Check this out...Mesa Arizona Temple in Legos!

THE AMAZING LEGO TEMPLE!

Okay, so the stake presidency decided in February of 2008 to have a big ol' Stake Temple Day and really hype it up. It was to take place in November and the stake president requested that each auxillary come up with an idea on how to promote it. The first idea I had was not going to work as it involved attaching things to the ceiling and walls of the primary room, which, apparently, the church building people frown upon...who knew. So, my 2nd counselor brought up the idea that she had used where each kid built a temple out of sugar cubes. I loved the idea, but thought that (1) that's gonna be A LOT of sugar cubes and (2) it needed to be GINORMOUS in scale. So I asked my brother, Nate, who goes by LegoNater in some circles, to create a Mesa Temple out of Legos. He honed it over a couple of months and finally we had it! He built it using the Lego Creator program on Lego.com. Once you're done with your model you can upload it to the website and order the kit, complete with instructions and an official Lego box with a picture of the finished project on it. COOOOOOOOL. We ordered one for each ward. Through some divine intervention the Lego people messed up the order (lost it, then found it) and let us have 2 full orders for the price of one. This proved fortuitous because we divided wards and added one ward and needed a second temple kit for two others due to primary size. Whew. Yes, Heavenly Father does take care of things even when you don't know they need to be taken care of.

So once we got the temples I wrote a sharing time called "Building our Testimonies of The Temple." (Clever, eh?) The lesson went over the blessings we receive by attending the temple and asked the kids to name additional blessings. These blessing were then written on the inside of each lego brick or placed on paper and put in the center of the temple which was hollow. Then the kids put the temple together brick by brick while listing the blessings. Then the kids were told to ask their parents to take them to the temple visitors' center on Stake Temple Day. I got to see a couple of the sharing times and the primary presidencies did amazing jobs and made the sharing time way better.

Each ward only got the bricks for the temple, window and door stickers (created on my little ol' computer with PrintMaster and printed out on address labels for easy attachment) and a 10"square green baseplate. The primary presidency then were instructed to decorate the temple however they wanted and then present it to the bishop and have him put it in his office. The stake president asked if we could bump up the schedule for this a week so that the bishop could then show the congregation during sacrament meeting the Sunday before the Stake Temple Day. It was so cool. I put together one using an extra set for the stake president's office. No reason for him to be left out. Here are the pictures. I found the bride and groom, camera man and plants on ebay and at the Lego store in Chandler. I cut the palm fronds out of fun foam. The other temples were great too. Each one different and cool. It was a truly inspired thing and the kids totally loved it.


I send a shout out to by brother, Nate, for his dedication and lego skills. He was just as enthusiastic as I was. And now we may be branching out. In fact, we've been asked, "Where do I get one of those?" so many times that we are seriously looking into creating a couple kits and hawking them on ebay. We think a series of other temples and Book of Mormon events are total possibilities. Lego Liahona anyone?

Kids' Fall Portraits 2008

Each year we take the kids over to Target Portrait Studios for the annual patience testing torture session also known as family photos. This year, however, I decided I was done with that scene. I had seen some photos at people's house done professionally and looked through some online and figured I could do it myself. It looked like it was "eclectic and professional" if the photo was off-centered and slightly blurry. Since I've been taking photos like that my whole life I thought I'd try to do it on purpose. I took the kids out one afternoon after church and played around. I took WAY more than I actually could use, but I'm calling that "portrait profiling" rather than "whoops, why didn't the flash work?" Sounds better, eh? Here are some of the shots. I've only got one each of the kids all photo shopped (b&w, soft focus, cropped etc.) Enjoy my cute, adorable kids. The next step is a family photo, but's it gonna have to wait. Even though we weren't at Target, the annual patience testing torture session happened again...in our backyard. The pictures are cooler, however, so....worth it.

Zachreson Troy Willes, 2

Claire Elyse Willes, 5

Emma Kay Willes, 7

Katherine Ann Willes, 10

What happened? We thought you died....

SORRY! I knew this blog thing was a bad idea. I can't seem to get to the computer ...for the purpose of blogging at least. Like right now, I'm supposed to be doing billing for the law firm I work for. I just updated the family blog with the update Troy wrote yesterday so I thought I'd quickly update my own. I have to make it fast as I have two two-year-old boys "exploring" the house (and garage) right now. Uhg.

As you read in the family update I have a tan. Yes, it's superficial and dangerously unhealthy, but man I look good. I managed to grab a good tan during the kids swim lessons this summer, but it faded much too much during our vacation and early weeks of school. So the past two Saturdays I got to be outside (4 hours one day and 7 1/2 hours the next day) and soak up the rays. I only use SPF 8 as I rarely burn (thank you Scandinavian ancestors) and now have a lovely tan line. And the day was great as well. The whole two days were almost like going to a spa ....if you could ingore the 40 11-yr-old scouts running around, the constant questions from parents and the initial pangs of embarassment and self-consciouness when people in your ward saw you in a swimming suit. Yes, almost like a spa. I did get a few minutes here and there to float in the pool and enjoy the company of the ladies I work with. What a great group of wonderful ladies.

