Hello Fro

We made it safe and sound to London. We got here about 10:00 am their time but 2:00 am our time. Took a taxi to our hotel and then jumped on a double decker tour bus around London. The sights were amazing and we saw Trafalga Square, St. Paul's Cathedral, Hyde Park, the Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace, the Tower Bridge, The Globe Theater and watched the sunset over the River Thames light up Parliment and Big Ben and the Millenial Eye. It was beautiful.

When I say "we" saw it I mean Lezlee and I--both the kids fell promptly asleep when they got on the bus.

The next morning we had a proper English breakfast--eggs, bacon, sausage, pork & beans, roasted tomato, cottage potatoes, toast and 2 drops of orange juice.

Then we took the Tube (subway) to the Tower of London. They had built an ice rink in the moat so Jordan, Brennan and I ice skated for the first time there at the base of the walls of the most famous castle in England. As the Brits would say it was brilliant! Anne Bolynn lost her head just a few hundred feet away but we managed to escape unharmed. They used to keep a pet polar bear there and would let it swim in the moat eight where we were skating and he'd catch fish there.

We took a tour of the Tower and got to see the Crown Jewels which include the biggest diamond in the world. Jordan asked the gaurd in her most outrageous British accent "can I try them on please" but her request was denied.

We then went shopping at Harrods where I found a $900,000 watch; decided not to buy it though. Jordan did try and persuade us to buy here a scarf that cost more than our first car. Denied.

Today we're going to take a boat tour along the River Thames, take a ride on the Millenial Eye (the worlds biggest Ferris wheel, it takes 45 minutes to make one loop) and then over to Westminster Abby.

Sorry no pictures--i can't figure out how to upload them from my I-phone so you'll just have to wait.

Jordan Figures Out The Christmas Surprise

What've we been up to? What've you been up to?

We all have crazy busy lives I know - here's a brief update on a few things happening in our life:


Brennan thought it would be fun to sleep outside on the deck one night - Lezlee thought it was a bad idea (too cold) - Brennan snuck out in the middle of the night. Lezlee still thinks it was too cold for such things - Brennan still thinks it was fun.

We have a membership at the Phoenix Art Museum and love to go when we get a chance - this is a new painting they just acquired. It's really cool.

There is a cricket that has been keeping Kirk awake all night - he finally pulled out the cricket hunting gear and managed to get some decent sleep for once.

this is a sketch Kirk did at one of his live drawing sessions

We're kind of freezing here but this was fun - we were eating Nogales dogs on a Friday night before going to first Fridays.

Jordan, Brennan and Lezlee were all in the Stake Choir concert and this was taken just after.

So what have you guys been up to?

Granby Dates Finalized

The Hays reuntion will be Aug 7, 8, 9, and 10 at Granby Colorado. Hope to see you there.

More pics

Nicole getting to know the fam/House

It's been a while, a long, long while since we've posted but I’m back with a lot. I have been downloading everyone's pictures from the blog spot onto the iPhone and teaching Nicole everyone's name.

Some names she gets right on:
Ashley
Papa (for Grandpa)
Nana (For Grandma - she wouldn't even try Grandma so we had to try something else)
Moni
Jordan
Tori

Some names she gets close
Hannah is "nana"
Jennifer, I know you hate Jenny but she wouldn’t even try Jennifer and if it makes you feel better she doesn't even say Jenny she says "Nenny"
Jessica is "ica"

Some names she gets confused on:
When she sees Kyle she says Kirk
When she sees Kirk she says Papa - must be the hair
When she sees Holden she says Jordan
Ken is "fishy" because that's what he's holding
Brennan is "pumpkin" because that's what he's carving

Others she wont even try:
Lezlee
Sara
Nathan

And others still are camera shy and I couldn't find pictures for:
Matt
Mike
Chase
Chandler
Tammy
Eric

All the pictures of the house where taken with a phone and I'm sorry if there not very crisp but it'll give you and idea of how it's coming along. Almost done!

There are a lot more pics and I'll try to post more tonight, it's all done and can't wait till we can move in! Love you all

Holden's Mission Site

Holden's mission site is moving to a private blog. Please let me know if you want permission to go on the site and read his letters home, see his photos, etc. Leave a comment here with the email address you would like me to give permission to or send me an email at lezleehays@gmail.com

Thanks!

A Tour of Our Home

AT (the online magazine that we just participated in the color contest) now has a house tour of our home up online. For those of our family who have not been here for a while, you might find it interesting. There have been quite a few changes in the past year - to see a slide show of the entire house you have to click on the link in the middle of the page that says HOUSE TOUR -

It's very nice to be recognized for doing something you love! (to go to AT directly, click on the link below)

Kirk & Lezlee's Home at AT

The Arizona Hays Update

This weekend was Halloween - possibly Kirk's favorite holiday. One of his favorite things to do is pass out candy to the trick or treater's and he always makes the kids do a dance, a joke, or some sort of 'trick' in order to get more candy. He has been known to break into dance himself. Brennan was a vampire and Jordan was 'swine flew' - she had wings on her costume so it was a little play on words. She was a big hit. Her best friend went as a doctor so that was the perfect combination!










