Merry Christmas!

I want to wish our family and friends a very Merry Christmas. I hope everyone had a wonderful day with family and friends. I wish we could spend the holidays together, but being spread out throughout the country makes that difficult.

We had a great day. Janese and I got up at 6:30 am and got ready for the attack. I think this is the first time in my life that I took a shower before opening presents on Christmas morning. Normally I am woken up and dragged out of bed, but not today. I actually had to wake some of the kids up.

Our tradition is to open gifts one kid at a time, youngest to oldest. With eight kids that can take a while. It went by pretty fast this time. As the kids get older they mainly want electronics, which lowers the overall number of gifts they get due to Santa budget constraints. We video taped a lot of their opening of gifts (courtesy of Panasonic) and caught the different squeals of delight and excitement.

After we were done opening gifts, the downstairs looked like a Best Buy blew up in our family room. There was stuff every where. I spent the majority of today assembling all of the different toys, adding batteries, and trying to keep everything organized. Janese and I also helped everyone open up the boxes and take the toys out. In their excitement to open the box, the kids practically rip the toy itself apart. It does not make it any easier that the toy is virtually cemented inside the package with all of the tape, wires, and screws they use nowadays to keep everything in place in the box. I guess the ride over from China can get pretty bumpy?

The favorites this year seem to be the Guitar Hero III, Nintendo DS, Legos, iPod Nano, cell phone, and the many Wii and DS games. Some of the kids have not been seen since we finished opening gifts this morning. I am sure they are creating Lego villages in their rooms as we speak.

Thank you again to everyone for their awesome gifts. We appreciate your love and support and wish you all the best in 2008. We love you all tons and can't wait to see you again. Merry and Christmas and Happy New Year! May you be blessed with all the best in '08!

Megan and Ireland

Megan loves babies and little kids. She goes out of her way to talk to kids younger than her and is very good with Ireland.

The other day we found some reindeer antlers with our Christmas decorations and her creative juices started flowing. Before we knew it Ireland was transformed into Rudolph the red nose white boy.

Service Projects

Our service projects continue. I have committed our family to at least eight different service projects for a video project I am putting together (more to follow soon). We started with the visit to the Nursing Home in Payson, Utah. Since then the kids have done extra things around the house to raise money for "The moms" for the Smile Train and last night we went to Big Lots to fill two shoe boxes with $20 worth of gifts each for needy kids in South Dakota. It is for a reservation in South Dakota where people on average make about $3,500 a year.

I think the workers and customers at Big Lots thought we were crazy people. Janese and I split us up into a boy group and a girl group and each group had their box. I video taped a lot of the event and got some great footage. The kids ran all over the store debating over what they were going to put in their box. The boys chose to fill their box for a 10 year old boy. The girls put their box together for an 8 year old girl.

Unfortunately my camera battery was low, so I wasn't able to get everything. If I had been able to record it all I would have gotten shots of Makena falling head first into a display, Zak being told his breath smells like poop, Tanner trying to get me to record his "little dance" any time I was recording, and finally my making the kids walk around with their hands in their pockets for the rest of the evening. For the life of them the kids could not stop touching every single thing in the store. I was in charge of the boys and I had to keep reminding them who they were shopping for. If I hadn't, this poor 10 year old boy would have ended up with a fake pink cell phone, a brown and white feather bola, shampoo and several tiny nutcracker dolls that played Christmas music in his shoebox Christmas morning.

I think the store clerks were very happy when we left. I was extremely happy when we left. We got ice cream cones through the McDonald's drive through and then headed home for the night to pack our shoe boxes with the purchased items, decorate them and then to hit the sack.

We watched the raw footage before we went to bed and had several good laughs. I am excited to get everything put together. I think every single kid in our home loves to ham it up for the camera.

Thanksgiving Adventure

We had a wonderful time in Utah for Thanksgiving. Thank you so much Amie and Dean!

The kids had a great time playing and getting to know each other better. There were a few minor arguments, but other than that the kids did awesome. They spent most of their time playing pool, building forts and watching movies. It was very nice having them entertain themselves.


We arrived Tuesday night after driving 7 hours and ate dinner at the McDonalds in Spanish Fork. We made it to Amie and Dean's around 6:30 pm. From the moment we arrived the kids scattered off in different directions and were doing stuff non stop until we left.


Kori and her friend Kelen arrived Wednesday afternoon. I was glad that she came. My four had not seen her for a long time and the Gillam's had never met her. They had fun with her holding them down and tickling them until they said how much they loved her and that she was their favorite aunt.

We joked that Kelen was the kids toy while we were there. They played with him all the time. At one point the girls convinced him to let them do his hair. They styled it with several different pony tails and hairsprayed it. I wish I had pictures.

On Wednesday night we went to a nursing home in Payson, Utah and sang and visited with the residents. We performed during their dinner hour with my sister and her family and a family from their church. Dean's grandmother lives there. Although our singing was pretty horrible, we did get applause and ended up getting requests. Amie and Hailey performed a flute duet, which was awesome. I am very impressed how talented they are.

One of the residents named Darlene sang with us the entire time. She was the hit of the group and is pictured above with Megan. She may not have gotten the words right, but she put her whole heart into every song. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the kids interact with the residents after we were done singing. I took several pictures and laugh out loud when I look at the facial expressions of some of the kids in the photos.

Thanksgiving dinner was wonderful. Amie did an incredible job. It was delicious. Amie worked her butt off and we totally appreciate it. Everything she made was incredible.

On Friday we went to Janese's sister Lara's house. Other than not being able to breath because of their cats it was nice having most of her family get together. Tyler bonded well with Lara's boys. The kids ran all over her house and through their yard the entire day.

