This is the blog for the family of Wayne and Vicki Hays so that we can keep in touch even though none of us live in the same state. Frequent posting is encouraged--especially by the grandkids. Grammar and spelling don't count, so you don't need a dictionary by your side. Post and have fun.
Sorry no pictures of the bloody nose, but I do have plenty of pictures. Yesterday marked a few firsts for Nicole, her first wave and the first time she gave someone a bloody nose. As her grandma Toner was leaving yesterday she waved her hand across the room at Nicole and did so long enough that Nicole realized that if she copied grandma everybody in the room got really excited. By the time Nicole got it down and would wave every time grandma did we had a hard time getting grandma out of the house, she just sat there in the door waving at Nicole. That was quite a bit of fun but not long after that Kristi got hit by a rogue fist as Nicole was flailing her arms about and actually got a bloody nose. Here is Kristi and Nicole right before church. I know you don't have a good view of the dress Nicole is wearing but it is very cute and Kristi and I our having a hard time deciding if she looks like an Indian (Native American) Squaw or ginger bread princess - so cast your vote.
Here Nicole and I are enjoying my early father's day gift. I have always wanted a grill and now that I have one we are grillin’ brats, chicken, ribs, corn and everything else I can get my hands on. One of my favorite things is my view while grillin’ I love to look over river as I grill!!! Here is Nicole taking her first pianio lession. We took a lot more pictures but she was moving so fast that it was hard not to get a blurry one. I’m so sorry I missed your B-DAY Brennan. Hope Mexico was GRATE!!!
We have a lot more pictures to wade through and probably will subject you to them in the near future as well as seminary graduation, end of year stuff and Brennan's birthday which is on a different camera - but for now, enjoy a few photos of us enjoying Mexico.
We only went with just the 5 of us this year and did not take any other families, so we rented a smaller house further down the beach than the house we are usually at (the one that you all stayed at last year). It was lovely, calm, relaxing...everything we have come to expect from Mexico.
The temperature was perfect, not too hot and not too cold. In short, everything was great and we really enjoyed the break from our usual life!
Today we finished the "Loose Paper Project" This has taken us 9 months. It contains 280,000 pictures. We have moved on the the marriage of Lawrence County.
Look a Wayne middle, he has lost 17 pounds and looks great.
I looks like Grandma is trying to singing for joy.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Hi Everyone, I hope you all read the messages we have sent. If not, this might be a bit of a surprise. We are moving to Bountiful, Utah. Eric starts work on June 16th. The company he works for, EA, bought out a gaming company in Bountiful last year. So Eric is transferring there. We are happy to be moving so much closer to part of our family. Our kids and Eric have been working hard for two months to get our house ready to sell. We have known for a year that this is what we were going to do, so we had handymen come in throughout the last year and made sure all was in working order. Our ward has been fantastic. They have come in and transformed our house. The house is officially on the market. Yeah!!!!!!!!!! The realtors that have come through are very impressed with how the house looks. So we hope that it sells this summer. The housing market here isn’t near as bad as in a lot of places, but things are still moving slowly. We did find out if you price it right it can still sell very quickly, within a few days. Our realtor is fantastic. She is a mover and a shaker. She comes in like a tornado, does what she needs to and is out again. I have seen her everyday since I met her last week. Plus she calls once or twice a day to let us know what is going on. We have already had 2 of the 3 inspections we have needed on the house. They had a photographer come on Monday to take pictures, and on Tuesday they had them on the internet. They had a realtor open house yesterday. We had 37 realtors come through. Miora, our realtor, was excited that we had that many show up. If the house takes a while to sell, I will stay with the kids here until the end of July. That way they can do all their camps with the kids in our ward. Then the plan is to move everyone to Utah and rent until our house is sold and all the way closed. Then we will buy a house in Bountiful or North Salt Lake. These plans are tentative for the moment. We will be looking for a 5 bedroom house with a back yard the kids can play in.The kids are excited to have their own rooms and a back yard that we can have a trampoline, and a swing set area. They would also love a climbing tree. Ashley has decided that she wants her room to be all orange, she would love orange carpet, there is no way I am putting orange carpet in her room. Jessica wants her room to have a lot of different colors in it. Michael wants a blue room. Matt just wants a room that he can have a green or blue screen so he can make movies. Eric would love to have a place for a work shop. I would like the kitchen and famly room connected together. So there is our wish list for the new house. The kids rooms are easy, a can of paint is inexpensive, it’s the other stuff we will have a harder time finding. Have a great day. Love, Monika
Recently Kirk gave me crap about not posting lately. So just to shut him up, I think I will give you an update on our life...
First, thank you to everyone who called and wished me Happy Birthday! And what a birthday it was, I got a brand new lawn mower and my wonderful children allowed me the opportunity of being the first one to use it. And not to whine but what the heck was I thinking buying a house on an acre and a half of land! Needless to say I didn't finish the entire lawn.
As always, life is busy. Actually I don't even think busy is an accurate representation of what life is here. I was recently given a new "opportunity" at work. I have been moved back to Product Management and am managing the distributed hosting environments. Which is basically the server environments for all applications ran by Fidelity on UNIX and Intel machines. We currently have approximately 20K servers and has an annual budget of about 250 million a year. It is a very daunting task with a lot of drastic change that will be happening within the next two years. My job is not to manage the support groups but instead to set strategic direction and manage the budget.
The kids are also keeping me on my toes. All three are in baseball/softball currently and Chase is on the school lacross team. This week we had 4 softball games, 4 baseball games, 6 practices, 2 lacross games and 3 lacross practices. Add them all up and you come up with not enough time in the day! Luckily some of the games and practices overlap.