We were also thrilled this week to finally get our fire pit up and running - it was completed with old tractor parts which made it seem very unique and pretty darn cool if we do say so ourselves! We had quite a lot of friends stop by to sit around the fire this week and on Halloween night with the doors open all the way in the front and back, it was quite a draw! Yesterday we had around 55 people over for lunch and they made s'mores. I think we've decided to always have the supplies on hand to make s'mores. It was quite a hit!






Holden is doing extraordinarily well on his mission. We love getting his letters and his photos. There are some funny stories in his letters, including his latest. Here are a few new ones, if you haven't checked out his mission site lately here is the link: www.missionsite.net/elderhays - I will also post it on the sidebar so that you can find it more easily in the future. From this point on the best way to communicate with him is via email. Just be patient if he doesn't answer you right away - he only has one hour per week on the computer to answer and read all his mail. We are so proud of him!

The voting is SUPER close...if you haven't voted yet...pretty please?

New voting again today. I'm getting closer to the Western division finals - ALL the competition is so tough at this point! I'm going to be so lucky for every vote I get! Won't you please be one of those votes?

VOTING HAPPENS HERE


You are awesome! Thank you!

Please Vote !

Our house (well the front room) - is still in the running for this contest! PLEASE consider voting - voting on this round is only open 24 hours!

VOTE HERE

If you didn't vote before, you have to create an account first - but it is super quick to sign up - all you really need is an email address!

I'm competing against a girl from Denver right now so in this particular round it's just between me and her and she has A LOT of friends!!!

Thank you for allowing me to be obnoxious about it!

Tea Party

Grandma Watterson was sick so we brought a picture of her. The Tea Set is Grandma Hays's
The table was set with little treats and beautiful flowers
It was fun to have Nicole and Kristi there.
Ahley
Jessica
Tammy was sick and we missed her a lot
Sarah was dress up so pretty
Hannah looked like a real doll

Elder Hays is now In Bulgaria!

(photo of Elder Hays with his MTC companion Elder Spencer)


Tuesday Holden was able to call us from the Salt Lake airport before boarding his plane to head out on the long trip to Bulgaria. Flight/travel time is 29 hours. It was so great to be able to talk to him. We were able to conference call in Noelle too and I let the kids wait to head to school until after the call was over. He was very excited about getting to finally go to Bulgaria after his 2 months in the MTC. He really did love the MTC though and he loved his companion Elder Spencer. He said that he and Spencer felt like that had been friends forever even though they just met 2 months ago. That even though they are very different in a lot of ways, they just totally got along.

He talked a lot about things they had been told about the Bulgarian people or what to expect on his mission. He said that there are times when you might be the only members (almost) in a pretty big area. The missionaries are often called to be Branch Presidents of the areas where they serve because there are not enough members to hold those callings all the time. The Bulgarian people have trouble with the idea of becoming baptized, even when they have felt the spirit, read the Book of Mormon and believe in what they have read. They are very attached to the idea of being Orthodox - when the church split originally between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox church it was the Bulgarians who were all Orthodox and so it is a big part of their cultural identity. Asking them to become a member of the LDS church is like asking them to not be Bulgarian anymore. The two things Bulgarians are most proud of is their alphabet and language (St. Cyril started the Cyrillic alphabet which is the alphabet both Bulgarian and Russian use) and their Orthodox religion. The only problem is that many of them who consider themselves to be Orthodox, never go to church at all and are, in fact, actually atheist. So it is an interesting dichotomy.

When he finally had to get on the plane he said that he might be able to call us from JFK in New York, but he wasn't sure. So we waited around by the phones all afternoon and finally, he was able to call for about another hour. They had stayed up in the MTC all night the night before leaving and so you could hear in his voice how very tired he was becoming. He was trying really hard to stay awake so that he could sleep when it was night time in Bulgaria and attempt to get adjusted to Bulgarian time (they are 10 hours ahead of us). The time with him on the phone seemed to fly by so fast. We all had questions for him - it feels like, even though he is able to email every week and send letters, the communication is hard because you never quite feel like you get the whole story or he forgets to answer questions you ask in your letters - so it was really nice to be able to talk to him and have an actual conversation.

Finally he had to get on the plane.

I was so pleasantly surprised yesterday morning to get another phone call from him! His mission President had each of them call their families to let them know they arrived safely in Bulgaria. I was able to talk to him for maybe 5-10 minutes. He was still exhausted. He said he had slept maybe 4 hours total on the planes. He flew from JFK to Vienna and then they had a couple of hour lay-over until they could fly to Sofia, Bulgaria. He estimated he had been awake about 60 hours at that point.

