One decade ago, 2 became 3 when Peyton joined Julie and I.

The day before, Julie had gone to a wedding downtown and had been walking around quite a bit.  She came home and laid down on the bed next to me and we were talking about the day, when we heard (and Julie felt) an audible popping sound.  Having never been through this before, we weren’t quite sure what was going on.  But in fact, Julie’s water had broken.  I went into crazy new dad mode, and we hurried from our Midvale apartment down to Utah Valley hospital in Provo.  The nurses got Julie all changed into the gown, IV in, heart-rate monitors on, and all comfortable just in time to find out that our insurance wasn’t even accepted at Utah Valley.  For some reason Julie’s doctor (who we learned later was kind of a wack job) had never bothered to check our insurance.  So off came the monitors, out came the IV, and back went on the regular clothes as we raced up to Timpanogos hospital in Orem, where our insurance was valid.  Another gown, another IV, and all the monitors on again.  Now it just so happens that Julie’s doctor was nowhere to be found.  Was he on vacation?  I honestly don’t remember.  I just know he wasn’t available.  But the nurses ended up taking care of Julie through the night as she progressed toward delivery.

After the relative excitement of the water breaking and actually getting to the right hospital, the delivery itself was normal.  The doctor on call delivered Peyton Buss Williams at 7:19 am.  Julie decided she liked the doc on call a lot better than her own doctor anyway.  So we named Peyton after him.  Just kidding.  Peyton is just a name I loved.  A good football name.  Peyton Manning and  Walter Payton, two of my all time favorite football players.  A nice boy name.  Or so we thought, until his first doctor visit when the lady next to us was there with her daughter Payton.  We’d never known a girl Peyton until that time.  Grrr.   Peyton is Old English and means “fighting man’s estate“.  Where do girls get off stealing that name?  In 2009, Peyton for girls became more popular than Peyton for boys.  I’m sorry Peyt.  But you do have a nice strong middle name too.  Buss.  Named for his Grandpa, Frank “Buss” Williams (check out page 12 here and page 6 in this 1969 football program).  If girls ever manage to steal THAT name, it’ll be a sad, sad day.

Anyway, today — 8/9/10 — I just want to wish Peyton a happy birthday.  There’s probably no bigger life changing moment than holding your first child in your arms.  And as I watch him grow and mature, I am amazed at the speed with which the last 10 years has gone by.  He’s almost taller than Julie.  Crazy.  And he’s becoming a pretty great young man.  We love you Peyton.  Have a great day!

The last week of June, we went down to southern Utah for an Esplin family reunion.  Julie’s great-great-grandfather was one of the original United Order members in Orderville and some of Julie’s Mom’s cousins still own quite a bit of land down there.  So we went down and camped on some nice family land near Cedar Breaks national monument.  We learned about family history, rode 4-wheelers, explored a cave, and visited some old family homes that are still standing in Orderville.  It was a fun time.  But the highlight of the trip, at least for the boys, was capturing some horned toads.  Technically, they’re lizards, not toads, but whatever.  We caught 2 little ones, barely 2 inches long and the boys put them in paper cups with some dirt in the bottom.  Remember, they’re really lizards, not toads, so they can’t really jump and they actually seemed pretty content to just sit in their little cup.  And when the boys pulled them out to play, they actually seemed to enjoy the company.  So we decided to bring them home.  And the boys decided to name them Maryann, and Larry.  They were pretty sure one was a boy and one a girl.

Peyton and Soren enjoy playing Monopoly and I’m not sure whose idea it was, but they decided to use Maryann and Larry as their playing pieces.  And those lizards were just fine with it.  Occasionally, they’d start exploring around the board, but for the most part, they sat right on whatever spot on the board the boys put them, just awaiting their next move.  Very funny!  I had to share some photos.

Maryann in Jail	Soren, Eden, cousin Eric, Logan, and Peyton enjoying Lizard Monopoly.
Larry chillin’ at Park Place

All right, well I guess there’s no better time than the present to start blogging again.  Megan’s been begging me to get started again for a while now, so here we go.  Not even worth it to try to update the last year.  So on to the present and the future!

Julie often gets online and chats with me on my IM while I’m at work.  We had a little conversation at around 2:40 this afternoon.  Later, at 3:37 PM, she started chatting with me again.  Her question didn’t quite make sense, so I called home at 3:40 PM to find out what she meant.  Well, Julie told me she wasn’t even on the computer.  Apparently we had a couple of little hackers.  So I told her I’d take care of it, which I began doing at 3:44 PM.  Well, 11 minutes later the real Julie got on to let me know she was there, as evidenced by her use of my Italian nickname, which our little hackers definitely wouldn’t know.  Apparently, Soren learned his lesson.

