More Christmas Fun

Christmas Season 2007 & Case of the Missing Lights

Wintertime in Utah is great as always. Yesterday we all got bundled up in our snow clothes and played in the yard. These snowmen were the result of that carefree frivolity.

Christmas Tree 2007 minus half of it's lights.


The culprit for the missing lights.



Evidence found against the culprit.

We've Been Elfed!

Go on! Check us out. Just click the links below. We had to do two because, frankly, our gargantuan family wouldn't fit on just one. Merry Christmas!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1270939737
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1269875488

Liza Does it Again

I just had to add this one that Eliza said last night. Over the years James and I have acquired the friendship of many international folks and consequently seem to be eating lots of cultural foods. Costa Rican, Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Malian, Haitian and so on and so forth. Well, the other night we were having a Korean meal for dinner. Since we are never quite sure what the kids will like as far as international food goes, we made them a tamer version of the dish. James and I were eating Kimchi Chigae with seaweed and tofu, and the kids had rice with chicken sauce. They all gobbled their food up and pretty soon were asking for seconds. Eliza announced very matter-of-factly, "I just want plain rice...and seaweed!" Now all you parents out there, how often do you hear that from a child? Sure enough Liza ate every last bite of her plain rice and seaweed. Kids say the darndest things and I think that my blog might be just the place to record such sayings. Look forward to more friends. Ta ta!

Eliza

I have a funny little child. Her name is Eliza. Eliza is funny in lots of cute little ways but one of the things that I love the most is her funny way of saying things. Today she came in from playing in the snow and took off her coat to hang it up. She then came up to me a bit frustrated and said, "Mom, a junk of snow just creeped out of my coat and it's on the floor!" I looked down and sure enough, a junk (not to be confused with chunk) of snow had creeped right out of Eliza's coat and fallen on the floor. Rock-on Eliza.

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was great this year. I don't have any pictures to show for it but it was really a nice one. We ate at James' brother Kevin's house and I think one of the things that made it so nice was that we set up tables and fed all of the kids while Kevin told them the history of Thanksgiving and then we sang them a song. When they were all done we cleared everything away, sent the kids upstairs to play and all of the adults had a nice quiet Thanksgiving dinner. It worked out perfect. Then after dinner we played games and did a humanitarian project. Fun fun fun! For those of you that weren't there you really missed out. In addition, we had a sixteen year old student from Mali, West Africa staying with us for the week. Her name is Mariam and she goes to a boarding school down in Mount Pleasant, Utah. Mali is an extremely poor country and so she is very privileged to have the opportunity to come to school in the states. It was really fun to have her stay with us. She is a very sweet girl and was so helpful and easygoing. We took her to the play "Savior of the World" up in Salt Lake, she liked it but I think that she was more excited about getting a copy of her very own Book of Mormon in French which she had read a signifigant amount into the first night she got it. Mariam is Muslim but she was really eager to learn about Christ and about the LDS faith. She kept flipping through our children's storybooks and picking out the ones about Jesus to read. She is just learning English so the kids books were a good level for her. We showed her "Finding Faith in Christ" in French and after that she kept asking for more movies about Christ, preferably in French so that she could understand them better. She watched all of our movies of Christ and we talked quite a bit with her about our faith. We also let her know she could have missionaries come and teach her if she wanted. We hope that she continues to have interest. The whole idea of religion was quite foreign to her. She was Muslim by birth but did not know much about it, or any other faith. It was funny to realize how much our faith is incorporated in our everyday lives. It seemed like we were always praying, something she had not done. It was cool. Anyway, ta ta.

HALLOWEEN!

Okay folks. Here's the promised festive photo's. Aren't they cute? You can pretty much tell what each of them are except for Liza and Maillie, they are mermaids. Halloween was quite fun as usual. We had a fun family day and ended up being late to our wards trick-or-treat at the church. Yes, I did say TRICK-or-treat. I am boycotting the term TRUNK-or-treat because frankly it sounds stupid and untraditional and I love Halloween, and though I resited change at first, I do actually like the safety and fun of trunk-or-treat, I just hate the name. So in my vocabulary, it's the ward trick-or-treat. Last year it was goulishly fun with tons of people, doughnuts, a fire blazing, and a movie playing on an outside big screen t.v. People stayed late. This year it started at 6:30ish and we arrived at 7:15, and everyone was heading home. Wierd. So we tricked and treated the old traditional way, going only to homes that we knew. It was fun. So, Happy belated Halloween! Ta ta.

Oh Thou Devoted Following

O.K. O.K. Many of you have proved your loyalty. Enough for it to be worth it to me to continue blogging. So, be excited because the next blog will delight your fashion senses and tickle your festive funny bone. Hopefully I will get to it soon but if not then the suspense will be fun for you. Ta Ta!

You're All Under the Microscope...or Somthing

O.k. everyone, I love blogging, love it. But I wonder, is it worth it? Because, if I am the only viewer that would be quite lame. You will all be the deciding factor. I am conducting an experiment on you. I just don't know if anyone actually looks at my blog, so basically I don't know if I am doing it all for naught. So, your part in the experiment is easy. If you read this message (which means that you have actually viewed my blog) then please comment on this message and say, "Hey! I looked at your blog". Or maybe you could say, "Howdy, Howdy, Howdy" and then sign your name. What ever frosts your cookie. Just make sure I know that you've viewed. If the percentages are high then you will all be graced with future blogs from me. If not...then, well, we'll see. Ta Ta.

