Thanksgiving 2009

Okay, I know that I am a traitor. It's been three weeks since I have blogged, which is a long time for me. And now that I am back to blogging, I have to steal all of these Thanksgiving pictures from Lexie and Connie because I was busy taking pictures while there, with Lexie's camera. We had a great time in St. George, as usual, with all of our Willard relatives. My kids have never known another way of doing Thanksgiving, and I have never in all of my Thanksgiving-ing had to cook a turkey, so it is all fine with me. I can make a mean fruit salad though...
Here are some candids, mostly for those of you who are not immediate family members, which is very unlike me...
The grandkids trying their hands at Nintendo 64 at our house before we headed to St. George. They are not good, but love to try!

Thanksgiving morning is always breakfast at the church, with a game of basketball "bumpout" thrown in. The rest of us mingle and catch up.
Kira, Michaela, and Tibi
In line for bumpout. Getting a candid shot of all 6 kids is a miracle.

All the kids were here this year, except for Lexie's husband, Sharrid, who had to work Thanksgiving day. We did get to see him on the weekends before and after Thanksgiving dropping off and picking up Lexie and the boys.

Tibi, Michaela, and Connie

Kira, Michaela, and TibiNo pictures of the actual dinner. We are usually cramped into one room anyway and can't get to our cameras. This year we had 150 Willards, the most we've ever had. That number of Willards comes from Kevin's mom and dad alone. (And I thought the Packard family was big)

Friday morning we usually spend at a park playing and eating lunch. Here's Phoenix showing Landon how to catch a ball...

Kevin loves to catch up on things with his many brothers. If you know Kevin at all, you know that he LOVES to talk, and he and his brothers come from the same mother, so when they get together - well, you know the rest. I said his mother because his father hardly got a word in with mother around! This was the first Thanksgiving without having both of them there. It's not the same without them, but we still manage to have a great time.
Brother Parry and Kevin

I snuck a picture with him while I could grab him.

Veterans Day Parade

The Veterans Day Parade in Moapa Valley is always a big deal and has been for years. The kids marched in the HS band again this year, and Kevin even made it on a "float" representing the Clark County Fair, which he is the manager of. The weather was perfect and Tibi and Landon had the day off from school. It seems to me that the parade now-a-days is not what it used to be. This year we only had one band (no middle school anything this year), only HS cheerleaders, some gymnasts, 1 float (thanks to Inside Scoop, our local ice cream shop), Folklorico dancers, and about 3 horses, and then a lot of worthless advertising and cars. Maybe I'm just getting tired of the same old stuff, or the parade in general. All I know is that Kevin and I were talking all the way home about all the changes we would make to the parade to make it better. That's pretty pathetic... Maybe I just miss having all of my kids in the parade doing their different things and having two babies on my lap or out gathering candy. I had to watch the parade by myself this year. Not so fun, even at a parade.

You might have missed seeing the kids in the video. I had a hard time finding them when I was filming. Tibi almost gets cut off at the beginning and Landon is right in the middle after her. You'd think without the two babies I could have done this...guess not. Kevin is 2nd from left...another hard to see picture. I told you this wasn't the best parade we've had.

Halloween 2009

Okay, so I have been waiting for Kira to post these Halloween pictures, but I'm tired of waiting and Lexie's been asking for them, so here they are:

Kira as Catwoman (gotta love Walmart's Hannah Montana section!)That is one scary chick on the left - Landon's take on a dead prom queen. He doesn't make a very good looking girl, but Kira couldn't believe how much he looked like her!

Getting 'her' hair fixed.

Michaela and Marc came up for the holidays, but they had been golfing all day Halloween day and got home too late to dress up. Bummer, because Michaela's outfit was rad!! Click here to see her.

