of just taking. I set up our van, Clifford (as in Clifford the Big Red Van) and handed out treats. After a few rounds, Muscle Man (that's what Zach insisted on calling himself) came back to help me with the heavy candy. I'm wearing a SuperMom tshirt and red cape. See...I'm the mom of SuperBoy. Get it. Yeah.

In between the candy frenzies our kitchen decided to hold its own water frenzy by bursting a pipe under the sink. We got to it within 20 minutes we think but by then there was an inch of water on the ground. We spend one hour at 2am and every towel we had in the house mopping it up. The insurance people declared it a level three catastrophe and proceeded to tear apart our kitchen. Within 6 hours my old, but functional kitchen was demolished. The wall repair is covered. The floor repair is covered. But the cabinets are supposedly recoverable, at least the fronts. We disagreed, but lost out. We decided we'd move up our kitchen remodel by 5 years and do it now. We'll update you later on what unfolds.

Yes, that's a foot of drywall cut out and removed from the entire perimeter of the kitchen. We had SIX industrial dryers and a dehumidifying making our house even noisier for two days.

We did have fun with the industrial blowers, however.....

So the next candy frenzy was at Intel, where Troy is lucky enough to still be employed. They have Trick or Treat cubicle to cubicle event where about 75% of the employees on two floors decorate their cubes and set out candy for employee's kids. Most of the cubicles are unmanned and the kids just grab a piece of candy from a bowl and move on. No "Trick or Treat" or "Thank you" needed. We timed one row of cubicles. It took them 71 seconds to hit 11 "houses" and get candy. Now that's Intel Efficiency!

Zach checking out the view from the third floor at Intel.

Katie as Punk Rock Girl.

Every year we get a photo in this very spot. It's the last stop. It contains chairs, a drinking fountain and a restroom. We take care of immediate business and then set up our family photo. We then wait for a nice employee to walk by and ask them to snap our annual Intel Halloween Photo. We've been going every year since they started. Katie was 5. See, we do have traditions!

Okay. It's now OFFICIALLY Halloween night. It was great weather and since we didn't have a kitchen we ordered pizza, invited my family over and ate out on the driveway. We handed out candy too, but only had about 20 trick-or-treaters. Oh well, all the more for us! It was fun. So from Left: Katie, Punk Rock Girl; Kristen, Katie's BFF as Cleopatra; Claire, Disco Miniature Golfing Queen from Phineas and Ferb (Google it); Zach, Muscle Man, and Emma, not-so-evil Green Witch.

Katie went out for more trick-or-treating with Kristen but Haylee showed up so all was well. She was a cute Pink Pirate.

The welcoming committee: Claire; in hat; Nate, purposely hiding; Troy; Bob; Gramma Z; Grampa Z.

And there you have it. Another week and another blog post which only about 5 people, mostly family, will read. I do this in lieu of family history and call it good......

My How The Time Flies By... Months of..oh never mind.

2009-10-25T13:45:00.001-07:00

WOW! I am quite the Blogger Slacker. I apologize. There. Now we're friends again. Here is a brief synopsis of the past few months.

School started on July 27 and the girls started 6th grade (Katie), 3rd grade (Emma), and 1st grade (Claire.) Katie enjoys being top dog but did confide to Troy and I that she can feel the extra pressure of being looked up to by everyone. She's cute and we love her!

Our big project for the year...heck for this decade, was the addition of the office out the back of the house. Originally, we had the office upstairs in the smallest bedroom. The three girls have been sharing a bedroom for 4 years and although they haven't complained it was time to get Katie her own room. It was a long process, made longer by permit delays as the town of Gilbert has gone to 4 day workweeks and laid off a bunch of employees. Here's a photo of the day they dug the holes for the concrete. Zach and Haydn had fun jumping in the holes but I sorta lost that fun by having to pull them out every five minutes.

Zach got VERY into the whole construction thing and pretty much lived in a little boys paradise for the entire time. He even took lunch on the worksite and slept with his safety helmets. You can't be too careful, my friends! The man building the addition is in our ward and has his sons work with him. They and Zach all became fast friends.

And here's the finished product from the outside. It's really great and looks like a part of the original house and not an add-on.

Here's the interior shot. We used the same office stuff we had upstairs and it all fit great. I love being able to look out that big window into my beautiful back yard and watch my kids fight....uh, play.

Here's a view from inside the house. That door there has quite the story. I wanted an old-style office door as it would be stuck in the middle of a wall and the first thing you see when you walk in the house. Well, apparently, Phoenix and the west coast in general have a serious lack of old doors. I found quite a few on Ebay and for not much money but they were all "pick-up" only and even though the door may only cost $20, the trip to Eastern Pennsylvania would add considerable to the overall expense. Soooooooo, after searching many salvage yards I found this door with a hole cut in it. I repaired it, stained it, filled in the flaws, bought a window, found the hardware, painted the window frame and frosted the window. Our builder reframed the door, attached the hardware and hung the door for an additional charge and I got the door I wanted. But looking back I think I should have just driven to Eastern Pennsylvania. It would have been easier and maybe even cheaper........

Our school district's fall break was the second and third week of October and we had planned to head to Kingman the second week to visit Ken and Rhonda and their clan. Unfortunately, Ken and his family had some major changes in their schedules and we had to ixnay the trip. We decided to just have a Staycation and found a lovely hotel in North Scottsdale. We went to the fair, ate out, went shopping and swam in the pool. It was a lot of fun and we had a blast. The best part: 20 minutes after loading up the car and heading out we were at our destination. Can't beat that.

This first picture is supposed to be of an over-joyed Zach getting to meet his television hero, Diego, at the State Fair and giving him a high-five after they talked about rescuing baby jaguar. That was the plan as we waited in line. Then a 5-foot Diego with a 2-foot head showed up and it became a picture of a cowering 3-year-old who's excitement has been extinguished and who is now being forced to stand next to the creature that will haunt his dreams for the next month. Wow. Expectations are so fickle.

Zach found his happy face again at the petting zoo. But it was only near the smaller goats. The bigger goats and baby llamas had no happy faces near them at all.

The girls, Daddy and Zach rode the Ferris Wheel at the Fair. I stayed on the safe, low ground so that I could take photos of my cute family. It had nothing to do with the fact that I really don't like Ferris Wheels.

Much of our Staycation was spent in this lovely salt-water pool at the hotel. Our hotel was on the Mayo Clinic Hospital grounds. It's a Residence Inn and has suites and kitchens so it seems as though people visiting the hospital for treatments or in long-term care use it quite a bit. Consequently, we usally had the pool to ourselves as bandages and open wounds are not conducive to swimming in public places.

The best part of the Staycation for me, aside from being with my cute family, were the six meals we ate out where someone else cooked the food and cleaned up the mess. Love it! This is us at Islands Burgers, a family favorite since we went there in March while on a trip to Sea World. Such a yummy burger.