And just in case I didn't have enough things going on, I have decided to give dating a try. And isn't it amazing how once friends hear that, how many people have "friends" you should get to know. Last week I went out with two different people. A police officer (which watches Fox News so I had to say adeau to him) and a CAD designer/80's cover band drummer. This upcoming week I have dates with two different attorney's (Kirk already warned me about attorney's). I don't know about the whole thing...
Let's see...what else is going on? Tori just got back from 10 days in Florida. She had a great time, called me occaisionally just to rub it in. And Albus turned 5 years old. How time flies...much like our dog the albetross.
Oh yeah, and lets not forget the bad luck with Appliances I had last week. Plumber had to visit because a star wars action figure "accidently" was flushed down the toilet and got stuck. Washer started dripping, socks went down the dryer vent and got wrapped around the drum, dishwasher started spewing water out of the front. And I decided since I was getting everything fixed or replaced might as well install my new oven (which isn't technically new since it has been in my garage about 8 months). Which required an electrician to run a new 240 volt line to my kitchen. But now that it is all over and fixed, I can only anticipate the next series of items to "challenge" us.
Well that is it...I hope I accomplished my goal of making you feel sorry for me. Love you all!
(if we were in the same state we would totally take you out for an awesome dinner....rain check?)
Sarah had a 1st Grade Program for parents last week. They sang a lot of cute songs about what they had learned over the year and most of the kids had little speaking parts. She seemed to really enjoy performing for the audience.
Nathan has been working on a Utah history project for the last part of the year. He had to do a written report, an oral report, a map of the state and a visual project. He chose to write about the Davis County Courthouse (a historical building in Farmington). We went to his class fair on Friday to see all the projects.
He also received special recognition for an art project he made out of junk. The school librarian had the kids create art from junk (“Jart”) and then two students from each grade level were chosen for their art. Nate chose to make a snake out of blue bubble wrap and a red twist tie (snakes are his main topic of conversation these days). The librarian then got all the kids’ art displayed at the local art gallery and had a reception for them and everything. Nate loved every minute of it. All the entries were very creative.
He couldn’t wait to come home and make something else. This is his latest creation - a spider out of a pop can.
On Saturday, we went to the Walk for Autism fundraiser sponsored by Autism Speaks at Cottonwood High School. They had a great turn out, the weather was perfect, and the kids really enjoyed themselves.
Luv the movie Jordan but I can see how watching it more then once could drive one crazy!!! So I've been really excited about dad's (grandpa's) TV show and been having a hard time waiting for the DVD which led me to... absolutely nothing. Well, I can't say that, I did find out that dad was a Former State Senator, US congressman, powerful chairman of the House Administration and United States presidential candidate (though he didn't actually run). Oh and he was a movie star! (Now I didn't spend too much time researching these facts so they might be a little off but I did find that it was interesting that there is more info on his scandal then his political career.) But my favorite site was "Wayne Hays - Dead or Alive?" So all that searching and it looks like I'll still have to wait for the DVD.
Well, Kristi has been doing a great job with her first web sight - it looks great. Plus she's got the house looking great and has taken a bunch of pictures of Nicole. Speaking of Nicole, she's started teething - still in the very early stages - but other than that she's doing fine and full of personality. Here's a few pics, hope you enjoy.
HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER! I was afraid that if I waited to wish you a happy birthday tomorrow , I might forget. I hope you have a fantastic day!!!!!!!!! Love, Monika
Jordan has been watching this video over and over. So this post is an homage to her current favorite video.
Here is Waz Up with us this week.
(1) Jordan continues to drive us nuts.
Some of you may recall that my youngest heir has a love of contracts. She drafts and requires her family to sign them constantly. She has now added a new element to her obsession--multi-media presentations of why we should gladly enter her contacts.
Here she is presenting why we should hire her to do the laundry. That's a graph demonstrating why hiring her would be superior to Lezlee doing it.
And here are some of the skills that would make her perfect for the job.
She got the job.
2) Lezlee loses 22 pounds!!
And this is why:
3) Brennan starts sculpting, when he's not wrestling.
Brennan is really into wrestling. He works out with the wrestling team five days a week and lately has had meets two days a week. And he likes to try out moves on his big brother, who seems to be showing him a lot more respect lately.
4) Lilith-Revisted sells while still on the easel.
Lilith Revisited sold while it was still on the easel--someone saw it on my blog. The person reserved it but while it was sitting at the gallery waiting for them to pick it up the next day, two more people put it on reserve in case the sale fell through. People really seem to like these black and white paintings.
5) Holden's street art.
Here is a picture of the wall in the back yard that we let Holden paint on.
And here is his "signature" he's been working on.
Can you figure out why he chose this as his street moniker?
6) Jordan's choir presentation.
Here is Jordan getting ready to sing. Later in the week we had to watch various dance performances, plays she wrote, etc.
7) Senior sluff day.
Friday was senior sluff day and so Holden skipped school and went skateboarding with his friends. It sounded like such a good idea I decided to sluff work too.
We have a mannequin named Lucy that I use in the Lilith paintings and Lezlee uses to take pictures of dresses on for her e-bay business. Lezlee always leaves Lucy outside by the pool and we both love how she looks in the sun as the day progresses and the shadows move across the form.
We've discussed how nice it would be to have a statute of Lucy in the backyard once the addition is finished. But the $10,000+ price tag is a bit of deterrent.
So I decided to see if I could carve one. I bought a small piece of alabaster and spent my senior sluff day trying to learn how to carve.
I really enjoyed it and I'm happy with how my first attempt came out. I think I'll be doing a lot more stone carving. Here is a picture of it roughed out. I'll be polishing it today.
I'll have a detailed blog about how I did it later this weekend at kirkhaysart.com
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