Here’s the IM window:

Soren turned 7 today!  Work’s crazy lately and then on top of that on Wednesdays I have Young Men’s and an online chat for my International Law class in the evening, so I won’t be done until after 9:00pm.  So we celebrated this morning with his favorite breakfast of oatmeal pancakes and bacon.  Then we opened his presents.  He was most excited about the Lego Batman game from Grammy and Gramps.  Julie and I are trying to “broaden his horizons” a bit, so we took the risk and got him some baseball gear.  I think he’ll enjoy it once we can get out into our backyard to play (when spring decides to stay).  The final part of his birthday will take place next Monday when we’ll go to Crystal Hot Springs.  We’ve heard a lot of good things about it and Soren’s excited to go swimming in the nice warm water and waterslides.\

Soren is a great kid and we are blessed to have him in our family.  He sure keeps us rolling with his antics.  Part of what makes Soren Soren is his dramatic flair.  Everything, whether good or bad, is magnified to the utmost extreme.  So he’s definitely entertaining.  And he’s a very good brother to his 5 brothers and sisters.  He’s really doing great in school and is enjoying wrestling.  Soren, we love you!

So Julie and I sat down last night to go over our summer plans and schedule vacations and days off.  I think I’ve mentioned on this blog before that probably the biggest benefit of working for McCann is that we get boatloads of time off.  So we have some time to do some nice vacations, like our 3 week vacation at Christmas this last year.  Anyway, I jokingly (well only HALF-jokingly) asked Julie when she wanted to go to Germany this summer to visit Jodi and Christian, who moved there last year.  It got us talking about it.  It actually makes sense as a great time to go this year.  Next year is the big family Hawaii trip, and the year after that or maybe 2 years after that, we’ll be going to Italy for the Rome temple dedication.  When you’re leaving little kids behind, it just doesn’t seem right to leave them for more than about a week and I don’t want to be racing through Italy to get to Germany and splitting time between the 2, so I’d much rather take 2 trips.  Julie was skeptical so I got online just to see how much airfare was.  This was what I saw…

Wow!  Can you say serendipity?  What luck!  $474 round trip tickets to Germany from now through May!  That is an awesome price to Germany and a great time to visit.  I could see the doubt start to waver a bit in Julie’s eyes.  But her main concern was the kids.  They’ll feel bad because we just went on a cruise a few months ago – now we’re leaving them again.  And it’s during school, so someone would have to come stay at our house to watch them.

“Huh, what kids?” I asked.

OK, actually I said, we’ve got brothers and sisters, cousins and friends – we could find someone to watch them, couldn’t we?  Maybe Katie and Tagg?  No they’ll be busy with internships after school.  What about Meg?  I don’t think she has any plans for her summer break.  So I decided to call my amazing, beautiful, intelligent little sister Meg and see if she was still awake at 11:00pm to just gauge her reaction to something like this.  Here’s how our conversation went:

“Hi Meg, how’s it going?”

“Oh Derek, I would LOVE to watch your kids.  I totally want to.  I would even take a week off from work to do it.”

OK, well it wasn’t quite that easy, but almost.  There was actually one more sentence in there where I mentioned that we were contemplating maybe going to Germany but we would need someone who could come stay at the house to watch the kids since it was during school.  But that was it.  And Meg was practically BEGGING us to let her watch the kids for a week.

Julie started to get a little excited now.  One last check needed to be made though.  We called Jodi and Christian, waking Christian up at 6:30am there.  Turns out they are completely available and would LOVE to have a visit.  So that was it.

Now Julie got nervous because “it just seems too easy”.  I guess we got a visit from the easy button last night.  Which was EXACTLY why we had to do it.  So we bought the tickets!  We’re going over from May 25th to June 2nd.  I’m way excited.  Julie’s still way nervous.

Hopefully the actual trip goes off as easily as the decision and planning did.

I got this email from Julie this morning.  It makes me feel so bad for her.  I’m not even including all the details she sent, just some of it so you can get an idea of her morning.

“Well, I have not had the best start to my day. And eating my breakfast has lasted longer than any I recall. Everyone is always in need of something. I made it down stairs by about 10 min. to 8 A.M. I broke-up a fight between Peyton and Soren because of the new, rude, mean job chart Peyton had made for his brother after he tore up his old one. Logan was trying to talk to me the whole time as well, wanting to show me something. After getting through that whole ordeal I decided to pour me some cereal. So I had a bowl with dry cereal poured in it by about 8 o’clock. Peyton was yelling that he couldn’t find any pants so I went to help him. The babies were awake now and on the stairs wanting me to hold them. Luckily Logan came with a distraction and I got the boys situated. I ran back down to hurry and make oatmeal for the babies who I knew would be hungry. I tried to hurry and load dishes while the oatmeal cooked and I answered questions from the boys about everything they needed to take to school. Soon the babies were in the kitchen and into their high chairs. We gave them their treat from last night while I finished up and said goodbye to the older boys. Then I fed the babies the oatmeal and got some more for Eden. I gave the babies some milk to drink and poured some into my cereal and finally had a few bites while I tried to clean up. But then babies were ready to get out. I got Maren out who had a very bad poopy and was leaking so I changed her. Then went to get Roman out who also had a bad poopy and while going to get a diaper that was across the room he peed on the carpet. I hurried to put on his diaper and clean up the potty….“

and on and on and on.  I know my parents will say that someday we’ll look back on these days with sadness that they’re gone and to relish every minute of it.  But does that mean we’ll miss the moments of insanity too?

