A SHORT UPDATE

The Guffey Family is A-Okay,
Let me tell you how they spend their day.
Jason is off to work on construction
While Shiloh is busy with school instruction.
Emily, Jonas & Adrianna, you see
Love Math and English and Geography.
Preston, Adam and our Lydia girl
Keep the house in a constant whirl
With games and messes, and art on the wall,
So Shiloh's work hours are never small.
So don't complain when the posts are slow
Just know that this family is on the go.
So now they are sending their love your way
And want you to know, they'll post pictures someday!

Posted by Cindy

P.S. Shiloh's Computer is disabled at the moment (her electrical cord shorted out) She will be back online soon.

Was This Illegal??

Okay.... I got tired of looking at the same thing on Shiloh's blog. Knowing how busy she is, I hacked into (well, is it hacking if she gives you the info?) her blog and changed her background. At least that way I will have something new to look at. :-) Love you Shibaby. Can't wait to see more pictures of the kiddos!! Hope you like the background. If not just tell me and we will try something new. - Mom

Birthdays and Magic Carpets

First of all thank you to Grandma Cindy and Grandpa Darryl for the beautiful birthday dress! My camera accidentally got left in the van at the baptism so I'm waiting on a cd of the pictures that were taken so I can download them onto my computer and here of course.

The Magic Carpet

I figure that when my kids grow up they are going to blame us for any of the quirkiness in their lives whether it's actually our fault as parents or not. So I believe I need to do something at least once in a while so they will have something really bizarre to look back on and realize the rest of the time we were pretty normal.
I was standing in the front room this morning when I noticed the rug by the front door was turned back. As I went to fix it the tag caught my eye because in big bold letters was the word "Magic". Having very recently watched the movie "Aladdin" I had a little laugh to myself and when I went back into the kitchen where the kids were I commented casually that we had a magic carpet. Of course the kids latched onto that.
"Really?!"
"Where is it?"
I told them it was right in front of the door. They raced to the front room then just stopped and stared at it for a moment.
"Mom, that's just a rug," one of the older ones complained.
"Yes, but did you read the back?" I asked. Suddenly from amid a flurry of activity came a voice full of awe.
"It says 'magic'! right there look!"
That exclamation was followed by shouts and squeals of wonder. Then the question that, for some reason, I had not anticipated.
"Can we fly it, Mom?"
I can only say that I have been a mother for a while now because the answer came without me even thinking about it.
"Sure, just not in the house." So the troops ran out to the driveway carrying the carpet. As they piled on as many as they could they began to wonder how to make it fly.
I think Jonas was remembering a scene from Harry Potter because the first the he said was
"I think you have to say 'up'," so immediately a chorus of "UP! UP! up?" filled the air.
Then they thought maybe it needed a jump start so they took it to the trampoline. There they took turns sitting on it while the others jumped trying to get it airborne so it would fly. By this point I was on the phone with my mother giving her a play by play and laughing hysterically. The kids were starting to lose steam asking my why it wouldn't fly. I told them I didn't know, when my mother laughing in my ear said maybe they haven't said the magic word. Of course I had to repeat that outloud and that set them off again. I let them go at it, guessing magic words, as I walked back inside. After a minute Jonas came running in saying he needed paper and a pencil because they thought they found the magic words on tag. Now the tag is written in English, French and Spanish so I'm sure some of those unfamiliar words probably do look magic to them.
I finally called them in for lunch and we went about the rest of our day, but the carpet was far from forgotten. During lunch they had left it out on the trampoline and when a bird flew past the sliding glass doors Emily saw the movement from the corner of her eye and jumped up yelling that she'd just seen the carpet fly past. By the time they got outside though it was still again. After that I told them maybe we should keep it inside just to make sure it didn't fly off. Jonas resorted to throwing a glass of water on it to try and wake it up. And later when I went up stairs I found several of the children sitting on it at the top of the stairs saying they were going to try and fly down the stairs.
Somewhere during all of this they decided they needed capes too, so the older four were all wearing their baby quilts tied around their necks. It was during that time period that Adrianna brought Adam downstairs. They were followed by the carpet. When she had bent downto pick up Adam, Jonas had been messing with the carpet and it fell on her cape so when she went down the stairs it was dragged with her. Of course she is convinced it was following her.
They have now come to the conclusion that the carpet is like some of the animals from Narnia, (note the book Prince Caspian) it has been treated like a regular rug so long it doesn't remember it's a magic carpet. So now they are on a quest to help it remember.

Christmas of Course

Christmas at our house was wonderful! This was the first time in our 10 years of being married that Jason and I have spent the entire Christmas day with just our little family in our own home. It was absolutely fantastic. It was so relaxing! Which is what we needed after being up till 4:30 a.m. doing all the Santa stuff and finishing our projects (which got mostly finished). This is our Christmas tree with all of the presents before the carnage began. Notice all the Morrocan poofs. The kids now have their own favorite seats for movie watching.

Before we had our traditonal reading of the Christmas story from Luke 2, we talked about symbols of Christmas and what they mean and how we remember and celebrate the holiday.