Okay...time's up! The Boys just found water spray bottles and are turning my front room into a rain forest. Stay tuned, but not too often for more!

I'm famous...

About a year ago I responded to a request in the local paper for suggestions to keep kids clutter under control. I sent in some ideas and was contacted by the paper who sent out a reporter to do a story. It turned out the reporter was an old friend of mine from Mesa Community College. We had been on the college newspaper, The Legend, together. I was the copy editor and she was a feature reporter. We had a nice reunion. She lives not 10 minutes from my house. Anyway, the story was featured on the front page of the Arizona Living section of the AZ Republic and had the CUTEST picture of Zach with it. It covered half the page. The cool thing now is I recently "Googled" myself and found that the story has been sold as an AP Wire piece to a ton of other websites for parenting tips and other cities' online newspapers. At last count it was on 7 other websites, beside the one I'm linking for you below. And some of them have different pictures with the article. I wish I could get copies of all the pictures they took that day. Zach was being his cute self....although in hindsight I wish I had dressed him better. Honestly, I thought they'd take a picture of the system we used. I totally forgot all my journalism training of having the human factor in a photo. Oh well, enjoy the article. I'll hopefully be worming my way into another newspaper article soon! ha-ha http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0513toys0514.html

Rachel's in the kitchen...

This is the season of birthdays in my own family and extended family. It starts with Claire on 4/4, my brothers and dad on 4/23,24,27, Zach on 5/15 and my sister on 5/24. I didn't have to do a cake for my brothers and dad but I did create some for the others. I also made 2 dozen brownies in cupcake tins (yes, rather time consuming but per instructions as ordered) for a stake relief society event and a flower made out of 12 frozen rolls covered with cinnamon sugar and icing for for a stake primary event. Yikes. Every weekend for about 6 weeks straight I was baking something else and I gotta admit I'm more of a grilling red meat kind of gal. Bakery Betty...not so much. I am including pictures of them but don't start ordering them online yet. I was so sick of making cakes I didn't even do one for my own birthday celebration two weeks ago.....

This is Claire's Princess cake. I had gotten a new springform pan with a rose top and she picked that one for her Princess themed party. It didn't turn out as good as I envisioned it, but then again it never does.

Zach couldn't decide on the theme for his second birthday party. We wandered up and down the boy birthday aisle at Party City for 30 minutes as he kept saying yes then no then yes. Really all he wanted to do was use the rolls of wrapping paper as bats and whack the toy balls over the aisles. Finally, Claire chose the "Cars" theme over my baseball theme (I know...I was weak) and so I made the appropriate cake. This one did turn out as I thought it would. Not perfect but pretty danged good. Zach was pleased and kept asking to eat his "Go Cake Now." Notice my cheap $1 black plastic table cover made into a road with masking tape. Go ahead. Copy my idea and take the credit. These blogs have dates you know and I can prove authorship!

Now, my sister, Sarah, turned the big 4-0 this year and I couldn't let that one go by. We used all black plastic ware and tablecloths and I covered the door in black as well. I hung little "Older Than Dirt" signs and such around the room and we all wore black. She had requested German Chocolate cake, thinking I wouldn't be able to do anything with it, but HA-HA. With my handy bread knife and a little wooden skewer I made a lovely natural pine (maybe oak) coffin. My handy dandy computer helped out with the headstone. I think she liked it, even though she didn't quite express that sentiment exactly. Oh well....she'll have her turn at revenge next year. Bring it on.

Who knew Rhodes frozen dinner rolls could be so much fun? We made these for our 11-yr-old girls activity for stake primary. This is a picture of the test batch so I could figure out what we were doing and let the ladies know how to make the thing. The Final Product was much prettier and involved a much more delicate artistic touch on the icing. Normally, we just buy a bunch of muffins, but our budget was chopped in half this year so us Frugal Frans put these together for the big day. Don't worry, we still bought a few mini-muffins. Gotta give the people what they want.

Obviously, I'm not so good at this...

So, it's only my second blog. Sorry. Time is non-existent with all the kids home and in my lap all the time. Between swimming, summer rec, home craft time (basic entertaining of kids used to being in school all day) in addition to my normal duties of mothering, cooking, cleaning, church calling and work I am finding little time. I got on the computer today finally after about a week, but it was to complete the billing for the Law Firm I still work for. Sorry all. Now we are getting ready for a ward campout tomorrow night, which Troy is in charge of. We've (I've) still got to go buy stuff for Saturday-Ward-Supplied breakfast tomorrow morning before loading stuff up and waiting for Troy to get home from work. I'm tired just thinking about it. I will have lots of amazing and insightful entries in the future....probably. So don't give up on me yet!

This is my first time. Be kind.

Okay, kiddos. It's 8:09 pm. Troy's at a church meeting (his night of the week, mine's usually Thursday) and the kids are demanding baths, dessert and attention now. The house looks like it imploded and I think I can still smell the diareaha diaper that I just pulled off Zach. My friend, Kary, said that she loves her blog. That it relaxes her. Well, I'm already stressed out just trying to get this entry done. Hmmmm. This does not bode well. I guess if no one is really expecting a whole lot, then I will acheive great success. The glass is half full, my friend, half full.