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!

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.

“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?

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. 

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

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.

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

Lots of Time Off!

Christmas was awesome.  One big benefit of my job is a TON of time off.  Coming into December I still had 5 days of available PTO, PLUS it’s kind of tradition for the entire office to shut down completely the last couple weeks of the year.  It’s a VERY nice part of working here.  So on the 17th of December, we packed up the kiddos and hopped on a plane to San Antonio and didn’t come back until the 5th of January. 

Flight to Texas

We were very nervous about the flight down with 6 kids 8 and under.  Well, the nervousness only increased as we made it to our terminal and saw a huge line at the counter.  I knew something wasn’t right.  Well, we decided to fly on the night of the worst snow storm in Vegas in 25 years.  Anything in or out of Vegas had just been canceled, including our flight which had a layover there.  Our original flight had been scheduled to leave at 5:30pm and arrive in S.A. at almost 1am — 5 hours of flying with an hour-plus layover in Vegas.  So after worrying and wondering while we waited in line to talk to the good Southwest people, they told us there was a direct flight to San Antonio that was leaving shortly and we could get on that.  Wow.  It didn’t actually leave shortly.  Turns out they had decided to just put another flight in the queue to get people to San Antonio and so we had to wait for an hour or so for the pilot to show up.  But it was great.  There were only about 12 other people on the plane, so rather than our original packed flight we got to spread out, take up 3 rows, and the twins got to run around a bit and explore without bothering a bunch of people.  Plus, we ended up getting into San Antonio a little after 10pm, a LOT earlier than our original flight.  It was great and we were definitely blessed.  I don’t know why they got a separate flight just for 20 people, but I’m sure glad we were watched over.  While we were on board the plane waiting for the pilot to arrive, the stewardess brought some coloring books and crayons for the kids.  Soren busied himself coloring and after 20 minutes or so started gushing about how “this is the best flight ever.  I love this flight!”  And we hadn’t even left the ground yet.  But he was right.  I think it was about the best flight ever, especially for a family of 8.

PRE-Christmas Events

We had a lot of fun leading up to Christmas in Texas.  We went to a get-together with our old ward friends from growing up - actually I should say with JESSICA’s old ward friends because only one of the friends there was my age, but we were all a pretty close youth group anyway, so I was pretty good friends even with Jessica’s age group.  We also went to a Christmas concert that featured amazing performances by a bunch of different performers who just happened to include my mom singing and Jessica playing the piano.  Also we attended my Mom’s school Christmas concert - amazing what she pulls out of those little kids.  Probably the highlight of the pre-Christmas activities though was celebrating the twins’ birthday.  I made this video showing the party entertainment and I think it turned out pretty well.  Too fun.

Christmas Day

Well of course we were up nice and early Christmas morning.  The kids had a ton of fun discovering what Santa brought and then we sat down to open presents.  I had been secretly planning a surprise for Julie with the help of actually my whole family.  For Christmas (and our anniversary which is January 2nd) I gave her a cruise.  We would leave on the 27th of December and be gone for 5 nights as we sailed to Cozumel and Progreso, Mexico.  My mom helped out in the months leading up to Christmas by concocting a story about how we were going to go across the border into Mexico for a day or so and how Julie and I needed to bring our passports, but to not worry about getting the kids passports because Mexico has a “reciprocity agreement” with the U.S.where adults’ passports are required but their kids aren’t.  Fortunately Julie bought it all and wasn’t suspicious.  To give her her present, I wrapped a new swim suit and the tag said “Because you need the proper wardrobe for the ride to Mexico”.  Julie got a boatload (pun intended) of cash from my parents and got to go shopping the next day in preparation to leave.  I got the SWEET Olympus Stylus 1030SW shockproof, waterproof, dust-proof, freeze-proof camera that I had wanted to take on the cruise for good snorkeling and swimming photos.  So I was stoked.  But the best gift we got was that my parents and sisters had volunteered a couple months before to watch all 6 kids for a week so we could actually go on the cruise.  Without that, obviously, it would not have been possible.