The reality of feeding 8 people is starting to dawn on Julie and I, even though 2 of those people are still REALLY little and 4 are very young as well.  This morning I made scrambled eggs and it was the first time that I’ve made eggs for the babies as well.  So this is the “before” picture:

And this is the “after” picture:

I used a full dozen and a half of eggs to get every one fed.  Only it didn’t feed everyone.  To this we added a roll with strawberry jam for each person as well.  And we made one of those giant-size orange juices, which was gone after one serving for everyone.  After dishing all the eggs and getting everyone their rolls, I finally sat down to eat, just in time to hear Logan say, “Mow eggs pweese!”

This could get really bad.  They’re not even teenagers yet.  I know how much I ate when I was a teenager and thinking of the future makes me a bit nervous.  Ten years from now, we’ll have 4 teenagers and 2 11-year old tweens, all of whom will be very hungry at mealtime.  So take my advice — if you’re looking for a good investment to ride out the next few bad economic years, you may want to buy futures in eggs. 

Roman has some little pajamas that have monkeys all over them.  They’re some of my favorites.  He really lives up to them, too.  About a month ago we discovered he could climb up onto the bar in the kitchen.  At church, he enjoys climbing up on the folded chairs stacked against the wall.  And two days ago, we discovered that he has conquered a new quest — Logan and Eden’s bunk bed.  I decided to pull the video camera out and record him.  Julie had caught him doing it the first time, so I wasn’t too nervous, knowing that he had successfully climbed it before.  But then on top, he decided he was going to do the slide on his own — and he hadn’t done that one before.  So I got most nervous about that, because that slide is FAST.  But no need to worry, he handled it just fine, going on his stomach feet first, with his little toes pressed against the slide all the way down to keep himself from going too fast.  I thought it was pretty funny.  Here’s the footage:

Mission: Impossible — Bunkbed Slide from Derek Williams on Vimeo.

Last Tuesday we went to Julie’s parents’ in South Jordan to see Justin get set apart for his mission.  For any of you that may not know, Julie’s brother, Justin Sorensen, is a quasi celebrity in Utah because of his football kicking prowess, which garnered him some state records and a ton of local and national attention, like Gatorade Player of the Year honors and All-American Bowl invitations and more.  He had a decent first year at BYU with loads of touchbacks and a few field goals.  But now he’s setting all that aside for 2 years to serve a mission to Macon, Georgia. 

So after a tasty family dinner we went to the stake center for the little meeting.  It was nice.  Good things said by the stake presidency and Justin’s bishop.  After the setting apart, Justin made the rounds shaking hands and hugging everyone.  After my handshake/hug, I went and sat down.  Eden, who was sitting there before the blessing, wasn’t there.  Turns out she had gone up to the front to hug the stake presidency, who she’d never even seen before.  She gave each of them a hug and then finished off with Justin.  It was very funny.  I was trying to get the camera out to snap a photo of Eden hugging the stake presidency but was too late.  I got it out in time to get a pic of her and Justin after their hug, though. 

So Justin is in the MTC now, getting ready to head to Macon, Georgia in a couple weeks.  We’re all excited to see his growth and experiences over the next couple years.  We’re also excited to see how he does on his unicycle.  That’s right, he’s taking his unicycle on his mission.  He got approval from his mission president to use a unicycle instead of a bike.  He’s almost as fast on a bike as on his unicycle.  He’s ridden that thing competitively and down mountains before, so he shouldn’t have any problem with the Georgia streets.  Plus what a great finding tool!  He’ll probably have a lot of people coming up to talk to him to find out what this freak is doing in the blazing hot Georgia sun on a unicycle wearing a suit.  So cool. 

One side benefit of Justin using his unicycle is that all the BYU fans out there shouldn’t have to worry too much about Justin coming back in kicking shape.  He attributes much of his kicking strength to his unicycle riding.  Now that he’ll be doing it full time for 2 years, he shouldn’t come back too weak.  Plus, he’s taking 8 balls with him to practice on P-days at the local universities or high schools.  So Justin, we will miss you.  Thanks for being a good example to your many nieces and nephews and family – the fans that really matter.

So apparently the twinners had so much fun with the kleenex, they decided to try it again on their own.  I walked around the corner yesterday and saw this:

I think we’re in big trouble.  They’re starting to work together on stuff like this.