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

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

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.