Slackers...

Yes, we have been slacking on the blogging for a few weeks. But we do have some clever excuses. First, last Monday we hosted an evening of hot-tubbing for Katelyn Baird's 3rd birthday, sooooo we considered the family party our FHE for last week. We would have updated after that, but we were also busy with Easter (and I spoke in church Easter Sunday), egg hunts, soccer games (Danny coaches Macie's pre-K team on Thursdays and Saturdays), Eagle courts of honor, baptisms, an 100-mile bike ride through Moab (go Danny!), the Republican caucus and training (I ran our caucus, and I'm the precinct chair once again), work trips (Danny flew to Denver & Houston to seal some deals), book club (I hosted a very yummy dinner party at our house -- while Danny was gone!), more church talks (Danny taught the combined adults & youth on Sunday), a visit from Amy and David (now living in Logan), a new calling (Danny is now the Young Men's President), and just the general busyness of everyday life! It's amazing how much stuff can happen in just a few short weeks! Here are the photos documenting all of the fun we've had:







And for this week's FHE installment:
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
DAVIS: Has successfully boycotted naps for one whole week (this is not a happy accomplishment for me, but Davis seems quite pleased with himself.). I think he is getting new teeth.
REID: He turned three! (old news, but still his favorite news.) He played basketball and soccer with his new hoop and goal!
MACIE: Created a beautiful book at preschool that describes her five senses. She gave lots and lots of her Easter eggs away to little kids that didn't find many. (I was really proud of her!)
ME: Hosted a delicious book club, hosted a great Republican caucus, and was elected Precinct chair and delegate again. Gave a good church talk.
DANNY: Plans to partner his huge Twilight oil deal with Fidelity. Sold another 7 1/2% of the Keystone oil deal! Rode his bike 100 miles through Moab! Traveled to Houston and Denver. Called as Young Men's President. Gave a wonderful combined lesson.

(President Eyring Gratitude Moment)
*One of the highlights of the past two weeks was arriving home from Las Vegas and finding that our favorite neighbors, the Judkins, had taken all of our remodeling garbage to the dump for us! Whoo-hoo! We love them and are grateful for the friendship they've given our family!

Quote of the Week: (From Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin's talk, "The Great Commandment")
"The most cherished and sacred moments of our lives are those filled with the spirit of love. The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. . . . consider your sacred duty to teach others to love the Lord and their fellowman. This is the central object of our existence. Without charity—or the pure love of Christ—whatever else we accomplish matters little. With it, all else becomes vibrant and alive."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY REID!

Today was Reid's third birthday (and Grandpa "Pops" Reid's birthday too!) and we celebrated with a fun-filled day at Churck-E-cheese, playing with LOTS of PRESENTS, eating hot dogs/mac-n-cheese/hamburgers/brownies, and hot-tubbing. Who could ask for more? Grams and Grampy made sure the day was lots of fun, and Aunt Katie and Uncle Tyler were wonderful, as always. Hooray for Reidy-boy! We sure love him and are glad that he came to our family three years ago!

Proud to be three -- he's been showing everyone this number for months!

His new "run bike" -- seems pretty cool, if you ask me. Since he is still too shrimpy for a normal 12" model, I went the scandanavian route and got him one of the pedal-less bikes. I learned all about them on Sesame Street, where Grover's friend from Norway seemed to really like hers. :) We'll see if Reid can really get the hang of it...

Intensely playing at Chuck-E-Cheese

Check out this attitude, when I tell him to smile for the camera. He's just like his Daddy...

Macie loved the pink slide. She's all girl!

Checkin' out his super duper deluxe soccer goal from Grammie and Pops. It's just like the one we couldn't drag him away from at the Discovery Gateway!

Of course, this little hoopster loved the new b-ball hoop from Grams and Grampy. He was really bummed that I made him wait until we got home to Provo to open it up.
What a happy birthday!

If it's not too CHEESY...