Anniversary Cruise

The cruise can pretty much be summed up in 6 words: “best week of my adult life”.  It was AWESOME.  We’d never cruised before but we’re sold on it now as the most relaxing method of vacationing.  It’s so nice to be spoiled and taken care of.  Your luggage and hotel room “goes with you” basically, so you settle in on the first day and don’t worry about packing or hauling luggage around until the last day even though you’re going to different locations.  The crew waits on you hand and foot and there’s always something going on — or you can just sit and relax and watch the water go by.  And of course there’s the food.  Plenty of food.  At any time of day. 

Cozumel was our favorite stop.  The shore excursion we chose was “Amazing Cozumel Race”.  Julie and I have always loved the TV show.  A few years ago I had a business trip to Las Vegas.  I didn’t tell Julie about it at all, and she was surprised when I had a cousin of mine show up at our house to take the kids and give her her first “clue” leading her to the airport.  After a few more clues she finally found me at the Rio Hotel and we enjoyed a couple days vacation from real life.  But her race was nothing compared to this “Amazing Race”.  We ran all over Cozumel and there were many challenges we had to do like:

• Par 8 holes on a mini-golf course
• Answer a sheet of questions about exhibits in the Cozumel Museum and use those answers to get our next locale
• Get a Henna Tattoo and translate it in order to get the next stop.
• Take a boat ride and then snorkel out to a sunken ship to get it’s name (my personal favorite - the image of that sunken ship is permanently etched in my mind.  It was AWESOME!)
• Find the right shop in the farmer’s market
• and more!

Julie and I ended up doing really well.  We came in 2nd place.  Our undoing was our physical fitness.  The thing I like about Amazing Race is it’s not just about physical prowess, but there’s a good mix of mental gymnastics to even out the playing field.  Julie and I excelled at the mental part.  If we could get in a little better  shape we’d make a perfect Amazing Race team.  Even with our lacking though, we were only 2 minutes behind the first place team and 6 minutes off of the fastest time ever so we were pretty excited.  As a prize we got some “Amazing Cozumel Race” t-shirts.

After the race, we did some shopping, then headed to a pier the race organizers had told us about to do some snorkeling.  It wasn’t as good as the reefs that are in the area, but those require more time  than we had.  The snorkeling was still pretty nice.  At one point, I was swimming around and all of a sudden I was surrounded by “Sergeant Major” Fish swimming all around me.  They’re pretty aggressive and weren’t shy at all.  I got some great shots of them using my sweet new camera.

The next day we docked in Progreso.  Our excursion here was to some Mayan ruins called Dzibilchaltun.  Not as big as Chichen Itza, but a shorter drive and impressive nonetheless.  The best part of the ruins, though, was the Cenote, or sinkhole, where we were able to swim.  It’s a spring and the water is crystal clear and refreshingly cool.  The swimming was amazing.  I could have stayed in the water all day, but unfortunately we didn’t have a ton of time there.  After the ruins we went to a private beach house where we sat on the beach sipping Pina Coladas and enjoyed the water a little more.

New Years Eve was our last night on the ship and there were loads of activities planned.  After dinner we went to our room and found hats and noisemakers waiting for us on the bed.  After some karaoke, we went up on the pool deck for the party and counted down to midnight while the band played.  It was packed and pretty crazy.

Late the next morning we debarked in Galveston and drove the 4 hours back to San Antonio.  It was an awesome vacation and honestly I think about going back every day.  We are so grateful to my family for volunteering to take the 6 kids, who can be quite a handful.  Julie and I never really had a honeymoon.  We got married on January 2nd and school started 2 days later, so we got a weekend in Salt Lake for our honeymoon.  So finally, for our 10th anniversary, we got to get away from everything for an extended period, forget about life, and just enjoy each other’s company. 

If you’re really wanting more info on the cruise, I posted all the cruise photos here.