Thanks for reading everyone! Have a great week and hopefully I'll get pictures up from Halloween before Valentine's Day of 2010! Adios!

Spring Break Trip to South Cali.: Better Late Than Never...Maybe

2009-06-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday 22 Mar 2009 (Written on this date by Troy, but not posted by Rachel til now. Sorry.)

California Trip – March 2009

Friday was spent travelling. Troy fried his laptop’s power input, so we were only able to watch half of Beverly Hills Chihuahua before the battery ran out. [Blogger's Note: This was not a huge loss...] We stopped in Blythe for lunch, as is usual. The kids spotted a Carl’s Jr. restaurant with a playland. Very good for getting the wiggles out. Katie gets kind of carsick sometimes, so we let her sit in front for the last part of the trip and she was much happier. Our splurge that night was going to Black Angus for dinner. We even got out with enough time for the kids to splash in the pool before bed.
[Making our regular stop at Cabazon for the GIANT dinosaurs. Zach REALLY liked them!]

[RUN, KIDS, RUN!!!]

Grammy and Papa Willes and Grant and Jason drove down from Lodi that same day.

Saturday ended up being cool and cloudy, but that was our one day that we had to play at the beach. We started down at the Huntington Beach pier shops and then ended up on the beach watching the surfers. The air temp was only about 65 and the water temp was only about 55 that day. Regardless of the temps, the girls were excited to see the waves and the beach and couldn’t resist getting wet. After a bit of playing in the water, they came back and huddled under towels. Finally we made them change into dry clothes and then they were plenty warm. Zach was content playing in the sand with shovels and sand toys that Anna brought.

[We all thought that Zach looked like he belonged on that California beach.]

[It was really cold! Emma and Claire got wet and then huddled in their towel cocoons.
Somehow they managed to eat lunch in there too. Hmmmm.]

After the beach we all met over at the Damitz’ house for pizza party dinner. The kids enjoyed playing with the Damitz kids on the trampoline and with their toys.

Sunday we all of the relatives attended Todd and Anna’s ward. John and Grant did a piano-violin duet and then all of the singers did a hymn arrangement with John accompanying again. The Willes-Lassig-Damitz choir was bigger, and dare I say better, than the Ray 1st ward Choir is!

After church we met at the Damitz’ house again for a big Sunday lunch. We even had cake, ice cream and presents, and played Uno with all of the kids. Anna, Sue Lassig and Tiffany Damitz worked hard to feed everyone and take care of all of the details of the parties -- and the baptism.

[The whole gang at the baptism.]

Later that day we all went back to the church for Kevin’s baptism. The baptism went well. Even the kids stayed fairly reverent. Kevin’s cousins sang “If the Savior Stood beside me” and did a fine job. The Willes girls had sung that one before, so they did fine. Anna arranged to have cookies and cake as refreshments at the baptism. Even though the kids just had cake and ice cream, Katie put some cookies on a plate and then declared to Troy “I already had dessert, so this is all I’m having.” Troy expected there to be one or two cookies on her plate but turned around to find her holding a whole plate full! There were just too many yummy looking cookies to limit herself to only one or two!

After the baptism we all went our separate ways. Our family took a few minutes to drive down to the Newport Beach Temple. We didn’t get out and walk around it, but the temple and the grounds were pretty.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at a Subway for subs and at a Japanese restaurant for Sushi. Katie had been requesting sushi since we started the trip – and she talked Troy into getting some for their late night snack.

Finally that night, Zach was comfortable with his surroundings and went to sleep fairly quickly.

Monday we partied it up at Sea World! We left the hotel around 8:30am and took the scenic drive down the coast to San Diego. We don’t go to a theme park every time we go to California, but we decided that since it had been a few years, it was probably time. Grant had never been to Sea World and we convinced him to stay an extra day by planning the trip to Sea World. Anna and Todd decided to Join us there as well, so there was a total of 7 adults and 8 kids in the party. It’s always a challenge to keep everyone together and happy with that many in the party, but I think everyone had a fun visit. We didn’t get to see all of the shows because of the limited number that were available, but we saw Shamu, and the pet show, both of which the kids enjoyed. They also liked the penguins and the manatees and sharks. The park wasn’t extremely busy that day, which was also nice.

[Katie making friends with the Manta Rays.]

After spending $65 for chicken nuggets at lunch time we weren’t sure we wanted to go very nice at dinnertime. Todd and Anna suggested the Islands burgers across the freeway from the San Diego Temple. This one is special for them because it where they ate the night before they were married. And now it is special to us because as we drove up to it we noticed a sign that said “Free Kids Meals”! We had a good meal there. Everyone was pretty hungry after walking around all day. Rachel wolfed down her bacon cheeseburger and the kids slurped down shakes. [Blogger's note: We got out of there for under $25 with tip. And for a family of 6 that just plain rocks!]

After all of that crazy fun, the kids were content to sleep in a little and lay around the hotel for a bit on Tuesday morning. They made sure they got a good hour of swimming time before we headed back to Arizona. Anna came over with Adam and Cole and she and Troy had a good chat while the kids splashed in the pool. After that it was time to pack in the van and drive back.

As noted earlier, the computer was broken, so we passed the time driving home by listening to Rachel’s 80’s hits CD’s. The girls’ favorites included “Move Out” and “Let’s Go”. Troy should put those as the background music for the trip slideshow.

We had a great time in Southern California. It was so much fun to see the Willes side of the family and there are always so many great things to do in California. It'll be our big trip of the year so we'll have to find fun things to do around the Valley this summer. Wish us luck!

Okay, sorry...

2009-06-09T23:23:00.000-07:00

It looks like the JibJab videos I posted have either expired or just plain died. I apologize. I am trying to pick the photos to go with Troy's update for our trip to South Cali back in March. Yes, I know. I am hanging the curtains of shame in my house as we speak. I will get to this hopefully before Troy and I head to Denver on Thursday for his 20th High School Reunion. Weeeee! That will be an interesting blog in and of itself, I am sure of it. Thanks for being patient!

Yo, dawg. Word. Click the pause button on our jukebox to hear the whole thing.

2009-03-31T20:30:00.001-07:00

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Wait for the DVD Click the pause button on the jukebox in the left sidebar to enjoy the full video.

2009-03-31T20:13:00.001-07:00

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What's been going on thru 8 March 2009...

2009-03-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday 8 Mar 2009

Well it’s already the end of the first school quarter and time for spring break. Our big plans include a trip to California next weekend for Kevin’s, Troy's nephew, baptism. Rachel got a friends and family rate certificate for a Marriot hotel, so we’re staying at the Marriot Residence Inn. We were originally going to stay through Tuesday night, but decided to go to Sea World on Monday and come home on Tuesday.

