The Adventures of Food Boy

Two of Don's brothers, Marc and Sam, wrote and produced a fun movie called The Adventures of Food Boy. The star of the movie is Lucas Grabeel, one of the main guys in High School Musical. The movie was released today on DVD and can be found on Amazon and at some Walmarts.

It's won a bunch of awards for best family movie at multiple film festivals, and is on IMDB and has clips on you tube. Check it out!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnT7bAsdouU

The Meier's Wedding Reception

THE MEIER FAMILY

A couple of weeks ago we had a fun wedding reception to go to. 2 of Don's cousins got married in August and had a double reception here in town the week after the hurricane. It was a lot of fun. The kids were the official helpers with the door, presents, and passing out thank-up gifts for when people left. They had a lot of fun and looked pretty cute too!

JAKE AND HAYLEY PASSING OUT THE POPCORN BAGS TO GUESTS AS THEY LEFT

TREVOR PLAYING WITH BRITNEY'S FLOWERS

MICHAEL TAKING HIS ROLE AS DOOR OPENER VERY SERIOUSLY :)

The food was awesome of course..those Meiers always know how to throw a party!
JAKE SAMPLING THE PICKLES - THEY WERE HIS FAVORITE!

But of course, I don't know if anything could compare to the tabletop entertainment...
JAKE TOOK THIS PICTURE OF HIS FAVORITE FISH

And the FIVE beta fish that ended up coming home with us!!! That was SO sweet of you Tracy! :)



Good news, all 5 are still alive 2 weeks later, despite me making the mistake of putting 2 in the same container while I cleaned the bowls. When Jake informed me the 2 fish were KISSING, I had to run and break up the death match. But they did both survive - Whoops!

OUR BEAUTIFUL PET FISH!

CONGRATULATIONS JARED & CHESLEY AND ADAM & KATIE -
WE LOVE YOU GUYS!

Helping Hands

Because of the storm, we have been able to spend a lot of time outside doing natural landscaping. The kids have gotten quite good at being helping hands in our yard and the neighborhood...





Michael and Don have also gotten to go out on several work crews and help out with larger projects. This past week-end Don had to work but Michael still got up early Saturday morning and went with a group of men to help clean up parts of town. I am proud of everyones hard work and helping hands to help put our town back together!

No Power, No Problem!

Since the kids had already been out of school for 2 weeks, their school did this...



Hayley and Trevor were excited to go and see friends and do fun activities outside for 2 hours. Lucky them, the school got power back the next night and it was back to school for real on Monday!

Powerless Activities

Things I don't recommend doing when you don't have power or water pressure...

PLAYING WITH MOON SAND. It's lots of fun until it is time to clean up the warm, sticky bodies and floor. Running water really is a fabulous invention. Thank goodness for wipes and the Swiffer mop!

Other fun Activities to do without power...

PLAYING GAMES LIKE UNO TOGETHER

FLASHLIGHT TAG WITH JAKE

PLAYING BATTERY CHARGED VIDEO GAMES

MAKE-OVERS WITH FRIENDS...DON'TCHA JUST LOVE THE NEW 'DO. IT WAS BETTER THAN UNWASHED HAIR LOOK :)

The Power of BYU Football

The most asked question in the last 2 weeks around town seems to be, "Do you have power?", followed up of course by, "So when did you get it?". I feel guilty at times, especially when the entire neighborhood surrounding our street and a couple others, were out of power for 13 long, hot days. But for posterity sake, I have been asked to post our POWERFUL story for all to enjoy.