Post-Cruise

The rest of the time in Texas was spent just lounging around and getting ready to come home.  Peyton and Soren had driven home with Katie and Tagg so they could be home in time for school to start.  They left San Antonio while we were on our way back from Galveston, so we didn’t get to see them until we got home from Texas 4 days later.  10 days is a long time for a 6 and 8 year old to be away from Mom and Dad but they did OK.  The flight home wasn’t quite as nice as the flight there.  We had to go through Denver and Maren was very riled up and didn’t settle down until the second flight.  And the flights were packed so we had to hold Maren and Roman on our laps which got pretty uncomfortable after a while.  But we made it and for the most part it was nice to be home after so long away.  But it was definitely a great time and worth any of the hassles there may have been.

I heard last year that Jon does these in-home concerts for a nominal fee at Christmas time.  So this year I kept it in the back of my mind that I wanted to get him in our home for an evening.  It all came together and he came on Saturday.  Julie and I had spent a couple days making food and had a bunch of hors d’oeuvres and goodies.  We moved the piano into the family room next to the Christmas tree and moved the couches out of the family room into the guest room.  We lined the floor with chairs and I think everyone had a pretty good view.

We had about 45 family members and friends in our home.  Jon arrived about a half hour or so after we started.  He had some food and then we all sat down to enjoy the show.  We don’t have a grand piano so one of the funniest parts of the night was after a few songs when Jon decided he wanted to take the front sound board off the piano to get every last bit of sound he could from it.  I told him he could saw the piano in half if it would make it sound better.  It was an awesome show.  He played a bunch of Christmas songs and a lot of his other stuff too.  He played for a good hour and a half and answered questions and took requests.  One of the highlights was a jazz version of Rudolph upside down with his head under the keyboard.  He finished with one of his classics, Tribute, and then a beautiful version of Silent Night where we all joined in to sing.

Everything turned out about as perfect as it could be.  The “scenery” was perfect as we had all the lights off except the Christmas lights and the fire (at least until it got too hot) and of course there was the great view out our windows to add to the scenery.  After the show Jon got a standing ovation and then brought in CDs and piano books to sell.  He ended up staying until about 11:00pm and I think everyone had a great time.  We’re definitely planning it again for next year.  We may have to invite a different crowd though because we had so many people who wanted to come to this.  Here’s a couple photos.  I’ll post some video a bit later.

Jon Schmidt In-home Concert from Derek Williams on Vimeo.

Eden, December 2008 - Logan was getting a little mouthy with Julie one day.  Eden ran up and said “You need to respect Mom, Logan.”  Except it sounded more like “You need to wespet Mom, Logan.”  He walked off and Eden looks up at Julie and says “Seriously, Mom, he needs to wespet you.”

Logan, November 2008 - Logan was having a talk with Grammy and Gramps who were visiting from Texas. Grammy said something Logan didn’t believe.  Grammy told him “Ask your dad”, to which Logan replied “OK I will - wait - he lies a LOT!” Hmm - he thinks he’s figured me out.  I don’t really LIE.  I just like to have fun with the answers.  I subscribe to the “Calvin’s Dad School of Question Answering”.  You can find some awesome examples here and here.

Soren, November 2008 - We were playing Scattergories and the letter was P.  One item was Summer Activity.  As we’re all working on our list, he suddenly says “ahh man, I wish the letter was S.  Then for Summer Activity I could put Sacrificing Chickens.”  We were rolling and could barely finish.  When we finally finished and were reading our lists, when it came to Summer Activity, he proudly said “PERSECUTING chickens!” Don’t ask me. I have NO IDEA where he pulled that from.

Logan, October 2008 - Just sitting at the bar eating breakfast and matter of factly said “Hey Mom…I want you to change my birthday, OK?”

Eden, January 2008 - Upon seeing Julie in some pants she’d not been able to wear while pregnant with the twins.  “Wow!  New pants, Mom!”

Peyton, November 2004 - While we sat in an IHOP in Anaheim having breakfast waiting for Disneyland to open.  Our waiter was speaking to us in his thick Mexican accent.  Peyton, stared at him intently while he was talking to us, then suddenly said “Uhh, we speak English!”

Soren, more than once, random bathrooms, usually in a restaurant, when someone in a stall is having a “rough” time. “Dad, what’s that noise?  Is that a monster, dad?  Dad, I think there’s a monster in here.  Ooh, dad, what’s that smell?  It’s making my tummy sick dad.”