Katie
Katie presented research on Buzz Aldrin last week. She made a story board with some pictures. For the presentation she wore an old wool military coat that Rachel has. She enjoys the presentations more than most students, I think. She practiced and practiced. Troy and Rachel have always thought that her true calling in life is to be a lawyer.

Emma
Emma has been fighting allergies and colds lately, so she hasn’t been very happy. She's had a cough for a long time which prompted our pediatrician to put her on a steriod nasal spray. It hasn't helped her mood much, but her coughing is less. Now we need to pick which Emma we want: Grumpy coughing, sniffling Emma or grumpy, allergy-free Emma. Hmmmmm, not a big difference...

Claire
Stubborn Claire Story
The other night Troy dished up ice cream for dessert. Troy served Claire first and then dished some up and handed it to Katie. Claire saw Katie’s portion and immediately complained that she was slighted because she got a smaller portion. Troy told her that Katie is a bigger person, and so she is allowed to have a slightly bigger portion. That didn’t seem to matter to Claire, however, who continued to cry, whine and complain. While enduring her complaining, Troy and the other kids quickly finished their desert and then everyone except Claire went upstairs to get pajamas on. Finally, seeing that there was nobody left to complain to she reluctantly ate her ice cream. Being the third child has made Claire learn how to inflict the maximum amount of annoyance and discomfort into just about any situation she doesn’t agree with. Sometimes it even happens during dessert. (Hi. Troy wrote the stuff above, but this is Rachel now, and I have to stand up and defend third children everywhere! We are just products of our environment! That, and mean older siblings who always seem to get everything cool! Thank you.)

Zach
Fortunately Zach has been getting a little better about lying down and going to sleep at night.

Cousin Haydn comes over for Rachel to take care of once or twice a week. They love playing together (well – except for when they are fighting over a toy, or a whose turn it is to swing…) and it is fun to watch them talk and jabber to each other. They carry on pretty in-depth conversations, and even if the adults don’t know what they are saying, they seem to understand each other most of the time.

Zach’s mis-adventures
Whenever Zach gets bored, he’ll get a chair and look up on one of the counters to see what kind of new goodies people left out. One day last week as Rachel came down the stairs to check on him he covered his eyes and yelled out “Stop Mommy! Don’t see me!” Rachel had caught him with his hand in the jelly jar, but this time it was petroleum jelly (Vaseline). He found a big jar of it somewhere and proceeded to smear it on the table, some on the floor, some on the chair, etc. Only later that night when he returned to the scene of the crime did we find another spot that he smeared on the wall. We were still wiping up walls and floors Saturday night – trying to get it all up. Fortunately he didn’t put any in the carpets – that would have been impossible to remove.

It’s a very good thing that his partner-in-crime/buddy Haydn is only here one day a week. We’ve noticed that with two boys wandering around there are inherently twice as many bad ideas. Those days, Rachel plans on getting nothing else done.

Rachel

Rachel and the stake primary presidency hosted the ward and stake pinewood derby races yesterday. Once again they had a great time- almost as much fun as the cubscouts who actually raced the cars, I think. She was at the church from 6:30a-9:30pm without seeing daylight. The stake monitors the 8 individual ward races and helps out if needed but the big event for them is the Stake Finals Race that evening. Each year Rachel seems to add another cool thing. Last year was the remote-controlled blimp to fly over the track. This year, she asked a member of another ward to come project the results of each race and racer point totals on the wall over the track so everyone could follow along. She's already coming up with something for next year. She's wondering how the church feels about celebrity endorsements...

Rachel is looking forward to her trip to New York – alone. She will meet up with her high school friend Gwen Lytle who manages the Marriott in Times Square. Gwen says she can get tickets to David Letterman and they are planning a host of other fun activities.

Rachel is not quite as anxious for our trip to California. Travelling with 4 kids is still a lot of work.

Rachel is definitely NOT looking forward to all of the kids being home during spring break. Trying to keep them all out of trouble all day is also a lot of work. With all of the Primary stuff going on, she hasn’t really had a chance to sit down and plan fun crafts and activities yet.

Troy

Usually, trying to get everything done before vacation is difficult. Troy is hopeful that this week won’t be too bad, however, because he has 4 whole days of work, AND his boss is also on vacation.

With Rachel busy with stake Primary meetings and activities, Troy has had plenty of quality kid care hours lately. Thankfully, the kids are a little more cooperative when Mommy (A.K.A. “Good Cop”) isn’t around to complain to regarding Daddy (A.K.A. “Bad Cop”) making them do chores.

Yesterday we did a lot of house chores, but we also went to the local nursery and got some veggies for the garden. We planted some tomatoes, peppers and summer squash. Hopefully it stays cool for a couple months longer while the veggies grow.

A couple weeks ago Emma was invited to a birthday party at the local roller skating rink. Katie is getting pretty good on her roller blades, so she has been asking to go to Skateland for a while now too. Troy decided to take all 3 girls down to the rink for the evening and help them skate. As noted, Katie brought her own skates and did very well. It was Emma’s first time on skates, however, so Troy walked around the rink a few times with Emma clinging on to his arm. Claire and Troy played some video games and then she decided she was also ready to try skating. She laced up her rented skates and she and Troy made around once before she was tired and ready to go back to the video games. Everyone had bruises on their legs and rear-ends after a couple hours of skating, but in the end they said they had a good time.

Well, that should do it for now. The trickiest part about these updates is remembering all of the weird and wacky things that 4 kids do all week. Until next time – take care.

And now for our weekly update...written monthly: week of 7-15 Feb 2009

2009-02-17T08:23:00.000-08:00

Cute little nerdy boy.

Crazy Hair Day at Shumway during Spirit Week. Claire's hair is naturally a wee bit crazy so we just kicked it up a notch. Emma was game for super crazy too, but her baby fine (nee thin) hair didn't hold it so well. Katie did a couple crazy pony tails, but she's got a rep......you know.

AZ WILLES FAMILY UPDATE
Sunday 15 Feb 2009

Since the beginning of the year the later church schedule (11 to 3) makes life easier in the morning, and makes staying up late on Saturday night not so bad, but I am having more difficulty finding half hour on Sunday to write the update now. This weekend is president’s day, and Rachel is sick, so we won’t be going anywhere. That gives me a little extra time to sit down and write.

Katie

This week in school Katie enjoyed a secret valentine gift exchange – very similar to a “secret Santa” exchange. They gave small gifts to their randomly assigned valentine each day of the week with little hints about who they were. On Friday they gave one larger gift and then the secret was announced.

Katie’s school chorus participated in a district-wide chorus festival on Wednesday. She had a good time travelling to the High School and performing in the big auditorium.

Katie also sang in church today with the other 11-yr old girls from the ward. They sang the primary song "I will Follow God’s Plan" and did very well.

