Allie Turns 20!

Can you believe Allie is turning 20 today? She came into this world on September 29, 1989, at 12:00 p.m., while the theme song to the Andy Griffith show was being whistled on the hospital t.v. Maybe that has something to do with her upbeat and hilarious personality.

What an exciting day! She weighed 7 pounds and 5 ounces when she was born and that seems like just yesterday. How can she be 20 already?

We hope her day is magical. Well, maybe not this magical, but we hope her day is awesome. We want to wish her a happy birthday and tell you 20 random facts about Allie.

1. Allie is a huge fan of "Jack" as you can see from this picture. "Jack" is dependable and is available 24 hours a day. She doesn't go there often, but when she does his 2 tacos for $1 is one of her favorite things to order.

2. Allie is a primary teacher and a pretty amazing one!

3. Allie doesn't like scary movies but she loves scary roller coasters.

4. Allie won't admit this, but one of her hobbies is squeezing fruit to see if it is ripe. She only

does this to bought and paid for fruit at our house, but it is a temptation to great to pass up.

5. Allie is great at doing hair, not cutting, fixing. We actually don't know about cutting because

she has never tried it. She has offered plenty of times but every time she says "get the

scissors and a bowl" people in our family run for the hills.

6. Allie REALLY likes snow cones.
7. Allie is a hard worker and knows how to get a job done.

8. Allie is beautiful!

9. Allie is one of the funniest people you will ever meet.

10. Allie loves the color yellow.

11. If you asked Allie who her favorite prophet is I'm pretty sure she would say Prophet

Hinckley.

12. Allie isn't a huge fan of cake, but she sure enjoys Otter Pops and caramel apples.

13. Allie is smart. She passed chemistry and trig and that makes her a genius in our book.

14. People in our family respect Allie's opinion and she is often asked for advice.

15. Allie enjoys taking pictures and would love to have a job involving photography.

16. Allie is a great sister and always knows how to have fun.

17. Allie's favorite flower is a Gerber daisy.

18. Allie is kind and loves nature. She especially loves the beach.

19. Allie does not love scary clowns.

20. Allie likes cotton candy.

Allie you are wonderful! We love you and we are so glad that you are in our family. You make life fun and no one can resist your smile and fun personality. We hope your birthday is the best and that all of your dreams come true. Happy Birthday!

Zuckerman's Famous...Pumpkin!

Some roomies and I went to the Utah State Fair last Saturday. It was great!! We saw a 306 pound pumpkin...Wow, that would make a LOT of pumpkin pies!!!

We saw our fill of sheep, cows, and rabbits...but didn't visit the pigs (sorry Wilbur!). This contest took playing with your food to a whole new level. It looks like something a BYU Family Home Evening group would do for an activity. These were some of my favorites...

This one reminds me of Larry on Veggie Tales-I didn't even watch Veggie Tales as a kid...I must have learned about him from babysitting.

In honor of Halloween, meet Frankenstein!!

A Tough Decision!

So, do you remember when I wrote about these 2 great guys building me something this summer that I have wanted for a long time?



The entire family spent most of the summer anxiously watching the mail for this catalog to arrive and then we spent the rest of the summer reading it.


Finally, after much anticipation, the day arrives when Richard and Matt decide to build this fantastic chicken coop. But, after it was built, it became SO handy that I just couldn't decide if I wanted to use it for chickens after all. Our children and lots of the neighbor children could play in the backyard and I just didn't even have to worry about them getting into trouble. Just kidding, hang up the phone and don't call CPS.


Each of these children should get an academy award for their acting ability.

Well, we kept calling the feed stores, but none of them had ordered any baby chicks yet. However, Matt found a place in Queen Creek that was selling day old baby chicks. We had originally wanted to order our own chicks from the catalog, but then Matt read in the catalog that the minimum order was 25 and that was way more chickens than what we wanted. So, we set off in the car on Saturday afternoon to go and buy our chicks.

Here is Paige and Sarah excited that we are finally getting chickens.

Kaylee is REALLY excited!

Matt and Allie can hardly wait. It may look like Matt is wearing a flower in his hair for this special occasion but actually it's Allie.

These were all of the cute little fluff balls that we had to choose from. They are Red Star chicks and we bought 8 of them, one for each member of the family.

Here is Sarah with her chick.

I think Paige is already in love.

Kaylee is thrilled with her choice.

Richard named his chick, Esther.

