Yes, We Are Still Alive!

O.K., so I am blogging about some things that happened in October and November is almost over. Better late than never, right? Meagan and Brigham came to visit for a week in October and we had lots of fun together. Several pictures below will show you our adventures at Lenny's Burger, our new favorite burger place on Stapley and Southern:

This is Allie with her then boyfriend, Chad Tyler. One month later, he is now her fiance. Hooray! They are getting married March 10th, 2012.

Notice all of the t-shirts we are wearing in the above pictures? Well, we got together to make them in support of one of our favorite cousins, Annie Jones, who was nominated for homecoming royalty at Mesa High School this year.

We had so much fun going to the homecoming game and cheering for Annie and guess what? SHE WON! She was so excited and looked amazing in her jackrabbit purple dress, crown and robe. Thank you Mesa High for being so kind to our Annie, you made her day/week/year/life! She had so much fun being queen for a day and even better, she gets to dress up all over again next year and crown the new queen.

Brigham is looking a little fussy in this picture, possibly because he has too many Aunties fighting every day to hold him and decide what he is going to wear.

Meagan and Brigham were definitely the stars of the show for the week that they visited. I am sure they both had to go home and rest from their vacation. We can't wait to see them again at the end of this year.

Here is Kaylee, all dressed up for Halloween. She had a blast being a bride. Today, Allie and I are going wedding dress shopping. I don't think we will find one for $9.99 which was the cost of Kaylee's wedding dress, :) but we should have lots of fun looking. Wish us luck!

I Love This Kid!

Today is Allie's 22nd birthday! This girl puts the zing and the zest into living. She is pretty much the mustard in the sandwich of life. That is a pretty good analogy because Allie even loves the color yellow.

She also loves shaved ice and snow cones and she can recite from memory just about every flavor sold at Bahama Bucks.

Allie has a deep love for the temple. This is a picture she took when we attended the Gila Valley Temple's open house. Allie goes to the temple weekly and has come to love and appreciate the peace that comes from attending the temple.

Allie loves service and she loves her family. She gives me a hard time about posting unflattering pictures of her, but what can I say, that girl sure can ham it up!

Here is Allie holding one of our dear departed chickens on the day we bought them. She is always up for an adventure.

Allie loves the ocean ALMOST as much as I do.

She has worn her "co-pilot" hat and navigated her perpetually lost Mother on many adventurous trips!

Allie can find fun everywhere she goes.

Why do we have so many pictures of Allie with clowns?

Allie loves shaved ice, pomegranates, snow cones, cotton candy, caramel apples, fudge, kettle corn.... How does she eat all of that stuff and still look so good?

As you can see, Allie has blessed our life and kept us laughing for the last 22 years. We are so glad that she is part of our family. I nearly killed her once when she was 3 years old. She said something sassy and then told me because I was so far along in my pregnancy with Matt that I was too fat to catch her. I did catch her that day and I am really glad I decided to let her live. :) Not all of you will understand what I am about to write, but I know that Allie will. Allie is kind, she is smart and she is important and I am so proud to be her Mama. Happy Birthday, Allie, I love you!

Oh, What Did We Do In The Summertime...

when all the world is Brown! That is what it feels like sometimes when you are living in Arizona during a hot summer. I think that the person that wrote that song must have lived in Colorado not Arizona. Anyway, here are some of the fun things we did this summer;

Sarah, Paige and Kaylee had fun painting flower pots by our front door and got a little carried away with the paint.

Allie may or may not have started dating a clown. :)

We went to the circus and took our neighbor and our cousin because life is so much more fun when they are with us.

Richard and I celebrated 25 years of being married. This was a big year in his family because his brother and his wife also celebrated 25 years and his sister and her husband celebrated 30 years of marriage. We plan to spend a week in October together celebrating a collective 80 years of marriage and enjoying each other's company.

As you read in the last post, we got a dog named Dixie. She is cute, but more than a little squirty and she equals the equivalent of bringing a newborn baby into the house. We all love her, but a baby at our age? What were we thinking?

Right before school started we made our annual Cluff Family Tradition trip to Dennys. One thing that changed this year was that instead of going to breakfast on the first day of school, this year we went to dinner. I found it much more relaxed and enjoyable to hear about the first day of school instead of seeing nervous people hardly being able to eat, but there are some in the family that are already campaigning to return the tradition back to eating breakfast together. Who says the Cluff Clan isn't wild and crazy? Imagine that, us changing our breakfast to dinner? We do like to change things up now and then. :0

Before the summer started I agreed to serve on the PTO board at our local elementary school. These are some of the cookies that Richard and Kaylee baked so that everyone who went to the meet your teacher event could have a cookie. Thanks for the support Cluff family!

Paige and Kaylee spent an entire month visiting their new nephew, Brigham. Oh yeah, and Meagan and Hyrum. They had so much fun! Meagan and Hyrum took them camping and to a museum and introduced them to lots of new people and lots of new foods. When they were home, they continued playing volleyball. I was just a little bit jealous, but I got to spend a lot of time with Sarah and that was pretty great.