Well, the cheesy Davis family strikes again! Last night we all got together and helped my little bro Brian ask a girl to prom in the CHEESIEST way possible. It was hillarious! We all dressed up in costumes and went to Janae's (the sweet girl he asked) house, and when she opened the door we burst in with song and dance. Most of us were dressed Mexicans style -- going with our "latin" theme song -- but we also had a lion, Native American, Jamaican, doctor, and cowboy which were part of an inside joke.
So, Janae opened the door and we danced in, with Ricky Martin playing in the background (courtesy of my Dad's iPod). Tyler and Danny were especially vigorous with the maraca shaking, I was getting down with some serious shimmying, and even Macie and Davis were feelin' the rhythm. When the chorus hit, we all sang "Go! Go! Go! With Brian on a Date! Go! Go! Go! It's gonna be real great! Go! Go! Go! With Brian on a date! Go! Go! Go! Won't keep you out too late!" Then we presented Janae with a bag of beans, hot sauce, and chips which read "Janae, I BEAN thinking you be a HOT date for de prom. If it's not too CORNY, you go wit me, OK?"
Hopefully she won't think it's too corny, or cheesy, and she'll answer with a creative "YES!"
Here we are, "CHEESING" it up for the camera in Grams and Grampy's pool, as we celebrated Tyler's birthday earlier in the day, and before our "CHEESY" dance number.










Our FHE installment for tonight will be short and sweet, since I've already updated the blog two other times today. We had our Gunnell family FHE yesterday, anyway, since Danny is back in Utah for his 100 mile Moab bike ride and the kids and I are here until Thursday.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
DAVIS - Gladys Knight said he has great lungs and he looks sharp. See previous blog.
REID - Made it through the whole car ride to Las Vegas without crying or whining once. A huge hip-hip-hooray for that one!
MACIE - Also made the drive without whining. Passed off two new books in one week (her pre-school reading assignments. We are so proud of our little smarty-pants!).
ME - Packed the family and got us all ready to leave Provo at a reasonable hour. Prepared fun activities for each day of "EASTER WEEK" -- so that the kids can celebrate the last week of Christ's life.
DANNY - Sold another 7.5% of Keystone! (Whoo-hoo! I'm really celebrating this, since we had a lot of our own money invested in that one!) Mowed Grams and Grampy's lawn. Saw his first ever Las Vegas show!

We discussed President Boyd K. Packer's talk, The Weak and Simple of the Church. The kids really seemed to like it, especially when I related the writings of Paul (when he speaks of the body, asking which parts are the most important). We had lots of fave quotes, but the one we choose to publish is "In the service of the Lord, it is not where you serve but how." Hope you enjoy it too!

Future American Idol???

I'm just letting you all know, way in advance here, that we may have an American Idol on our hands. Yep, you guessed it, at the young age of 10 months, our little Davis was discovered by Gladys Knight. You see, she lives in my parents stake, and she was at church with us yesterday. I'm not sure exactly why, but she was in their ward, sitting 2 rows behind me in sacrament meeting and making lots of comments in Relief Society. Naturally, Davis was aware of her star presence and felt inspired to make his star talent known. So, all during Relief Society he proceeded to yell quite loudly so that she might sense his talent potential. After a while of yelling, I felt that it was time to take him into the rest room to change his diaper and give the judges a break (after all, they don't like it if you are TOO pushy in your audition. Let them see what you've got, and leave it at that. None of this 2 or 3 song business...). Anyhow, Gladys decided to join me in the rest room and just happened to say that Davis had "great lungs." I'm sure that she meant that he has a future of vocal stardom, and not just that he is an obnoxiously loud baby. I could tell this because of the inflection in her voice as she said that he had "great lungs," and also by her later comment that he "looked sharp." We all know that appearance IS a HUGE factor in the American Idol competition. So, now that he is destined for greatness, I just thought I would let you all know. And, by the way, I think Gladys Knight is a SUPER NICE lady. :)
Here is a little video clip of Davis squaking after church. Enjoy!

