Garrin & Janese

Last month we went to Mike and Carla's ward to bless their new baby. His name is Garrin and he is a cute little red head. Janese, Megan and I all took turns holding him throughout the afternoon. Even though we already have eight kids of our own we can't seem to get enough of babies. We will sometimes plan where we sit at Church so we can steal someone elses baby during the meeting. We get an instant baby fix and they get a small break. It's a win win!

The best part is after the meeting is over we get to give them back.

Cleanse!!

I know what you are thinking, "That is one burning hunk of a gorgeous man!". Also no, I am not posting naughty pictures of myself on the Internet either. I started an Isagenix Cleanse on January 27th and ended it this morning. I don't know if you can notice much of a difference in the pictures, but on top of feeling incredible I lost 12 pounds.

The other great benefit from the cleanse is I haven't had a headache in 11 days. Before this cleanse I was taking 800 to 1,600 milligrams of ibuprophen a day. I haven't taken any since I started.

Now it's all about keeping my improved health going.

Party!!!

Makena and I were both born on the 3rd of January. Normally that means I get to blow out candles on some girlie pink Barbie cake. This year Janese out did herself. On top of some awesome gifts we each had our own cake.

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Makena's Baptism

Makena was baptized today. She was very excited. I think she was most excited about getting her scriptures, which is a family tradition. After every kid is baptized they get a new set of scriptures as a gift. We have six down, two more to go

Makena was lucky she actually got baptized today at all. It seems like we always run into some type of problem on baptism day. On Tanner's, people forgot things important for the meeting and Ireland threw up all over the place. His Uncle Brad ran over to him and picked him up and proceeded to run him all over the room with Ireland throwing up, making sure they spread the barf over every part of the room. They acted like some type of horrible vomit sprinkler system.

When we arrived at the Church for the service at noon, the ward before us thought they were being helpful by draining the font and putting back all of the chairs. Somehow they failed to remember that 5 or 6 other wards had baptisms after them. We had to wait for 45 minutes to re fill the font with now freezing water. Once it was high enough they turned the water off and started the meeting. When it came time for the actual baptism they realized that the seal was not put in the drain correctly and most of the water we had put in had drained half way out again. Makena was baptized by her Grandpa Gillam and they tried to dunk her before the water was completely gone, but after two tries they gave up and we had to wait for the font to fill up a second time. Finally on the third try Makena was officially baptized. Quinton will be baptized in November of this year. I hope all the kinks are worked out of the system by the time his day comes along.

After the service was over and after dragging everyone out of the Relief Society room, we went to the Gillam's for lunch. They are wonderful people and great to be around. They take great care of the kids. It ended up being a good day. Joy made an awesome lunch and we hung out for a couple of hours.

It was a good day that I am sure Makena will never forget.

Thank goodness for my ipod!!!

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.