We ended up at the Chappell's house for fun, food, and a good laugh watching "Mystery Science Theater." Better any day than watching some stupid, scary movie that will give us nightmares. One year we watched "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" with Don Knotts. That's the next best thing to watching "Mystery Science Theater." Here's Chad (Britney's husband), Parker, and Ashley (their foreign exchange gal)

Homecoming 2009

Tonight we spent our time up at the high school for our yearly homecoming parade and assembly. Tibi was chosen by her classmates to be their Sophomore Princess. She asked her best buddy friend, Parker Chappell, to be her escort. They looked radiant in their formal attire, thanks to the tux shop and big sister Michaela's prom dress. Here are the snapshots and video of the night, again for big sisters who missed out on the festivities.

Landon was chosen by his bandmates to play the quads this year in the parade, which is almost unheard of as a freshman.

Tibi came by next on their class float. The weather was colder than it's probably ever been for a homecoming parade, with wind thrown in for good measure...

After the parade, we headed into the gym for the assembly where they crown the Homecoming Queen. They introduce the underclass princesses and escorts too. Here's Tibi and Parker. They made such a cute pair. (I told Parker earlier that he wasn't allowed to look better than Tibi! He's cutting it a little too close.)

Landon playing the quads in the band. He's following in his two big sister's footsteps. Very cool...

These are some "after" pictures, just random, fun ones.

Sometimes I Surprise Myself...

All I can say is "WOW!!" I've never considered myself to be a "sell yourself short" kind of gal, but today I proved myself wrong. This morning after dropping the kids off for Seminary and getting a few things done, I decided to tackle a run by myself. Kira has started working now during the day and has to leave at 7 a.m. which makes our morning runs impossible. We ran a few times at night, which is very foreign for me since I am a morning workout person, but with all of us getting sick at different times and lasting longer than some, our nights have been crazy, to say the least. So after not running for 6 days, I donned my workout clothes, and trecked it outside. I had originally decided to just try a 1 mile run, since this was going to be my first time without Kira. I started running up Whipple (the hardest part for me) and thought, "This isn't so bad, and not hurting at all" so kept going. I ended up running the whole 2 miles without stopping! I couldn't believe it... All this time I've been weiny-ing out and telling myself that I would "never get there", meaning that I would never get to that point of running on auto-pilot someday. Well, here's a HUGE high five from me to me. What a great way to start off the day...

BEDTIME

Today was a long day, a day after almost everyone was sick yesterday, and we are ready to go to bed. So we grab a couple of Disney books off the shelf and head into bed with our blankets to read. One grandbaby goes one way with Tibi, and the other goes another way with grandpa. And Kira heads off to help Landon with a plan for a school project. Man, it's good to have her home...

Our Quick Trip to the Cabin

This last Thursday, we were able to take a quick trip up to the cabin, thanks to Kira being home to watch Tibi and Landon and get them off to school. She was kind enough to run things here at home while Kevin and I headed up the mountain to spend the night and have some fun with some of the family. The guys are in the process of building a bunk house next to the cabin that will end up sleeping 21 extra people when it is finished. Of course, the women go just for the cool weather and relaxation, so we naturally wanted to be a part of that...

Here's just hanging out around the cabin. The temperature outside was a wonderfully brisk 40-45 degrees.
More hangin' out...

We took off on the 4-wheelers when we got there and spent about 3 hours out in the countryside checking out the fall leaves and getting dirty. Here's Kevin looking like a 13 year old!

We got pretty high up on the mountain and got to a place where we could see the whole valley. That reservoir WAY DOWN there was our destination.

Getting ready to roll after a bathroom break...

Heading down the trail.

Way up there!

Checking things out. (nice pose, Chris!)

Parowan valley, WAY DOWN there...

This was hard to film bouncing all over the place, but this was heading back up.

We spent the night rooming with Scott and Yvette and laughed ourselves to sleep. Chris and Debbie's whole family ended up trickling in one at a time all through the night until around 2:30 a.m. After a yummy breakfast, we took off for home by way of Lincoln County, Nevada so Kevin could do a few appraisals and a not-so-quick project in Alamo, just getting us home in time for the BYU-Utah State game. GO COUGARS!!