Katie is growing up quickly. She is starting to be a better helper when needed. She got some cereal and cooked bacon for everyone’s breakfast this morning while Troy was at church meetings. Later, she experimented with hair-dos, settling on pulling her hair back and to the side, which she felt made her look “older”. She recently announced that her hairstyle will now correspond with her mood. If she has a pony tail up high then she's happy and energetic. If her hair is not in a pony tail and just hanging down, she's tired or grumpy. We're still waiting to see the hairsytle for "contradictory because I know everything" mood. :-)

Emma

Emma had a couple of fun field trips lately. Last week her class got to go to the local IMAX theater and watch a 3-D movie about ocean creatures. The class then went to a park for a picnic. The rest of the family was jealous. Lately, because of her airtight memory, Rachel has been asking Emma to remind her to do things "in the morning" or "tomorrow afternoon." Emma hasn't let her Mom down yet. Who needs a Blackberry when you have an Emmaberry?

Claire

Claire’s favorite projects lately involve coloring with crayons. She brings home detailed crayon artwork, and prides herself on being a good artist. She likes to ask Mom and Dad: “Do you think this looks like 1st grade coloring work?” to which we say: “Oh definitely 1st grade, and maybe even 2nd grade quality!” Her kindergarten teacher once commented to Claire that she is a "2nd Grade Colorer." What amazes Troy is that all she has at school are the jumbo crayons – which are very hard to color accurately with, but she still manages to stay in the lines.

Zach

Super Fix-it boy
The other afternoon, Zach and his sisters and cousins decided to play super heroes with all of the dress-up clothes. Zach’s chosen hero costume had a cape and a small backpack full of his play tools. His alias quickly became “Super Fix-it Boy” as he ran around the house “fixing” whatever was handy: the table, a chair, the dishwasher, etc. At least once a day now he grabs his tools and becomes Super Fix-it Boy for a while.

Bedtime Hassles
Unfortunately the lowered bed only kept Zach in his crib for a couple weeks. One night he REALLY didn’t want to go to bed yet and he scaled the side of the crib and got out again. So now we are back to putting him in the crib multiple times per night until he finally decides to give up and go to sleep. If the number of times we have to put him back in doesn’t decrease soon, we may try to attach a bed rail to the side of the crib to make it harder to get out. I have a feeling though, that anything short of an enclosed cage wouldn’t hold him for very long. Heavy sigh…

Rachel

Last Wednesday Rachel helped put on an evening workshop for 11-year-old scouts. She also trained a new Ward primary presidency on Thursday, and then has been going to Ward conferences as a special guest star every other week.

The other big project this week was printing out 150 pictures of kids from the Articles of Faith Reception a couple of weeks ago. Rachel imported, sized and printed each one on her computer and printer. That’s dedication!

Haylee and Haydn have come over for one day each week. Rachel doesn’t get anything else done on those days, but the cousins love playing together. Rachel was even brave enough to take all 6 kids to the grocery store with her. Wow!

Troy

For our twelfth anniversary, we went out to dinner at Chompie’s Delicatessen and then to the comedy Improv theater. We had a fun time walking around the art shops in Scottsdale. Right next to the Scottsdale museum of modern art is a very artsy sushi restaurant called “Pure”. The whole place is white: White plastic tables and chairs; white walls; white dishes, white waiters, etc. We had fun just watching the fancy people come and go. The whole thing looked like a strange movie set. Someday we’ll have to go inside. We'll get our best pretentious clothes on (all white or all black, of course) and do our best to fit in. Rachel thinks we should speak in accents the whole time we eat there. Tee-hee.

For Valentine’s Day, just two weeks later, we went out to dinner and then over to a friend’s get-together.

Troy’s work is going pretty smoothly. Most of his efforts involve coordinating the efforts of the TME’s he manages now. He is also involved in interviewing more people, as his group is one of the very few places within Intel (or anywhere for that matter) that is hiring right now. It’s comforting to be looking for more people to do the work, and to be approved to spend the money to get them.

Finally,
We are all looking forward to our spring break trip to California to visit family. I think we have settled on a visit to Sea World.

Sorry, it's been a while- Week of 11-18 Jan 2009

2009-01-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

Katie; Katie's friend, Laura; Haylee; Claire; Emma; and Zach. Why does he always seem to be hiding behind things. Oh...Haydn is down in the bottom right corner of the picture...totally asleep.

Sunday 18 Jan 2009

Katie
Today was Katie’s birthday party with the family. Haylee always shares the party because her birthday is so close. (Katie’s is on the 21st. Haylee’s is on the 23rd) The family enjoyed dinner together and then opened presents shared cake and ice cream. Aunt Tana and Grammy Z always bring presents, so everyone has a little something to open and enjoy. Before the party, Katie saw a large present wrapped for Haylee, and asked where her “big present” was. We told her that as you get older your presents get smaller – a strange phenomenon indeed. She wasn’t too sure she really liked that trend. She couldn’t really figure out what could be small but still really good. Maybe we should wrap up the present we saved for the 21st in a great big box – just so it looks impressive. Anyway, she was pleased with the “small” things that she got, including a little digital photo keychain and digital photo cube.
Katie is making big plans for the 21st – the day of her birthday. She is planning to invite a couple friends over for dinner, and she will have a few more presents to open that day. Around here we like to extend the celebration over as many days as possible.

Zach
Over the holidays Zach finally escaped from his crib. After he did it the first time, there wasn’t any way to keep him in it, so Troy took the side off. He doesn’t take regular naps anymore, so that wasn’t an issue, but it became an exhausting ordeal trying to get him to stay in his bed and go to sleep at nights. There was just too many other things to do besides go to sleep if he was outside the crib. If we shut the door and made him stay in the room alone he freaked out and wouldn’t calm down enough to go to sleep. Finally after trying about everything we could think of, Troy adjusted the bed to be about 3 inches lower than before and put the side back up. Zach just was not able to handle that much freedom yet. Now we are back to a much more pleasant night time routine. We read him a story, and then put him in the crib with a book and eventually he lies down and goes to sleep on his own. He still prefers having the room light on – which is just fine as long as he goes to sleep.
Nursery on Sunday is another recent ordeal with Zach. He won’t let us leave him in there without Mom or Dad. A couple weeks ago we left and let him cry for a bit. Eventually he stopped crying, but then the next week, he started freaking out at just the mention of going back to church. You could tell that he really hated it. This week Troy stayed in with him the whole time except for a few minutes of Priesthood opening exercises. He realized and remembered today that he did enjoy the toys and activities. So we’re hopeful that he will be more willing and excited to go next week. Even if he has to have one parent in there that’ s OK – I just don’t want the mere mention of church to send him into a panic. It may be another long year of Nursery attendance… Over the last 7 years Troy has attended Nursery more regularly than Elder’s Quorum. Well, I guess they do have better snacks in Nursery!
The Arizona Cardinals won their playoff game today and are heading to Florida to play Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl next week. After watching a couple of football highlights, Zach started pretending to throw the football and then run around the house. After a few laps, he went outside and found his football, and talked Troy into chasing him around the yard with it for a few minutes. Watching sports definitely never that effect on any of the girls. Wow – boys are different creatures!