It was Saturday afternoon after the storm. It was getting a little hot and sticky, but not too bad yet. Don had been up most of the night, monitoring the storm, and accessing damage during the day when it wasn't raining. So about 2 pm, he said, "Well, I guess I'll go try to take a nap, since there is no chance the power is going to come back on anytime soon and I can't watch the BYU game." For those few of you who don't know, Don is a HUGE BYU fan, and seriously, I think he really bleeds blue. At any rate, he was definitely looking a little blue as he headed down the hallway :)

The kids and I were playing games by the light of the front room windows and about 20minutes later, the hallway door flies open and Don is running into the front room. Again, for those of you who don't know, Don rarely runs anywhere. So he totally startled us, and as I am asking "What's wrong?", Don is fumbling for the remote to the TV. The only words I understood coming out of his mouth was "power...football". Apparently the power kicked back on at 2:25 pm, setting of the alarm in the bedroom, shooting Don out of bed into the front room. It took another minute or so before the air conditioner kicked in (Don already had remote in hand before the rest of us noticed!). By the time he reset the Satellite, which by some miracle in itself was still lined up right, the coin toss was over and BYU was lining up for the kick-off. You couldn't have timed it better if you tried. It was a powerful moment :)



And of course, we were really thankful to get power back so quickly and have AIR CONDITIONING! It also probably help save our carpet that had gotten water damage near the front windows since we quickly pulled it up and dried it out with fans and were able to clean it.

And for those of you wondering, it was an AWESOME game - GO COUGARS!

The Horn Player

It was a dark and stormy night...really dark (the power was out) and really stormy (Hurricane Ike was at its peak). All was quiet, except for the wind. The wind was blowing so hard (between 90 -100 mph) and really loud, and 3 of the sleeping kids had woken up. We were all talking quietly in the hall, because we thought Trevor was still sleeping. Until from the far dark corner of the hallway pipes up a voice, "Hey, whose playing that loud horn?!"


We all started laughing, as we listened to the wind play our free concert, whistling through the metal flag holder on the side of the house. It was a fun time, surprisingly none of the kids were scared, just excited to be together eating oranges and telling funny jokes in the dark hallway, listening to the horn player in the wind :)

Getting Back to Normal

The rest of our neighborhood, church and schools finally got power back up from Ike on Saturday, and in the process of that this week-end, we got our internet back up as well. I added pictures to Jake's birthday if you want to see the excited birthday boy in action.

There are still signs of the mess left behind everywhere, from the piles of trees on the lawns to traffic lights that are still out, but it great to be getting back to normal!


Today was the first real day back to school for the elementary school (Michael started Thursday), and everyone was excited to get back to school and normal schedules...well, almost normal. Trevor and Hayley came home from school with homework, but Michael's principal has announced there wouldn't be any homework this week from the middle school, as there are still a few areas without power.
Michael was devastated as I am sure you can imagine :)

Happy Birthday Jake!

Today is Jake's 4th birthday and he has been having a blast. We are still in Dallas (but will be heading home tomorrow), so Jake was able to party with cousins, uncles, grandparents and more. We helped Uncle Ben move from his old apartment to a new place, and took a break in the moving to go have fun at Chuck-e-Cheese. I think Jake had only been there once before and he LOVED it! We went mid-afternoon which was perfect, no crowds and we didn't have to eat dinner there :) Jake winning tickets at Chuck-e-Cheese Watch out for Jake!
Jake and his ultimate Chuck-e-Cheese fun pal, Uncle Ben...thanks for taking time out of moving to come play with us!

Later we meet up with Grandpa and Grandmommie and had a fun dinner, then back to Uncle Ben's for presents and a little Kung Fu cupcakes and chocolate cake.
The whole gang eating at Chili's...Michael enjoying his baby back ribs! Cake Time with lots of help!

Jake loves Star Wars and space things, like Planet Heroes that save the universe. I guess you could say the force was definitely with him this year.

Jake having fun opening presents Jake, aka Commander Fox, Clone Trooper Commander

He is looking forward to continuing his birthday tomorrow at home with Dad.

It seems like Jake's birthdays are often touched in some way by hurricanes. The evening of his 1st birthday was the night Rita hit, and now we are in Dallas because of Ike. Of course, Jake is a little like a hurricane himself sometimes, always blowing some adventure and laughs our way. He is such a fun part of our family and always makes things exciting. Happy Birthday Jake! We love you!

Ike Update

AROUND THE CORNER FROM OUR HOUSE...SCARY!