True Blue, Through and Through...

So, we came down to Las Vegas for the MWC Basketball Tournament (Naturally. After all, I married the biggest BYU fan EVER!), and we had a blast the first two games cheering for the good ol' cougs. My sister Katie and bro-in-law Tyler came and cheered with us for the first game against Colorado, and then my parents joined us in cheering for the San Diego State and UNLV games. Our third game against UNLV was a rough one, and I can't say that I didn't leave the Thomas & Mack without hard feelings. Those UNLV fans are RUDE. Extremely. But what can you do? I hope we bury them next year. Kill them. Make them wish they had never seen a basketball. If you can't tell, I am still feeling a little bitter. :)

Anyway... Tyler arranged things for us so that BYU blue wasn't our only "blue" Vegas experience. He hired us for a night to work for the wedding chapel ("The Little Chapel of the Flowers" -- he is co-owner of this super cool little business right on Las Vegas Blvd. He and Katie are actually living there right now!) so that we could join with them in attending "The Blue Man Group" on Thursday night (Unfortunately, he had to fire us Donald Trump style after the show was over...). It was Danny's first Vegas show, and he really enjoyed it. Katie and I had both been before, but we found it as entertaining (and as odd and unusual) as ever. :) Before the show we had a chance to visit Madame Tussad's (at the Venetian) -- the super coolest wax museum on the planet. Seriously. Very very cool. I'd wanted to go before, but it is outrageously expensive. Props to Tyler for scoring us some free tickets! Here we are hob-nobbing with all of our new famous friends.

Danny and the blue men


Katie is interviewed by Oprah


Ben Affleck and Tyler play poker

I'm hangin' out with Tupac

I gave Tiger Woods some golf advice (I am quite good, you know...)

Danny thought the lie was different

Smile with the strange blue man

Family Fun

So, here is our first little FHE installment...


Little Reid, our hard-worker out in the garden. Nice boots. :)
Pizza-faced Macie and Reid show how much they enjoyed their dinner tonight!

GUNNELL FAMILY ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Davis - His top teeth are growing closer together, so he looks less like a hippo. Hooray!

Reid - He went to the store! Hooray! (We went birthday shopping for his big #3 at Toys-R-Us today. He is still too small for the smallest bike. Poor little shrimpy boy. But he did like the scooters, nerf guns, legos, Diego computer game, automated baseball pitcher, basketball hoop, and cash register -- so I think we'll be able to think of another good present for him.)

Macie - She made a snake at preschool (expert scizzor-cutting skills required). Hooray! And she recovered from Strep throat (as did Reid).

Mary - Almost finished painting the Manti temple for Grammie (Danny's mom). Prepped the garden for carrots (which I will plant tomorrow, hopefully!). Did a stellar job taking care of kids with Strep. Hooray -- double hooray that they are better!

Danny - Hired a CFO for Liberty Pioneer. Rototilled the garden (a huge Hooray for that one!). Took the scouts on an awesome campout this weekend (if you call staying at a cabin in Midway a "campout"). And, researched and purchased a state-of-the-art security system for our home! Now (hopefully) people will stop robbing us! Hooray!

And the lesson for the night was on Elder Enrique R. Falabella's talk, "Why Are We Members of the Only True Church?" The quote for the week is:

"...we headed down an avenue at the end of which we could see the house of the Lord, gleaming and beautiful. I remember the joy which filled our hearts; we all broke out in songs and praising, and tears ran down the cheeks of many Saints.
Later in the temple, we knelt as a family to hear the beautiful promises about an eternal family, with the certainty that our mother, though absent, was now our mother forever, and we felt the peace which comes from knowing that we are an eternal family."

We loved many things about this talk, but as we studied it again tonight, Danny and I both remembered how touched we were during conference when Elder Falabella spoke of this temple experience and the eternal blessings we've been given! We love this family and we love this gospel!

