12 December pics

Hi everyone,
Just wanted to send these pics out before we go up to the internetless
mountains tomorrow. Merry Christmas!!! Love, Alma


Quick description:
At WHO Filipino Christmas festival that the Filipinos put on for the
staff to raise money for typhoon charities. So proud to be filipino
and to see my kids devouring filipino food! Tom practised for several
weeks to sing with the choir, and do the bamboo for two traditional dances.

At Christmas outing to Santa's hamlet.

Kids with escalade (geneva holiday) chocolate.

Asia getting ready for her "spectacle" at school with her classmates.

First day of snow. It took us 40 min to walk home that day instead of
5 b/c kids played all the way.

Getting excited for Xmas at home.

Tom working on his dollhouse for Asia.

Then Christmas eve pictures. Asia showing us her christmas bricolages
from school. Too cute. A pot pourri packet, a candleholder, and xmas
magnets.

Joseph and Mary not sitting still for a second.

Loving their traditional buche de noel!

Two Asia winter stories

Last night Asia was helping me to wrap Christmas presents. She was
excited to write on the gift tags. So I would tell her, "Okay, write
To Papa, From Asia and Evan on this one." Or, "Write to Evan, from
Asia on this one."

When the gifts came back to me, I noticed she wrote the names twice,
Tom Tom and Evan Evan. See the pic attached. I just thought it was
amusing.

Then I started getting tired, so I said quickly, "On this one, write
Evan, From Asia."

And she said, "You mean, TWO Evans, From Asia."

Oh!!! That's why!

The other story is that Tom and Asia had to go to church early on
Sunday for meetings and primary singing rehearsal. So they took the
train. While they hurried to catch it. Tom slipped on the ice, holding
Asia. I heard about the unfortunate experience but didn't hear details
until after the kids were in bed. When I was helping Asia with her
prayers that night, I would say a sentence and she would repeat it. I
said, "Thank you that we didn't get hurt when we slipped on the ice."
And she paused, and looked at me, and said, "Thank you that we didn't
DIE when we slipped on the ice." When I asked Tom about it later, he
told me that when they slipped it was a pretty hard fall. Tom tore his
pants and scraped up his knee and jammed his finger. He was holding
Asia and dropped her so that her glasses flew off and she banged her
head on the ground, so she was crying but luckily okay. I had no idea
it was that bad and only understood Asia's prayer at that point!

Help me win Michael Buble Tickets!

I absolutely LOVE Michael Buble.  If you click on this link and vote for me I can possibly win front row tickets when he comes here in March.  I would love all the help I can get!  You can vote once a day too!  Forward this to people if you want.  Thanks everyone!

http://radiobase1.clearchannel.com/front/Image_Contest.asp?Action=New&ftt=1&SurveyID=47479&zx=294

Love Annie

Evan... product of the Ipod generation

Here's a pic my friend snapped of him while I was trying to keep him

busy during Asia's dance lesson ;)

Alma

Money for Mexican Orphans!!!!

Hello Family!!! It's that time of year again, Thanksgiving time. That time of year when we look at all we've been blessed with and feel the hefty weight of our wallets in our pockets compared to orphans in Mexico that don't even have pockets to hold a wallet, because they don't have pants. I want you to think back to all the charitable nieces and nephews charitably helped rid you of this guilt by giving you opportunities to give during this season of thanksgiving; for example Stockton's basketball thing, and Brikelle's cookbooks. Now its my turn to ask for donations!!! On December 2nd I will be going with a volunteer group called Kaiizen to give Christmas to the 200 children in the El Sauzal Orphanage in Baja California, Mexico. Not only will we be taking the children shopping to buy gifts for each other, but we will also be teaching them classes, doing maintenance work on their school, and community outreach activities in the town. But in order to be able to do this successfully each volunteer is required to fund-raise! So now that my departure is approaching, I'm realizing that I am no where nearer to reaching my required amount to go on this trip, and all my planning will have been wasted! So if anyone wants to help me help orphans there are three ways you can donate!
There's 3 ways you can donate:
1. Go to Kaiizen.org and click donate. If you do this method, please send me a receipt of your donation via email (or via my parents) so I can use your donation towards my required fund-raising money.
2. Write  a personal check to Kaiizen and give it to me
3. Give a cash donation to me or my parents...but make sure they give it to me :)
I'm really excited for this trip, we have a lot of really cool things planned! If anyone would like to make any donations at all please don't hesitate! All money has to be in by Monday, Nov 30th.
I'm also looking for a Christmas Elf costume and wrapping paper donations if anyone has any ideas! Thanks family!