ONE OF THE STREETS NEXT TO US THE DAY AFTER THE STORM

I wanted to do a quick update and let everyone know we are doing good. We still don't have internet, but we were one of the really fortunate houses in our zipcode to actually get power back last Saturday afternoon. Ike left us in the dark for only about 13 hours! We did lose water pressure for a couple of days and have spotty phone service, but at least we have had air conditioning this week! I had plenty of water stored, so the water wasn't too big of an issue...who needs to shower, right?! Our schools still don't have power and won't be opening until at least Thursday, so this afternoon the kids and I drove to my brother's up in Dallas for some fun cousin time.

ONE SHOT OF OUR BACKYARD JUNGLE

A DIFFERENT SECTION OF OUR BACKYARD JUNGLE

Ike did leave us with a jungle in our backyard, a couple of trees uprooting on one side of our yard that we had to cut down this week (so they wouldn't fall on our neighbor's garage!), as well as a little water damage to our front room. But all in all, we were pretty blessed - no roof damage or real flooding, and everyone is safe. We have some fun pictures I will post once our internet gets up and running at home, and some fun stories to tell as well. Thanks to everyone for sending their thoughts and prayers our way!

Waiting for Ike

Now that we are "prepared", the waiting game begins. School was cancelled today so we had our own fun activities, like practicing drawing and writing...

"TAKE A HIKE IKE!"

Tonight we are having a little bonding time, camping out in the hallway together...



Well, the wind is really picking up and it has started to rain. Thanks to all for the nice messages, emails,phone calls, and prayers. We are expected to lose power, but will do our best to keep everyone up to date with the happenings here.

We love you!!

Prep for Ike

The last day or so has been filled with last minute preparation for Ike. We live in a zip code that is being advised to stay put during the storm, so we have been busy "securing the homefront". We've done everything from having trees cut down, to picking up yard toys and securing the trampoline, to filling water containers, making extra ice, bread and cookies. The kids had fun eating as much ice cream as they wanted, so I could have more room in the freezer for ice and water bottles.






Our 72 hour kit...just in case.

THE CALM....

BEFORE THE STORM...



More on our adventures with IKE coming soon :)

Busy Times

September is flying by fast. We've been busy with lots of back to school things, Scouts, church, meetings and more. We were supposed to start up with soccer and gymnastics this week-end, as well as have family come to town to visit, but it was all postponed due to an unwanted visitor named IKE!

But a couple of fun things we have gotten to do in the last week...

Michael came in second place in a speech contest they had with the youth and Scouts at the church. His assigned speech to present was a passionate anti-slavery speech by Frederick Douglass. He did a great job!



I also got the chance to play in our yearly women's Volleyball Tournament with my friends last Saturday. A group of us try to get together each week and play and this was a chance to show off our skills. We always have a lot of fun together, whether it's playing volleyball, basketball or going for ice cream when we don't have enough people show up to play. Good times!

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

After dinner tonight we decided it would be fun to take advantage of some of the crazy wind we have had today & go fly some kites at the park for FHE. The wind went in stages of being really strong, to really still, and then minutes later, picking up again. It made for some interesting kite patterns. It was fun for everyone to send the kites soaring high in the air. Some of the kites were flying so high, I couldn't get a picture of the kid and the kite together. Good times!

TREVOR AND HAYLEY RUNNING WITH THEIR KITES...GREAT EXERCISE!

TREVOR SENDING HIS KITE SOARING IN THE AIR (YOU CAN ALSO SEE HAYLEY'S KITE FLYING HIGH TOO!)

JAKE FLYING HIS KITE...HE MISSED THE TREES BUT DID GET THE LINE TANGLED ON THE BASEBALL BACKSTOP. BUT THE WIND PICKED UP AND WE GOT IT OFF WITH NO PROBLEMS!

DON TRYING HIS HAND AT FLYING MICHAEL'S KITE

HAYLEY HOLDING THE KITE BEFORE TAKE-OFF!