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.

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.