Claire
Claire is doing well in Kindergarten. She is reading more and more words as the year progresses. She likes the beginning reader books like “One Fish, Two Fish”.

Emma
Emma and her class sang This Land is Your Land for the school flag raising on Friday. She was excited to be up in front of her sisters and friends in the other grades.
Emma had a significant first today – her first piano performance in Sacrament meeting. She played When Jesus Was Baptized as a duet with her piano teacher (and ward member) Leslie Hodgson. They did pretty well, considering Emma is still a beginning piano student. After the piano duet, all three girls sang I Want to be Baptized. They were asked to perform only a week in advance -- So they did baptism songs because they had recently performed these at Emma’s baptism, and didn’t need much practice to get them together. They did a good job. It’s funny to watch all three of them – Katie is not afraid of getting up in front of the congregation, but Emma definitely is. Katie smiled and performed. Emma just sang. You could see the fear in her eyes. Claire did her best to remember the words and follow along.

Troy
Intel announced earnings this week. Pretty bad – but still “in the black” which a lot more than a lot of other companies can say at this point. In an effort to remain profitable, they announced that there will be no raises or promotions this year. I guess I picked a bad year to move up to a managerial position. It wasn’t really about the money anyway - but of course it might have been nice… The good part is that I still have a job, and management is currently committed to keeping the non-manufacturing staff they currently have.

Rachel
Rachel has been busy training new ward primary presidencies and planning for an Ice cream party to be held next week. The Ice cream party is for any primary kid that was able to memorize all 13 articles of faith during the year. The party has turned into quite an event. Even on the ward level, the kids get a chance after church every week to pass off one of the articles and then they get a little treat if they are successful. Katie had them all done a few months ago, so occasionally went in and recited one she already knew just to get a treat. Rachel even convinced the stake presidency and the high councilmen that memorizing the articles of faith was a good goal – and she will treat some of them to Ice cream next week as well.

Happy New Year! Week of 21-28 December 2008

2009-01-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS MORNING!

Sunday 28 Dec. 2008

Allright – well it’s been a long time since the last update. As we all know, things get a little busy during December.

There’s a lot to report this time – and probably the last report of the year -- so let’s go one person at a time for this update.

Katie

Katie had a big project on the body due in December. She (and Rachel) spent a lot of time making a paper mache half-of-a-brain and then attaching it to a foam core board. Around the brain she drew an outline of the rest of the body and all of the nerves running around it. Then she glued gold string on the outlines of the nerves. As part of the project they had to get up in front of the class and tell what each part of the brain and nervous system did. Katie does great with oral presentations and the teacher liked her project, so she got a perfect score.

She also had a couple books that she had to finish reading during the last week.

The last Tuesday of School, Katie had her Chirpin’ Cricket Chorus Concert. Katie had a good time singing. Her favorite song was called The Peace Song. The Zachreson family came to support her and they even brought some friends of theirs who were visiting from out of town.

As if all of that wasn’t enough to try to cram into the last week of school, Katie’s class also did a “Sneaky Snowman” gift exchange (a.k.a. Secret Santa). The kids bought little gifts for each other and then secretly placed it on the recipient’s desk each day that week.

Katie got some roller skates for Christmas – so she spent quite a bit of time practicing on Christmas day. To get her started, Troy got out our big two-seater stroller. She held onto the handle for balance and pushed it around the neighborhood as she got used to skating. The weather here was a nice, warm 70 degrees. No white Christmas – but we get to roller skate and bike around – so nanny nanny :-P

Emma

Emma is breezing through 2nd grade. No major projects yet, and she’s smart enough that she rarely needs help with her homework.

Emma’s favorite Christmas gift was a razor scooter. She had fun racing around the neighborhood on Christmas day.

Emma is a good middle sister. She is generally the most accommodating of the bunch. She will give up what she wants if it makes someone else happy. Last night when we went to a party at the neighbor’s house, all of the kids got a little gift. Emma saw that another little girl was really interested in her gift – so she offered to trade with her. It was a sweet gesture.

Claire

Claire has been coming home for lunch from school most days still. She goes to Kindergarten with everyone for the whole school day, but coming home at lunch time gives her a needed rest and recharge so she can make it the last few hours of school.

The last couple days of school everyone did projects with their buddies. Claire’s buddy is Sierra Mitchell, who she already knows from church. The projects and parties were just enough to keep her going to school during those last few days.

All three girls saved up some money and then bought little gifts for family and friends at a little school gift shop. Those little gifts were Rachel’s favorite part of Christmas.

Zach

Zach is saying more and more words now. He is at the age where he will try to repeat just about anything you say. One day after he repeated a couple of my statements I asked him if he was a parrot. He resolutely replied: “No, Hack not a parrot, Hack a big boy!”

Zach had another growth spurt. For the last couple weeks he has been eating a lot, and then today we noticed that some pants that we had to roll up 2 weeks ago fit just fine today.

Zach had a good time this Christmas. He got some toy cars and trucks and a Go Diego Go Playhouse for christmas. When it comes to toys, two-year-olds are generally pretty easy to please.

Zach’s new nickname this month is “The Candy Weasel.” Wherever we have candy in the house he will find it and eat it -- constantly. Christmas morning all of the kids got candy and gum in their stockings. Zach ate a lot of gum that day. The day after Christmas Troy went through the house and put away all of the candy that he saw so that Zach couldn’t reach it. Only a few minutes afterwards, Zach wanders in to the kitchen chewing some more gum. The candy weasel found more candy somehow! In order to find where Zach was getting all of it from, Troy had to tell Zach that Daddy really wanted some candy – so please go find some. He then watched as Zach went back into the living room and pulled out another pack of gum from a stocking that Troy missed earlier. Ah Ha! Much to the Candy Weasel’s dismay that stash was immediately confiscated. We have a bunch of goodies and candy on our counters as well – but we’ve found that if we put a towel over the goodies so that Zach can’t see them, then he forgets that they are up there. Out of sight, out of mind.

We thought about putting Zach on the front lawn as a living sculpture...he objected.

Rachel (as reported by Rachel)

Rachel gets to report the craziness of the last month in her own words.

It was craziness from about Thanksgiving on but that's what the holidays are all about, right? Between multiple concerts, performances, batches of popcorn balls, meals prepared, gifts wrapped, cards sent, errands ran, well-wishes given, messes made and cleaned up, extra trips to the store and kids running around the house it has been a fun, well-loved and well-used month of December. Christmas morning as a parent is much better than any other I can remember (except when I got my banana-seat bike that was all mine and not a hand-me-down.) This year I honestly didn't have anything major on my wish list. I picked out a purse I had been shopping around for for a while and a dvd, but it was fun just gathering things for my family. I felt sorry for Troy, as I gave him NO guidance on getting something for me, but he came through with a gift card to iTunes and some new Bass-Enhanced earphone for my mp3 player. Way cool, yo yo. Overall, it was a great December and a wonderful Christmas.