Love,
Ali

Colin Jay

Lucy

Sorry, that last post was from me and it didn't include my name like I thought it would. Lucy and Cory are having a girl.

Guess what we're having?

We're having a...

G-reat
I-ntellectulllness
R-adical
L-oving
B-oisterous
O-neofakind
Y-appy

GIRL! We're so excited!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Us!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween Everyone!
Maren went as Amelia Earhart to work on Fri. and Cory and I carved pumpkins with Cory's cousin Chad and his wife, twas muchos fun!

Some More Salem Pictures

Planting in Salem

We decided to plant the pasture in Salem which will hopefully feed some cows and, later, us. In typical Hiatt fashion, we had to have a bit of danger. In order to get the disk plows to cut into the ground, we needed some weight, so we put some concrete blocks on the top of the disc plows and then some kids on top of the blocks. The rest of us walked in front of the tractor sowing seed with the idea that the disc plow would turn up the soil and bury the seed. It all worked pretty well until Dad had to make a sharp turn and the disc plow hit a large bump. The combination threw the kids off the plow into the path of the discs. Luckily Dan had decided to sit on the plow with the kids and we got the whole operation stopped before anyone got too hurt. Daniel got a couple of stitches in his leg where one of the plows bit him and a very scraped back. We decided to finish with just concrete blocks.

Planting in Salem

We decided to plant the pasture in Salem which will hopefully feed some cows and, later, us. In typical Hiatt fashion, we had to have a bit of danger. In order to get the disk plows to cut into the ground, we needed some weight, so we put some concrete blocks on the top of the disc plows and then some kids on top of the blocks. The rest of us walked in front of the tractor sowing seed with the idea that the disc plow would turn up the soil and bury the seed. It all worked pretty well until Dad had to make a sharp turn and the disc plow hit a large bump. The combination threw the kids off the plow into the path of the discs. Luckily Dan had decided to sit on the plow with the kids and we got the whole operation stopped before anyone got too hurt. Daniel got a couple of stitches in his leg where one of the plows bit him and a very scraped back. We decided to finish with just concrete blocks.

Us too!

We're jumping on the bandwagon with Annie and Michelle and Katy and Lucy (Alma can hold her own on the trombone by the way). Baby number 3 is due here June 3rd. Alma's been feeling a lot better this time compared with the last two. Granted she's got 18 months of experience under her belt (pun intended), but it seems her nausea level, tiredness level, and all things uncomfortable level are lower this time. The third time really is the charm!

We're thrilled!

love,

Alma, Tom, Asia, Evan and The Charm

Tom is 30!

For Tom's big birthday we had a party with family and some friends at my parents' cabin. We had a little birthday celebration for him at home too on the actual day, with a giant cupcake that the kids were giddy about. Then a few days after Tom's birthday, it was a local holiday. We decided to be adventurous and we drove up to the peak of the St. Bernard Pass, where they still keep some St. Bernard dogs. When we told Asia and Evan about the dogs, they were so excited to see them. But when they came close to them, they stayed as far as they could. The St. Bernard Pass is a historical pass that used to be the only way to get to Northern Europe from Southern Europe (I guess that is why so many people got lost in the winter snow, hence the need for rescue by the St. Bernard dogs). We went over the pass and crossed into Italy and we visited the town of Aosta and got some gelato. Then we finished the loop home by driving into France through the Mont Blanc tunnel, then back into Switzerland. We felt pretty cool driving through three countries in one day!

Rollerboard

The rap creation by the boys.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

A Reunion Album

Here's more photos from this summer's reunion--- so much fun!

More Reunion Adventures