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.

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

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.