Troy (as reported by Troy)

I was fairly busy at work this month -- but I’m just glad that I’m not an accountant or salesman that has all sorts of end of the year quotas and deadlines. I’m still getting the hang of managing a small team of people, so much of my work is still learning as I go along. I hope to gradually get more efficient so that many of the day to day tasks don’t consume as much time.

Intel overall is still good – the top management says that because of the sluggish worldwide economy they will probably not give anyone any raises this year. The good news is that they plan to keep headcount flat during 2009 – which means no big layoffs.

Intel gives us Dec. 25-26th off and Jan. 1-2nd off so many people, myself included, are taking a vacation for the full two weeks. We decided that with all of the expenses of Christmas, etc, we didn’t want to spend more money for trips, so we’re just kind of hanging out.

I took the kids to the park a couple of times last week. Getting the kids out of the house helped them get rid of some wiggles, and helped Rachel get some of her Christmas prep done. On one of our outings I took Emma and Claire to my work to water my plants, and then we went to the Library for a couple hours. Emma and Claire like to check out the classic Serendipity books and color pictures while they are there.

Last night we all went over to a party at our neighbor Arthur’s house. It was kind of a friends get-together and birthday party for their 1-year-old. Our kids were well behaved, and to my surprise even ate the food. (adobo chicken and pork with rice and beans).

Rachel and I got a call earlier in the week to give talks in church. Rachel accepted the assignment knowing that we should have plenty of time to prepare once Christmas was over. We spent a good part of Friday and Saturday getting our talks ready. Mine was a preview for study of the Doctrine and Covenants this year – including ways to enhance your individual study. As one suggestion I told the congregation about Dad’s technique for underlining different topics using different color pencils. I had a couple people ask me to send them notes on the system. Should I copyright it and call it the Willes Scripture Marking Method™? But poor Rachel, no one told us that the Young Women would also be reporting on their trip they took the week before to an orphanage in Mexico. They had 3 girls talk on their experiences. By the time they were done there wasn't enough time to do both of our talks so Rachel just bore her testimony and gave me the rest of her time. What a trooper. Looking on the bright side, however, she realized she now has a really great talk prepared for a time when she's asked to speak and DOESN'T have the time to write one. The glass is half full, my friend, half full...

THE SPECIAL EDITION 2008 WILLES CHRISTMAS LETTER

2008-12-19T14:12:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-19T14:07:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-19T13:22:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-23T21:35:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-07T16:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-31T23:14:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-03T15:49:00.001-07:00

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!

Live From Boise! It's.... the Week of July 20

2008-08-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday 20 July

This week's installment is written from beautiful Boise Idaho. Mid-day is in the low 90's but mornings and evenings are very nice. With the high lattitude and daylight savings time the sun doesn't set until 9:00, so evening activities can continue longer than usual. (It also makes it more difficult to get the kids in bed before 10:00.)

Troy stayed home on Monday and finished up some work. He told everyone at the office that he would be on vacation beginning Monday, which gave him just enough peace and quiet to get one last project cleaned up before taking off on Tuesday. He wishes he could pretend to be on vacation more often.

Rachel spent the day packing and cleaning in preparation for the trip.

Tuesday we didn't have to be out of the house until 1:00, so that gave us enough time to get everything into the van and the house cleaned up just a bit before leaving. The big adventures for the day were the airplane flights from Phoenix to Denver and then from Denver to Boise. The girls were very excited to ride the airplane. Once we got to the airport and were able to look out the window at the big planes and trucks, Zach was also very excited. He kept pointing out the window at all of the equipment outside calling them "tools". It was quite a sight to see the three girls walking down the concourse with their carry on bags.

The first flight to Denver went well. The Frontier Airlines planes were nice, and had a screen in the back of all of the seats. The kids also had their own little bags with coloring books that they carried around on with them. As we were coming across the mountains towards Denver, the plane hit a thunder cloud and gave us quite a ride for a few seconds. The kids and Troy thought it was more fun than scarry - but the stewardesses got a couple bruises as they were tossed around.

We ended up with a late flight because our original flight was changed. So we didn't even get on the final flight from Denver to Boise until 9:30 pm -- finally arriving in Boise at 11:30. Needless to say the kids were tired but we made it to Grammy's without any major meltdowns. We didn't get everyone to bed until 1:30 in the morning.

After such a late night on Tuesday, we let everyone sleep in and take it easy at Grammy's house on Wednesday. The kids had fun exploring the back yard with the trampoline, pool and treehouse.

Unless there was a good reason to get up early, the vacation mode for our family is to get up around 8:00 and get breakfast. By around 10:00 we are usually ready to get out and do something. On Thursday we decided to take a trip to the Boise Mall. Not a bad way to pass the afternoon... if you like shopping. Zach and Troy got bored and tired by the end, so they took a nap while Rachel and the girls tried on clothes in Children's place. The big adventure was being in the mall when the power went out to a section of it. The girls had some money saved up, so they bought some stuffed animals. Total damage: about ~$160.

Thursday night Grampa Willes (Papa) hosted a music education session. He and the girls had a good time talking about Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm. Papa played some samples on his stereo and keyboard.
After the music session, Grant, Stephanie, Evan and Jason arrived from Lodi, CA. Everyone was excited to see them.

Friday Troy's family and Grant's family and Papa Willes went over to the Boise Zoo. Zach's favorite was the Monkeys. He calls them the "Ooh Ooh Ah Ahs". The animals were more active than we've seen them in the Phoenix Zoo -- probably because the temperatures were much cooler. At the end of our trip we came to where they are constructing a future African animals exhibit. There were no animals in it yet, but Zach really liked watching the big trucks and tractors! The girls made sure to stop in the gift shop before ending the outing.

Anna's family arrived that afternoon -- so now all the cousins were together. Dinner that night was shredded beef tacos back at Grammy's house. Even with that many people dinner wasn't that crowded. We set a table outside so some of the kids ate out there -- leaving enough room from the rest of the crew in the dining room. That evening we attended cousin Austin's performance as a troll in the play "Sleeping Beauty," the wrap-up of a week-long drama camp. Grammy had tried to get Katie in as well, but we didn't arrive in time. Next year. We hit a yummmmmmy ice cream place called Goody's for after show treats. It's in the "trendy" Hyde Park area of Boise. It reminded me a bit of Mill Avenue, although only the size of two blocks rather than 3/4 mile. It was cute. Papa also held another music lesson that night. Kim Butterworth arrived late that night to join the festivities.