FHE FUN

So, our latest and greatest FHE activity has been reading a conference talk each week and trying to apply it to our lives. Danny and I used to do this when we didn't have any kids, but once Macie entered the picture we fell off the Conference-for-FHE-bandwagon (our little kids + long conference talks = disaster). Most of our family home evenings with the kids have consisted of MANY MANY songs, a VERY SHORT lesson (usually a picture from the gospel art kit, or a story from The Friend magazine), and ACCOMPLISHMENTS (to be discussed later in this blog).
Well, just before President Hinckley died, one of my friends from book club (thanks, Clarinne!) asked all of us if we knew what President Hinckley had asked us to do during the last conference. I realized that I didn't know, and made a silent goal to find out the next day. What I read (President Hinckley's last conference admonition) was this: "We encourage you again to read the talks in your family home evenings and discuss them together as families." So, the very next FHE we started! And (a little surprisingly) it's been easier and more enjoyable that I thought it would be. No more kids + conference = disaster!
Well, a couple of weeks ago we read President Eyring's talk, the one where he had the prompting "I'm not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down." And we talked about keeping a family journal (ie -- our blog) to record the special things that were happening in our lives. So, here's our first real attempt at our "weekly" journaling. Here's our format for these FHE entries:
1- list our ACCOMPLISHMENTS for the week: we each take a turn to share with the family the best/most exciting/most rewarding/amazing things that have happened to us during the week. Just to warn you ahead of time, Reid always says that his weekly accomplishment was "I played fun games."
2- list our favorite quote from the conference talk we studied that week.
3- list any other fun stories or going-ons in the Gunnell family.
How's that for a star-studded line-up? We'll start tomorrow. Ka-chow!

And, in case you were wondering, our favorite quote from President Eyring's talk "O Remember, Remember" was:
"As I would cast my mind over the day, I would see evidence of what God had done for one of us that I had not recognized in the busy moments of the day. As that happened, and it happened often, I realized that trying to remember had allowed God to show me what He had done."

My Little Bookworms

So, my kids are like me and they love to read (I am a SERIOUS bibliophile). Every night at bedtime we have a routine straight out of the pages of OLIVIA:

Macie: Mommy, how many books can we read tonight?

Me: Two.

Macie: No, Mommy. Five!

Reid: Five!

Me: No. It's already past your bedtime. Just 2.

Reid: Two!

Macie: Mommy, please five. Five short ones?

Reid: Five!

Me: Alright. Three. But that's it!

Macie: Whoo-hoo! Three books!

Reid: Whoo-hoo! Three books!

Anyway, the only thing they love more than reading books is making messes with books (naturally). So, I wasn't too surprised when I came into the boys' room this morning and found Davis reveling in the same activity that his siblings have found so much pleasure in. There is nothing quite as fun as taking all of the books out of the bookcase and making a huge messy pile of them!

"Daddy, I need a quarter ...

...to fix my puter."

So... as I said in my last blog, our computer has been broken for a while. We lost the internet, the desktop froze, and finally the DVD-R broke down. Well, after leaving it at the shop for a few weeks (they said it would just be 48 hours... yeah, right) we brought it home and found that the DVD drive still didn't work. I tried everything to pry it open, but even an expert paper-clipper like myself could not get it to pop. Finally, we decided to just buy a new DVD drive and have Danny's brother Brad install it (Brad is much smarter than we are when it comes to things like that... well, actually, he is much smarter than us when it comes to just about everything...). Anyway, Brad was taking the old DVD-R out of the computer while Danny and I were watching his brillance, and Reid was playing on his "kids computer" (my old desktop from BYU). Just as Brad removed the drive, shook it and said "I think I know what the problem was..." (change started falling out of the drive -- mostly quarters) , Reid ran up to Danny and said, "Daddy, I need a quarter to fix my puter. It's broken!" Ah-hah! Apparantly, Reid thought that our computer worked like the games at Chuck-E-Cheese (his favorite place in the whole world), and he'd been inserting quarters to get the "puter" games to work. After we had a little lesson on "Never, never, never put money into our computer, ever," we are hoping that we won't have any more problems. Reid is actually an incredibly smart little guy, despite putting money into the computer. He figured out our TV system all on his own (we have 3 remotes, and we've never taught him how to use them), and we often find him sneaking downstairs to put on a DVD all by himself.