Richard got his first ever pair of Chuck Taylors aka Converse. I don't know if you can see it, but perched on the shoes are his reading glasses. You should see him wear these shoes. He looks so cool, in a mid-life sort of way. We love him and we love his Chucks!

As was mentioned earlier, Hyrum and Meagan went from just thinking about a baby...

to actually having one. I know, this isn't a good picture, but I am not that great with technology and this is what I had at the moment. If you want to see some fantastic pictures of their new family come over to our home and visit us and we will show you some great pictures in our family room. This means that Richard and I became grandparents and we think that is wonderful!

In case you can't read this paper it says, The Fort Of Bonding. Paige, Kaylee and Richard made several of these this summer and had a blast doing it. Who says chair forts are for little kids?

Sure, it's a big mess, but they always have so much fun doing it and they are always good to put everything away when they are done. Richard even agreed to sleep in it all night with them once, but that will never happen again. It was a loooooong night on the floor between chairs. He just might be in the running for father of the year.

Sorry, this is a file photo of our lovely Sarah. I had the honor of really getting to know Sarah a lot better this summer and I am so grateful for the opportunity. She participated in a U of A summer program called Med Start where she was able to explore the field of medicine and she really enjoyed the experience. Her days were long. 5 days a week and even several Saturdays she was on the bus by 7 a.m. and didn't return home until 7 p.m. I got to take her back and forth to the bus and even attend a couple of her presentations and it was a great experience. This summer Sarah really honed her skill for braiding hair and she learned to not only braid other people's hair, but also her own. She looked classy all summer and felt a lot cooler with her hair up.

This is how Kaylee, Paige and I decorated Sarah's room to congratulate her on her completion of the Medstart program and her acceptance into the EVIT medical program. Kaylee even painted the toenails on this foot and I think she did a great job.

Sarah's room is now full of hanging body parts and it looks awesome! Did I mention that the color of Sarah's walls was already red? Yup, her room looks pretty great now. So far she has learned how to suture and cast and she was able to go to the medical examiner's office several times. Some of you may be saying yuck, but Sarah is pretty sure that she wants to be a doctor.

Richard was able to go to Utah twice this summer and visit his family. Don't you love this 4 generation picture?

This is a picture of Paige and Allie at Matt's high school graduation. Allie spent the summer working and having fun with us when we saw her. She is great to always have her camera ready to take goofy pictures and to make us laugh, I think it is because she hangs around with clowns.

Matt spent the summer working and saving for his upcoming mission. He also had ACL (knee) surgery and had to be on crutches for awhile. He was told that he won't get clearance for a mission until his leg has healed at least 6 months. He is taking college classes at MCC right now and excited to get into the mission field in early 2012.

We called this summer our summer of service and we had such a good time going to the temple to perform baptisms weekly and...

working every week to fill orders and stock the shelves at the Bishop's Storehouse. It wasn't always fun to get up early during the summer, but we always had a fun time and enjoyed the time we spent together. We hope you all had as great of a summer as we did!

I Love This ...

CAGE! Yup, that is right, I LOVE this cage. Would you like to know why?

Well, this summer, not just one coyote, but two coyotes, jumped over our six foot brick wall and ate all of our beloved chickens. I know, what a sad day at the Cluff house you are thinking. I had already buried two of our foster chickens from our Jones Cousins earlier in the year. They were old and sick, poor things. Perhaps eaten was not the correct choice of words because when coyotes find chickens they get excited and after they are full they continue to "play" with the chickens until they don't move anymore. Well, when Richard saw this series of unfortunate events he said I had buried enough chickens, the Arizona ground was too hard and the Arizona sun was too hot and he insisted that we involve City of Mesa in the burial arrangements. I love that man, but in this case he was very wrong. This happened on a Friday and where we live the garbage gets picked up on Wednesday and it was toward the end of July. Fortunately for us, CSI did not come out to our home and investigate the terrible smell, but let me just tell you that it was DISGUSTING and I was never so happy to see the garbage man in my life as I was that week. If it is any consolation Jones Cousins, your two plump and beautiful chickens were the ones completely eaten, so I can at least promise you that they did not suffer much in their last minutes and they were not placed in the custody of the City of Mesa. O.k., I digress, back to why I love that cage so much.

These were our baby chickens when we first got them. Remember how cute they were?

They were wonderful chickens, blessing us with eggs everyday and starring in several Skyline High School videos that earned Matt good grades. Well, to think we lost it all and ended up with...

THIS! Richard grew up with small house dogs. I know what you are thinking, but we should all forgive him because he really is a good man. Well, I must have been out of my mind/depressed/defeated, because I ended up losing to a majority vote of 5 to 1 to get this little ankle biter. She is a girl and her name is Dixie. She came home from the pound two days ago. She is already beginning to be the boss of the house and she does NOT bless us with eggs everyday.

Don't let her cuteness fool you, she is a squirt and even though I grudgingly kind of like her and I personally potty trained 6 children, I have no idea how to teach this dog. Any helpful hints would be greatly appreciated. For now, I am very thankful for the cage. :)