I can't post all the pictures of the kids presents but here are a few highlights. The girls with the dollhouse we made them. Although we got it mostly finished we obviously didn't get it painted. The girls don't mind though, of course I did promise them they get to help with the interior decorating. They are excited to decorate the rooms especially the ones for the "High School musical" barbies they have. Thanks Cali, Trav and Gideon. They love them!
Jonas got one of his favorite presents from Grandpa Darryl. Here is his "Indiana Jonas" bag, it is awesome! He put it on as soon as he got it and only took it off to bathe. He even wore it to eat christmas dinner. It now carries all of his treasures including marbles, IndianaJones action figures, travel sized battleship, his "Junior Special Agent FBI" badge, a bug vaccuum, and of course his toy gun which looks very similar to Indy's.

The boys also got swords that dad carved. I was skeptical at first, but he made them big enough they have to use two hand to lift them so they can't exactly swing them around, they are just fun to have.

Lydia and Adam also got something mom and dad made. They got rocking horses. The neat thing about them is that we made the pattern from a rocking horse Jason's great-great-grandpa made for Jason's mom when she was little. That rocking horse made it through her, all her kids and now the grandkids so we figured it was a pretty tried and true design. They got finished, although like the dollhouse they need a coat of paint or at least stained and varnished.

Another of the cool homemade presents was a monster truck track that Jonas made for Preston. He designed and built it himself with only a little help from mom and dad. He used the brad-nailer and built ramps and jumps, glued log piles, cars to crush, rocks, the dirt track, grass and even a water hazzard in it. It got played with all day long! Luckily Preston got some new monster trucks from Santa.

We have been abundantly blessed this year and are grateful for all we have been able to do and the blessings wer have recieved. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

They said I had to put a picture of me on here. I was taking all the pictures so this is the only one of me all day. And no I'm not going bald the hat is just weird.

The blowout

I know I don't post pictures very often, but here is one I took this morning. Lydia and Adam in the tub. Of course they needed a bath after I let my 2 yr old feed my 1 yr old oatmeal for breakfast!

Tuesday evening we were in the van heading to Jason's office to pick up a notebook for him. We had just gotten on the interstate when I noticed something was wrong with my van. Since I was in the left hand lane I made my way over to the far right lane and could tell I had a flat tire. By the time I reached the shoulder and came to a stop I was in the middle of an overpass with 4 lanes of traffic blowing by. I jumped out, saw that my back tire on the passenger side was completely shredded and immediately began calling for help. While it is true that I am a pretty handy person and a do it yourselfer, there were a couple problems here: #1 I had a van full of kids, #2 I have never changed a tire on this van and didn't even know how to get the spare down & #3 It was getting dark. Thankfully a super nice brother from our ward (who just happens to be a truck driver) came and saved the day (& us). I helped him change the tire, so now I am ready to take on any future blowouts. Well almost - I have to replace my spare first.

Just so you realize this was more then a flat I took a picture of the tire (& odie!)

Here is a picture of the all of us.

This is what I found when I got out to look!

Halloween and Home

Ok, so we got one single solitary picture of us at halloween. Emily is some kind of woodland princess, Jonas is "Indiana Jonas", Preston is his sidekick "Short-round", Adrianna is a kittycat princess, Lydia is a Moroccan Princess, Adam is a giraffe, Mom is the Moroccan queen and Dad was just dad handing out candy. We had a great time, our neighborhood really gets into the halloween stuff, so we have more candy than we know what to do with. We always put everyone's candy together in a big bowl so everybody can enjoy it. It took my largest stock pot to contain it this year. Luckily though I can put the lid on it and put it up when I want it away from little hands.

I am also going to show off the shelves in my "school room". For those of you who don't know, we have a five bedroom house. Three for the kids, one for Jason and I, and now one room for school. It's still a work in progress and I took this picture while we were still moving stuff in, so it's a little messy, but you get the idea.

Oh one more cute story. I was trying to get the kids to take baths one morning before school. Everyone else was done and only Jonas was left. He had been reading in the school roon for quite a while and I finally had to go in to try and force him out to take a shower. What I saw was him sitting on the floor with and illustrated book of the Old Testament on his lap and a group of toys in front of him. His excuse for not coming when I'd called him was "But mom I'm teaching Sunday school". As much as I wanted to say "Aww! You-are-so-adorable-and-that-is-the-cutest-thing-ever!" I smiled and said "I am so glad you are and I will let you keep teaching as soon as you are cleaned up because you know that Heavenly Father does not like unclean things." He gave me the look that said "I don't really think this is what He meant." But fortunately he didn't argue the point. So Here are pictures of his "text" and his class.

School projects

I know you are all shocked by the fact that I am posting again within a week of my last post and not a month, however fact is sometimes much stranger than fiction. On that note allow me to share some of the more interesting parts of our school days.

Emily had to read an article and a poem recently on the Plains Indians and the buffalo. She was supposed to write two reasons why there are fewer buffalo today than in the 1800's. Her answer was in big bold capital letters "THEY ARE DEAD" and if she knew what it meant I'm sure she would have added "DUH" to that. Ah, the attitude of a seven year old and the obvious stupidity of adults asking the questions. I just busted out laughing and had to call Jason at work with that answer.

We have gotten to do some fun things like our latest project. Jonas has been studying ancient Egypt and got to learn to write using hieroglyphs. The symbols originally stood for words, but then evolved into standing for sounds so there is a kind of modified alphabet he used. We made some "clay" that he carved names into, his own of course then mom, dad and Bobo. (Sorry "Grandpa Darryl" was a little too long for him). Of course all the other kids had to get in on the action too, so I took some pictures. Enjoy!