Christmas, New Year's, Valentines ...

CANCUN - (Davis, the beach bum, Danny and I snorkel)

CHRISTMAS- (Davis + Grams, Macie, the fam...)

JANUARY - Skiing at Sundance and Temple Square lights

NEW YEAR'S PARTY (Steph + Will, Reidy-boy, All of us!)

CHINESE NEW YEAR - Melissa visiting, whoo-hoo!

VALENTINE'S DAY (Aren't those kids cute!)

OK. So....it's been a million, trillion years since we've updated our blog. I know, I know, I know -- I'm a slacker. I do have some good excuses (1- our office was hit by a nuclear bomb during our basement remodel (Really. Didn't you see the newsflash about the N-bomb in west Provo?), and it was hazardous to my health to enter the room and attempt to use the computer. 2- Reid thought our computer was a pinball machine like the ones at Chuck-E-Cheese and broke it by inserting TONS OF QUARTERS (true story -- see above blog). 3- We had so much happen this winter that I felt I needed to chronicle it all on the blog, and I became so overwhelmed that I imploded (OK, I didn't really implode, or I couldn't write this now, could I? But I almost did. ;) ) Anyway... here we are now, back in the world of blogging, and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with life and still have time to see what's going on in the lives of all our friends and family.
Since actually writing about everything that has happened this winter will take entirely too long and be entirely inadequate (see excuse #3 - I don't want to implode, after all) I am just going to include a lot of pictures and hope that you enjoy them. Hopefully future blogs will be frequent enough to actually include explanations of what wonderful things are going on in our little family. (keep your fingers crossed. I'm way out of blogging practice...) Anyway, here are some photos of Cancun in Novmeber, snowmen with Daddy, Christmas Day with the Davis's, Temple Square with Steph and Will, Chinese New Year's with Melissa, skiing at Sundance, and Valentines Day. We've had such a fun winter, and are grateful for all of the wonderful memories we've made!

Sweet Sarah

So.... I didn't update the blog yesterday, like I was planning on, because my sister Katie had her baby early and we spent the morning and part of the evening being visitors to the hospital! Baby Sarah is adorable, and super tiny. Macie can't get enough of holding her, so Danny keeps asking me if I'm ready for another one. Well, she is super sweet... but, I think three is all I'm ready to handle just now. I'll let you know when I'm ready to tackle 4!:)
Here is the link to their blog -- our pictures are posted there as her first visitors!
http://www.footefam.blogspot.com

Santas getting in shape?

I HAD TO post these pictures of my parents and little brother running in the million-santa run in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. It's hillarious. I guess they get as many runners as they can to dress up like Santa Claus and raise money for charity while they simultaniously get in the Guiness Book of World Records. I'm not really sure how it works, but if you want to know I'll ask my mom for you. Anyway, my brother did a feature on it for broadcast class, so my mom and dad helped him out by running with him and being willing interview-ees. Hope the pics get you in the holiday mood! :)

Double Take

Hey everyone ... I'm famous! (well, not really, of course). I posed as a missionary model for some of our friends whose daughter comes home from Germany today! Whoo-hoo! Anyway, they did a spoof of her coming home early, and I'm her "look-alike". Check it out at
http://maglebymissionaries.blogspot.com
And, sorry that it has taken me forever to get some new blogs up here. Plan on getting the complete Gunnell family update on Monday morning. Ta-ta for now...