Once we left I was able to breath through my nose again by the time we hit Provo. I am so glad we do not have cats!!

We got back home on Saturday night. We let the kids play Saturday morning while Janese and I packed up. They didn't want to leave. The kids were trying to convince us to stay another day and leave on Sunday. We made it home without any problems and it has been nice to have a day to relax and put things away before we start the week.

Thank you again Amie and Dean! We can't wait until you come and visit us.

Picture post

No, I am not vain and conceited, but I needed to add my photo to my blog so I can add it to my profile. Does the Internet add 10 pounds to my head?

Since this blog is all about our crazy family, I thought I would add some details about each member of the family throughout the blog. Since I needed my head shot I thought I would start off with myself.

Janese and I have been married since June 4th, 2004. I am a sales representative for Liberty Mutual. I sell personal lines of insurance (home, auto, life) and I also have my securities license. I have been with Liberty Mutual for over a year now and love it.

I can't afford to have much in the way of hobbies with eight kids. I love to snowboard, but with insane lift ticket prices, I do not get up much. I have an awesome Rokenbok construction set. My excuse is it allows me to play with the kids, but I think every boy's dream is to drive around big, earth moving, machinery. This is the closest I will ever get to driving the big toys, unless I can convince my Uncle Mike to let me drive his bulldozer.

Janese says that I am her 9th kid. I love playing with the kids. They say I torment them, but I think everyone needs to be held upside down and tickled until they scream bloody murder now and then.

WWF

I am going to have to ask my mom if when growing up, did we beat the crap out of each other on a regular basis? I have a couple of kids that must think they are part of the cast of the World Wrestling Federation. They are constantly beating each other up. What normally happens is that one of them throws the first punch. That kid is then pummeled within an inch of their life and then they come to me wailing and screaming bloody murder. When the truth finally comes out I end up sending them both to time out. I am sick of it! How in the world do I stop it? I may have to go back and watch reruns of the Brady Bunch, but I don't remember them punching, slapping, biting and clawing the living day lights out of each other. I guess we will figure it out. If I had enough duct tape I could tape them to the floor for a couple of hours.

Amie and I have been e-mailing each other about our blogs and Thanksgiving. We are going to spend Thanksgiving at their house this year in Elkridge, UT. It should be a lot of fun. Speaking of WWF, the drive up to Utah will be interesting. After being married for three years, we now know who needs to be seperated from each other to make for a peaceful road trip. Believe it or not we have to keep Madison (12) and Quinton (7) as far away from each other as possible. Q knows how to push every single person's buttons in the family and he goes through moods where he does it on a regular basis. If we do not keep him and Madison seperate in the van, we will have to listen to Madison whine and complain about him the whole entire eight hours. Luckily Amie's and our kids play awesome together. Harrison and Quinton generally find some way to get into a lot of trouble and everyone else races all over the neighborhood and has a blast.

Eight more days until install day!

Christmas Shopping

Do people really want to know that we went Christmas shopping today? Janese and I start our Christmas shopping very early. Last year we were done in October. The mall and surrounding stores are so insane during the holiday season that we try and knock it out as fast as we can. We went out and shopped for a couple of hours. We will have all of the kids this year for Christmas morning, so that means we do all of the shopping. The amount of presents around the tree on Christmas morning is amazing. I am sure the garbage man hates us on that first pick up day after Christmas.

Today we had our site survey for all of the new equipment that is going to be installed in our home. The installer, Chris, gave us several suggestions and one of them was to remove part of Janese's Woodley's entertainment center. She wasn't too thrilled about that. She had it custom made during her first marriage. It is made out of maple, I think and it really big. Chris was concerned that we will get the new TV installed on the wall and it will look as if we are watching it from inside a box. I guess we will have to wait and see what they say on the 12th. Hopefully we can come to some type of compromise.

This has been an off week from having eight kids. We have my four every other week. I remember when I used to think that having four kids was a lot. My four come home tomorrow night. They go back and forth every Sunday night. Hopefully it is not too hard on them. It has to be difficult constantly changing houses. They are troopers. I know the Gillam four are always anxious for them to come home. On Sunday afternoon they usually start asking when the kids are coming home. The moment the kids are here they all shoot off to different parts of the house and start playing immediately. Half of the time I barely get a hug from them before they are busy playing with each other.

This week they are going to stay until Monday, the 12th. The 12th is when we are having the entertainment equipment installed and they will have someone here to teach us how to use everything. It will be HD school. Janese keeps teasing me about how excited I must feel with all of the new users manuals I will have to read. The picture about is what I took and submitted that helped us win the contest. If Janese knew I put this on the web she would kill me.

The First Attempt

As the title of this blog entry would suggest, this is my first attempt at blogging. Is this the traditional first blogging attempt entry? I am a die hard Hugh Hewitt blog reader and have been curious and interested in starting my own. When my sister Amie decided to start her own blog I knew it was time to start my own. It probably has something to do with our competitive spirit inherited from our mom.

I am excited to be able to blog about our crazy family life. My wife (Janese) and I between the two of us have eight kids. I call it self imposed insanity. We each brought four kids each to the party. My wife's first husband passed away, so we have her four full time and my four every other week. The oldest is 13 and the youngest is 4. We have 5 boys and 3 girls. Our house is constantly on the move and can be totally calm or insanely loud and crazy.

The biggest thing going on with our lives right now is we won a major national contest. It is the biggest thing I have ever won in my life. I do not want to disqualify us in any way, so I will keep the details close to my vest for now, but I will eventually add a link to the official site so you can see what is going on. We are all extremely excited. It will be like having two Christmases (sp?) this year. I literally can hardly sleep at night thinking about it. It will be a lot of work, but more than worth it.