Saturday was Boise River day. After renting a raft at a local shop, most of the crew took turns going from Julia Davis or Municipal Park down to the take-out at Ann Morrison Park -- about a 2 mile trip. It was long enough to have some fun in the raft, but short enough that we could make 3 runs that day, and the drivers of the vehicles got to take turns riding down the river. Todd was sick, but even pregnant Anna and Kim took a turn on the raft. Stephanie and Evan also met us for the final run of the day. For that run we had 4 adults and 6 kids all loaded in to a 6 man raft. The river also got gradually more and more busy as the temperatures rose mid-day. Grant said they were almost playing bumper boats for parts of the final trip. The kids had a great time going over the little bumps and splashing each other as we went down the river. Rachel didn't want to take Zach, so she got stuck at home the whole time :-( Note for next time: It took about an hour to rent the raft. So it would have been best to leave an hour early in the the pickup to get the raft. All the people could have come in the van and met at the park later. Also - neither Julia Davis, nor Municipal park had very good places to put the raft in. It would be worth scoping out a better launch spot. We were all together again at Grammy's house for dinner that night. As a consolation prize for being home all day with Zach, Troy took Rachel out to dessert at Goody's again. We met Grant and Stephanie and Megan and her family who were all coming from Austin's final performance.

After getting the kids to bed, Troy, Grant, Anna and Kim went over to see Dorian in the Hospital. He has a tube down his throat which prevents him from talking, and the medication he's on keeps him from being very alert. He was able to open his eyes and nod his head yes or no to questions. Really, it's a miracle that he's still alive. He's been in the hospital for 6 weeks now. It's going to be another few months probably before he can get out of the hospital.

Sunday morning was far from restful. We had to get everyone ready for pictures by 10:00. Amelia McDonald Berg and her husband Paul are semi-professional photographers. They were able to come over on Sunday morning when everyone was looking good, and take pictures of the group. Even Megan and Austin and Cade made it over. Taking pictures with children is always tortuous, or humorous - depending on if you're responsibile for the particular child that does not want his picture taken. Paul's Technique was just to make everyone say cheese and then snap photos in rapid succession - hoping that there would be at least one where everyone was looking cute, facing the camera and had their eyes open. The photographers posted the photos online so we could see them and order the ones we want.

As soon as pictures were done Troy, Brian, Anna and Todd went over to practice "This is the Christ" with the pianist before church. Troy says to remind him to make a copy for his ward to do sometime. Sacrament meeting featured Brother and Sister Farar who just returned from their mission at the Far West visitors center. Our musical number went fine. I think Papa was proud to have his family perform for the ward. The kids went to primary. Troy took Zach to the nursery.

Sunday afternoon we all had a good ham and potatoes dinner and then took turns taking naps while the kids played games and watched veggie tales.

So thus ended a great week of vacation. The cousins all had a good time playing with each other and getting to know each other -- even if they did get on each other's nerves now and then. I think a good time was had by all.

2008-07-07T14:38:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

Here's the latest from Arizona.
Sunday 6 July 2008
Fourth of July week meant a nice, short week. It's too bad every weekend can't be 3 days long.

Friday Rachel took the girls to Target to buy clothes for a Stake service project. Troy stayed home and tried to keep Zach out of trouble, which is easier said than done. We met Martin, Ann, Bob and Sarah Z. at our favorite Carls Jr. with a playground for dinner.

Later that night we went down to the local park with Nate and family and Julie Gist and Jared to watch the fireworks. The show was scheduled to shoot from the Gilbert town party at Mesquite High School. Rachel bought 12 packs of glowing necklaces and bracelets at the dollar store for the event. Once we got there, we started handing them out to our kids. Suddenly there was a swarm of kids asking for handouts for themselves and their cousins and their brothers, etc Next year I think we'll setup a stand and sell some for 4x what we bought them for to recoup our expenses.

The kids had a good time running around the park and watching the fireworks. Fortunately a bit of a Thunderstorm was blowing nearby and blew some slightly cooler air in. The daytime high was 113, so it would have been over 100 at 9:30 show time. The storm cooled it down to around 95. Still hot, but bearable.

Saturday was spent picking and slicing apples from our apple tree. There were still more to go on Sunday. Troy took the girls over to a friends pool for a couple hours. Troy and Rachel had date night out while uncle Bobby watched the kids.

The holiday weekend also meant that there were not many people in church. We were working with a skeleton crew. Troy even had to sit up on the stand because the Bishop and his second counselor were both out. Zach came up to visit him during the last testimony, but stayed quiet, and then went back down for the closing song. Katie forgot that she had to give a talk in church until this morning, so we made her write it during Sacrament meetings. Teaching her important life skills like that is one is what we get paid to do as parents. She did a good job

This week instead of swimming classes, the kids went to a city-sponsored summer rec class every morning. Due to the short, holiday week, the class had fewer than normal attendees. Far from being a bad thing, this meant they got to do a few extra crafts and games.

Zach's word of the week is Diego, which he says more like "Hego". He has added "my turn" and "my seat" as well. He tried to tell me a couple extended stories this week, but I had no idea what he was trying to say, and I didn't have Claire there to make up a translation for me.

Next week is swim class again and preparation for our trip to Idaho for vacation. Take care until next time.

Week of June 15-29, 2008

2008-07-02T23:19:00.001-07:00

Week of Sunday June 15-Sunday, June 29...whoops. Looks like we missed a week's update there. So we'll combine all of the good stuff for you into one upate.

The girls were completely fed up with what a lame summer vacation they were having by the week of June 15. Katie was not shy in letting Rachel know just how boring her life was. Fortunately, Aunt Tana saved the day and invited the three girls over for a sleepover at her house. Rachel drove them over about 4 pm (after the girls piano lessons). She dropped them off and after letting Zach and Haydn play for a while took off. Zach was most displeased with the fact that he had to leave and the girls had to stay. Rachel came home where she and Troy had a quiet evening with only one child that goes to bed easily at 9pm. The morning was equally as calm, then Rachel went to get the girls at lunchtime. She ended up hanging out til almost 5pm but helped Tana come up with new designs for her house. Rachel will open an interior design business along with her "life coach" business and t-shirt business as soon as she stops committing to other things such motherhood, accounting and church. Yeah. The rest of the week was ordinary. Rachel took the kids to Target to wander around for a couple hours on one day.