Picture Us Here

All right friends, I am breaking the news to those of you who haven't heard. I never ever, ever, ever thought that I would be saying this any time soon but can you picture us here? Because we are going to Italy! We won't be going until June '09 but hey, were going! This little development all came about due to James' board position with Mali Rising Foundation. Mali Rising builds schools in Mali West Africa and James became a board member through his affiliation with Daily Dose and friendship with Executive Director Yeah Samake. So anyway, your probably wondering how this all turned into a dream trip to Italy. Every year the foundation has a fundraiser dinner auction. Well, not long ago James enlisted one of our good friends to become a board member as well and consequently they attended the dinner with us.

Anyway, the auction got pretty exciting this year because they had some really great stuff to auction off, one of which was a 7 day trip to Italy staying at a converted convent in Umbria Italy. If you can believe it this is actually where we will be staying. It is called Levigne (levigne.net if you want to check it out) and it is a old convent that sits on 15 acres of olive groves. We will be the only guests on the premises and will have our use of the pool, bocce and tennis courts, gardens, and Italian cooks. Umbria is located in central Italy not far from Rome, Tuscany, Pisa and all kinds of other amazing places.

So anyway, James and I usually purchase some artwork to support the foundation and had already done so in the auction. James was up front assisting the auction when they began auctioning the Levigne trip. The bidding started pretty high. It got lower and lower and lower and surprisingly no one was bidding. That's when in the heat of the moment our friend's hand shot up and we all gasped. He'd done the math quickly in his head and realized that it was the deal of a lifetime for this kind of trip. He won the trip and yelled to James, "You wanna go to Italy!" You can probably figure out what James said. Luckily the company gave us oodles of time in which to use the trip package, so we decided we would take it in June of 2009. That will give us plenty of time to save and dream. Ciao!

My Best Friend's Wedding

One of my very best friends just got married on October 22nd in the Salt Lake Temple. It was such a fun day. And for some reason it was all just really exciting and very impressive to me. The Spirit was definatley present for these two. I hope it was as fun of a day for them as it was for us. The sealer gave the best advice and the ceremony was beautiful. These two are a match made in Heaven. And I am so happy for them I could just eat them up.

The Beautiful Bride

Her Handsome Groom...wait a minute, hmm

Well, Tray thinks he's handsome anyway...wink wink.

My Lovely's

Love Birds

Aerospace Museum

On the way home from the Baptism we decided to stop at Hill Air force Base to take the kids

to the aerospace museum there, something we'd always wanted to do, but with how often we visit Military Bases we just hadn't gotten around to it. If you pull out your magnifying glass you'll actually find our kids in the picture above.

Baptism Bash

Heather sporting her new retro do along with her fashionably clad belly.

Was there ever a cuter pregnant woman?

Mama Michelle with baby Jarom. It is Jarom right?

Spawn of Arrington minus a couple of babies and Wendy's kids

Arrington Men minus Doug

Ever heard of Where's Waldo?

This is Where's Douglas.

O.k., so here is the "swinging in the trees like apes" thing that I mentioned and the pictures of the Arrington men showing off their manliness.

Motorcycle Mama

Just thought you all should know...I have decided to leave James for another man because he has such a killer bike. O.k. so he's really just my brother-in-law Dan. But the part about the bike is true. It is his bike, and it is pretty killer. Dan gave the whole family rides on his new bike when we were there for his son's baptism. It was a fun day. I always love baptisms. We had a good time just talking and eating and watching the men folk pile upon one another in an attempt to show their manliness, not to mention the swinging in the trees like apes. No...Really.

First Day of School...Again!

Well, here we are having a first day of school...again. Today was Eliza's first day of school and the last of the kids to start this year. Maillie will go to preschool next year on account of us not being millionaires and able to pay the ridiculously high costs for sending our hundreds of children to preschool, and because I want a little mom and me time with Maillie as well. Eliza had a fun day at preschool today and could not stop talking about it. She goes to the Community Preschool just down the street that is actually owned by our local Presbyterian church. Liza is very happy to finally be in school. She has been asking about going to school since she could form the words. Rock on Liza!

Drew's First Day of School!

Well, it was Drew's first day of kindergarten today and he was so cute when I dropped him off. I could tell he was nervous but didn't want to show it. He smiled and found his seat and was just as cute as can be. I did catch him looking around uneasily a few times. I think he'll love it though. Two in school! Liza will go on the fourth.

Jericho Road Groupies

For all of you Jericho Road groupies out there the Arrington kids have something to brag about! James and I along with our kids attend a group called the Genesis Group. It is church organization catering to black or minority members of the church (but anyone is welcome). We go once a month for a program and refreshments. So far it has been a lot of fun and the latest thing that we have done in connection with Genesis is that the kids performed with Jericho Road. One of the members of Jericho Road attends Genesis and invited the children to sing as a choir for their recent benefit concert. All of our kids did it except little Si. The kids sang "This Little Light of Mine" and they were also back up for Jericho Road on "Like a Child". It was really fun and they put on an excellent show along with several other performers which included but was not limited to, break-dancers, some divas from High School Musical 2, Jenny Frogley, Alex Boye (thats Abinidab on David and Goliath for all you Liken fans out there) and my personal favorites for the evening, Jacob Lutrell and the Divine Heritage Choir. The concert was held in connection with Reach the Children and 100% of the money made went straight to children in Africa. Fun fun fun. Anyway, I've included some pictures. Enjoy.