He said President Roth and his wife were very nice. President Roth is from Austria and so English is actually a second language for him. Holden said he speaks very fluent English but that he occasionally would use a word and then ask them if there would be a better word that conveyed his meaning more - like he used the word 'concentrate' and then Holden suggested 'focus' in the context is was being used and he said "Thank you! That is the word I was looking for".

Holden said he spent some time getting know each one of the missionaries individually so that he could get a feel for their personalities, strengths, language capability, etc. and then make assignments to new companions accordingly. They would be staying in the mission home (which is the former Cuban Embassy) overnight and then the next day they would be going to a park where the mission was actually dedicated and they would be praying there in the park to consecrate their mission. From there they would meet their companions and travel to their new areas.

They had already been to a park shortly after getting there - they were actually taken to a park and practiced street contacting, which is a lot of what they do in Bulgaria.

I asked Holden if it looked roughly the way he imagined it would or seemed from his the photos he had seen of it before. He said "yeah, kinda except it looks a little more bombed out than I thought it would - but it's COOL!"

One thing I think a lot of people don't understand about Holden is the more it seems different or interesting or totally unusual or not the norm or something he hasn't experienced before, the more excited he is about it. He is looking to have an adventure on this mission. To him, that's part about what is exciting about going somewhere else. So he was not disappointed that it looked bombed out - that actually made it more interesting to him. He said the housing is soviet bloc style block after block after block of it. He said it sort of looks like they said "we need a box to keep to all these people in" and they just built a concrete box. Later someone threw a bomb at the box and broke the windows. But the people still live there. He said there are stray dogs everywhere. We had heard that before - that there are a lot of stray dogs everywhere, that the woman all look like models and the men all look like Italian maffia. He said the stray dog thing at least is very true. He said they do not look like the stray dogs in Mexico (those of you who have been to Mexico know that there are a lot of stray mutts - stray skinny mutts - roaming the streets of Mexico) but he said these looked more like people's pets. He said there was a stray Chow Chow in the park - so it almost looks like people just decided they couldn't feed their dogs and just turned them loose.

We do know that the maffia does control quite a lot there. Somehow the church has managed to have a good relationship with them. Holden said that they were told that the maffia like that they the missionaries are well dressed.

He had to get off the phone, they were going to be having dinner and going to bed soon (it was about 6:30 pm there at the time I talked to him - I was thinking they probably let them sleep longer than a normal night on that first night to try to get them rested after that long travel).

The other thing was he was super confused about what day it was. Since he hadn't slept it was all very confusing to him. He said he felt like he was missing an entire day somewhere. I said something like "Yesterday you said..." and he said "YESTERDAY!" "What do you mean yesterday? wait? What day is it there?" - he was having a hard time wrapping his head around it all. He said it felt like he had talked to us from Salt Lake 2 days ago, not yesterday. Hopefully they let him have enough sleep that he is less confused about what day it is!

We love him, we miss him, but we are so excited for his new adventures!

vacation 2010

I've been checking with everyone I can get a hold of about dates for Granby. It looks like the best time would be early August. Eric will be available after 8/4. I couldn't get Kirk today but the last time we talked he said August looked o.k. but the kids need to be in school around the middle of August. So, it looks like we should shoot for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday etc. the 6th, 7th, 8th 9th etc.
Please respond to this blog. We need to tell Russ Watterson. Love you all Dad

Pics from our Most Recent Outing

Recently, our family spent the weekend camped near Currant Creek which is not too far from Strawberry Reservoir. We were in fishing territory, however, there were no fish caught on this trip (mostly because we forgot the worms).

Fifth-wheel, Sweet, Fifth-wheel (we wouldn't be camping without you!) And no, that little truck did not pull that big trailer. Thanks to my dad for getting it up there so we could sleep warm and comfortable (and eat without the flies).

Sarah, presenting our view from the trailer . . .

More lovely views . . .

Gotta love that sagebrush (and check for them ticks) . . .

The first thing we found at our campsite was, of course, a snake! Nate saw it first (good eyes!) and was thrilled. Hannah wanted her turn to hold it too, but would Dad hold the snake? Nooooooo. Kyle doesn't much care for snakes. It was mom that had to pick it up so the kids could all get a look. (Mind you, I did make sure there was no little rattler on the end of this one before I got too close.)

Even though my parents kindly let us stay in the comfort of their trailer we did have to pitch a tent to pass off a scout requirement (the whole purpose for the trip to begin with). However, when it came to actually sleeping in the tent, let's just say the nice warm, comfy trailer was too much of a temptation.

We had a great time together playing games, getting dirty (because it just isn't camping if you aren't getting dirty), going canoeing, and roasting marshmellows. And, as a camping trip really should be, it was short and sweet. By the way, you should ask Sarah some time about the ride in the canoe and just how much she enjoyed it. (She was convinced we were all going to die and anyone even remotely near the lake could hear her proclaiming this fear over and over. Boy, am I glad there weren't many people at the lake that day!)