The week of June 22 began bright and early as Rachel had found a swim teacher and signed Claire and Emma up for swim lessons. Monday she left Zach home with Katie as babysitter (for one hour) as she took the 2 other girls. She wasn't sure how things were going to be set up or how crowded the community pool the lady was teaching at would be. Turns out...Claire had one other kid in her class and Emma had private lessons due to the other student's cold. So since it was so laid back, Rachel ventured into the world of swimming with four kids the rest of the week. They all did well and came home and vegged out in front of the tv for the rest of the mornings. We discovered a few things by this latest adventure... (1) Emma appears to be a natural swimmer. According to her teacher, Emma has great coordination for a beginner and can already streak through the water quite nicely, when she's not sucking down water by taking a breath before she pulls her head all the way out of the water. (2) Zach's not big on deep water. We kinda knew this, hence the hesitation on bringing him, but we put a vest on him and he and Rachel hung out on the steps. By about Wednesday he let Rachel pull him out a bit and "float" but by Thursday he was back on his step where he was most happy. (3) Girls have to ALWAYS go to the bathroom at the pool with no bathroom even if they have gone twice before leaving 30 minutes earlier for swim classes. (4) Emma TANS! Who knew? Claire burns. Katie doesn't absorb much color at all. Zach tans like a California surfer and his hair is blonder. Dude... And lastly (5) When a sunscreen says it's "Rub-Proof" don't believe it.

That weekend (27th & 28th) was the Annual Ray 1st Ward Campout. This year the Elders' Quorum (nee Troy) was in charge. We ended up renting a big group campsite just outside Payson. It had a big ramada, picnic tables, toilets and running water. The EQ planned a fun program for Friday night and provided breakie and lunch the next day. The event was a big success and everyone had a good time. There was a creek nearby and some crawdads were caught and cooked and consumed. No word yet on if anyone suffered from that fun.... The girls all had fun at the creek. Claire came back completely drenched explaining, "Sorry, mom, I falled in...six or seven times." It was a good thing I brought 3 pairs of shoes and about 10 pairs of socks for the overnight event. Heavy sigh. Troy was busy being in charge so I had to follow Zach around and keep him from getting into too much trouble. So it wasn't much different from my normal everyday life for me except it was about 20 degrees cooler. There were 10 minutes of panic when we lost Claire and her friend up on the mountainside. About 6 people immediatley fanned out and started looking. It was a good thing I made Claire wear her bright pink Strawberry Shortcake hat because that's what caught the eye of the lady that found the pair. It turns out that Claire had followed the younger girl because she was afraid she'd get lost and kept trying to get the girl to turn and go back down (we had told our girls if they got lost to just head downhill as all the campsites were at the bottom of this valley.) By the time Claire convinced her friend to come back Claire knew she was lost. The other girl had no idea what was going on, but when we found them and I picked Claire up she was really frightened. I was so grateful Heavenly Father heard our prayers and we found them so quickly. Within the hour Claire was doing what Claires do best and driving me insane, but I remembered that feeling of thinking she was gone and I got over it easier. Oh, the lessons we are forced to learn the hard way, eh? Overall it was a fun campout and we even got to stop at Denny's on the way home to eat, which made it officially "THE BEST CAMPOUT EVER" according to Katie, Emma and Claire.

Zach is checking out the crawdads caught in the creek.

Troy's frantically trying to get work done before we head out for Boise in a couple of weeks. He took the manager job but was told that there's no extra cash for the extra work. Bummer. Although he will be reevaluated in March during his normal pay revue. It's probably for the best. Usually the higher paid managers seem to get the boot when times get tough and Intel tightens its belt. At least this way maybe Troy will lose just the title and not the job if another round of layoffs happen.

Stay tuned for next weeks' exciting events and see if Katie's "Insanely Boring Summer Vacation" improves....

AZ Willes Update

2008-06-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

So I had a great idea! Troy sends out this weekly Arizona Willes Family Update every Sunday. I'm going to post it here so that all can share in the daily wonders of our family. I'll occasionally add a cute photo or two and BAM! my job will be done. Maybe I can do this thing. Enjoy.

Sunday 15 June 2008 (Father's Day)

Zach

Zach's new words today were "Yah Baby!" Kids pick up the darndest things, don't they On Saturday Troy cleaned out the toy basket downstairs taking out a lot of toys, but leaving some cars. Zach discovered the "new" cars in the basket and loaded them up in a little tote-able basket of his own. So he went from 4 cars last week to about 12 this week. (Essentially as many as will fit in the basket.) He had a tantrum for the first couple minutes of church today when Troy would only let him take in a couple cars instead of the whole tote full of them. Aah two year olds

Katie, Emma, Claire

Not much to report from Kate, Emma, Claire. Summer Vacation got much hotter this week. It was between 105 and 110 for the highs. So the only thing that was bearable to do outside was play outside in the sprinklers which they did quite a bit. Their favorite water sport is to slide down the wet slide onto a slip-n-slide set up at the bottom.

Troy and Rachel

On Monday Troy's boss asked him if he was willing to take over managerial responsibilities for a portion of the team. Umberto (he's Italian-American) has had too many people to manage already and now there are a couple new people joining, so his manager duties are becoming unwieldy. Troy will have a final discussion with Umberto early next week to decide what to do.

Rachel's birthday was on Thursday. She received a good number of phone calls and cards with birthday wishes. Rachel and Troy went out to Golden Corral buffet and the latest Indiana Jones movie (both her choice).

One of her best gifts, however, was treating herself to a girl's night (overnight) out with some friends on Friday and into Saturday. Rachel can't get much rest at home with everyone asking Mommy to do things all the time, so it is good for her to get out once in a while. They stayed at a nice, yet inexpensive hotel in Scottsdale and went to a free "Showstoppers Live" show at a casino on a nearby Indian Reservation. On Saturday Rachel and her friends found a mall and had fun trying on clothes and shopping.

Troy and the kids mowed the lawn and cleaned the house while Rachel was out.

Rachel also prepared a lesson and taught Relief Society this week - as pay-back for a favor she owed the R.S. first counselor. Her lesson went well with good participation once she woke the class up from their mid-morning stupor. Troy and the Elders Quorum didn't have a teacher this week, so they were all going to join her in the R.S. room. Troy even OK'ed it with the R.S. president. But when the bishopric got wind of the plan, they vetoed combining with the sisters, and the Elders combined with the High Priests instead. It didn't matter much to Troy, however, as he had to be in the Nursery with Zach.

Liar, liar, pants on fire...

2008-06-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess the "first of many" was a bit ambitious and I'm afraid it may stay that way. I'll be trying to keep all updated on our family with this blog instead of our outdated and time-consuming website. It'll still be available for Willes research papers or all those tell-all biographies sure to be written, but it won't be udated much (if ever) now. So stay tuned here for all the craziness. Check out my other blogspot "Rachel's Blogarama" for my own personal outlook on things. But be warned....that might have even less updating then this one. Sorry all!

2007-11-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

We are the Willes Family-Arizona Edition. A new Fall 2007 picture will be posted soon. From left to right we are: Katie, 9; Troy; Zach, then 6 months; Rachel; Claire, 4; and Emma, 6.

First of Many!

2007-11-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

I am writing this under a time crunch, so it must be brief. I just set this baby up and hopefully, it will keep anyone who cares updated on our family. For more pictures and stuff visit our website at http://members.cox.net/twilles Thanks for visiting!