Matt named his chicken, Kevin, from the movie UP.

Here is Allie and her new friend.

This is what the chicks will look like when they are all grown up.

Here are all 8 new members of the family boxed up and ready to come home with us.

Here they are in the backyard. I've never counted to eight this much since the kids were little and we used to watch a lot of Sesame Street. How do we tell them apart? Easy. We put a different color of fingernail polish on each of their feet. We Cluffs think of everything.

These are pictures of Meg's chick. Isn't she cute. Meg is naming her Ellie, also from the movie UP. In case you can't tell, we are huge fans of that movie.

As you can see, we love the new additions to our family. Come over around the end of February for an omelet.

Cockroaches in My Apartment!!

There are cockroaches in my apartment!! Believe it or not...I'm the one that put them there! For one of my education courses we have to observe an invertebrate (fancy name for something that doesn't have a backbone) for the semester.

I named one of them Arnold (yes, I was a Magic School Bus fan growing up) and the other one Lewis (Meet the Robinsons is still on my top 10 movie list).

I definitely have the best roommates ever! They put up with a lot-I mean really, how many girls do YOU know who could live with a person who has pet cockroaches?

These are Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches so whenever they feel threatened they make a hissing noise.

Let's just say they did a lot of hissing during this photo shoot.

Labor Day Laughs!

Could anything possibly be more fun than throwing a heavy ball around while wearing shoes that hundreds of other people have worn? We think not! Allie and Paige seem to think that they will have an advantage by wearing these colorful, knee-hi socks. Have they no shame? Apparently not!

We decided to celebrate Labor Day by ceasing all labor and going bowling. We had a gift certificate for FREE bowling, FREE shoes, FREE pizza, FREE soda and the use of a lane for 2 hours. You may want to know what we did to deserve such an amazing gift certificate as that. Well, it was easy. All WE had to do was support ME as the Skyline Booster's Concession Stand Manager during the 2008/2009 school year by being at lots of sporting events and selling nachos, popcorn, Gatorade and candy. Simple, huh? Well, maybe not, but the Booster Club gave us this great gift certificate at the end of the school year in May and we still hadn't used it.

Here is a bad picture of a great husband who is still undeniably the reigning, family bowling champ. He was burning up the lanes on Labor Day.

Sarah is so excited to have a day off from school, as you can see in this picture.

Kaylee thinks bowling is really fun too. We didn't even use bumper pads this time and she still did a really good job.

Paige is excited because she ALMOST got a strike. There is only 1 pin remaining. Maybe the crazy socks are working.

Here's Allie striking a pose. I'm sure the professional bowling tournament organizers will be contacting her soon to model for all of their 2009/2010 publicity photos.

Matt had lots of fun too. When regular bowling got a little boring we came up with different ways the family had to bowl each frame such as left handed, no bending of the legs and the granny roll.

It just doesn't get better than this.

We even found these fliers about this new league that would be perfect for us. Unfortunately, they only meet on Sunday afternoons. Dang it!

Labor Day bowling was a huge success. Unfortunately, it wasn't amazing enough for us to agree to sell concessions during this school year. If it has been awhile since you have been bowling, we highly recommend it. Give us a call and we will even let you borrow some of our funky socks.

Dad, Blue Bomber, Grandparents...All in One Weekend!

I am now the proud owner of a 1995 Buick Century (fondly called "The Blue Bomber" by Dad). My fabulous Dad took the time to drive it up here to Utah for me, which was no small undertaking considering that we weren't sure how well the air worked and the radio only picks up a few stations.

It was so good to see Dad, I was really more excited to have him visit me than to get the car! We went to Grandma Terry and Grandpa Les' home for the weekend and had a great time visiting them. I know this picture isn't high quality but it's better than nothing. I figure I should pick up some of the slack since the computer is malfunctioning at home.

Love you family!

Technical Difficulties!

Do you see these pictures? Me either! That's because there aren't any! No, we are not dead. We aren't even sick. Our camera didn't break, although it is getting increasingly blurry. We are still having a wonderful time and even documenting it with pictures most of the time, BUT, last week I (there would be a picture here of Susan, if I could upload a picture) did something (I don't even know what) and now I am unable to upload any pictures to blogger.

Thanks for your undivided attention. I just thought I would take a minute and let you all know what is happening because the doorbell just keeps ringing with more bouquets of flowers and fruit baskets being delivered with cards attached full of concern for our well being.