As promised to my grandmother, I Trey, am writing this week with the intentions of publishing information and pictures about my eagle project. My eagle project was planning a Christmas Party for the Seattle Spina Bifida Organization. I was put in charge of most of the responsibilities in the planning for this event. The project began on Dec. 5, a Friday night, when about 15 people came to our church building and helped set up the cultural-hall for the event. The next day, over 100 people showed up to have some Christmas fun. For the kids, there were craft tables, letters to write to Santa, cookie decorating, and a puppet show. The adults were welcome to enjoy all those too, but I created a most-difficult Christmas trivia quiz for them. Those who answered the most questions correctly won a prize (p.s.- no one got 100%). Overall it was a really fun event and all the volunteers had a wonderful time playing with the children. I must say it was the only eagle project in history in which there were more young women volunteering than young men. I am a couple merit badges away from completeting my eagle scout award. Stay tuned for that event. Here are some of the pictures:


Above: (lower, right- Me, trying to catch my breath for a second
Below: (Puppet Show enamors volunteers and kids.)

Memories of an Old Man!

Hey Eliza Here! Doing the her duty on the blog! (for the record, the second time, since the last one was deleted second within completion!!!) 

This week (Tuesday to be exact) we celebrate Daddy's 46 birthday!!! yeah!!! This wondrous occasion was celebrated with homemade pizza's! The pizza's were imitations of the famous ones from Christmas eve, as they did not have quite as many toppings, but they were yummy nevertheless!!! 

   This is Dads creation.  And this is Dad enjoying his creation! 

        

                                                       

This year each child also completed a questionnaire for their knowledgeable father. This questionnaire covered various fun facts about the year he was their age. (For example: I did a little quiz on the year 1976 because that was the year he was 13) These questionnaires covered anything the child wanted, though most of them covered things like the top songs, super bowls, Olympics, world news, world leaders, world records...ect. Dad did pretty well on Taft and Trey's, and moderately well on mine, but we didn't even make quizzes for when he was 9 and 4 because we didn't think his memory would reach out that far!!! 

Because some of the top songs of those memorable year were songs the children were not familiar with, mom and dad began education our minds with classic seventies literature (or in my words, the crazy hippiness of the seventies!!! man, the seventies were sooooo retro!!!!) Our little peruse through the seventies lasted a little longer than anticipated, and the rest of the night was spent cleaning up pizza mess and reliving the seventies!! 

      

Thaddeus didn't know what        This is an example of

to think of the seventies            the very retro seventies!

     dancing style!                     (This is Earth, Wind and Fire)

(p.s. yes grammy beth, all the pictures were taken on the brand new blogger camera!!)

hi!! Abigail again!! I still don't get the blog that much, so I didn't get to add these to my last post. I hope you enjoy these pictures of our pets!!!!!

1. 

hello!!! this is abigail!!!!!!!!

The Birds

Hello! This is Abigail doing my blog duty!!! I thought that it would be very easy to right an entry on the Knowles family's beloved pets!! Snitch is my bird. She is yellow and is snugly! She squawks like a fire alarm and is my baby dragon!! I got her about a year ago for my birthday and she has come a long way in becoming the favorite thing in my life! Towards the end of March (i think) Snitch broke her leg and a few toes. It took her about 2 and a half weeks to get better, and then she was fine. Mommy thinks she has arthritis in her foot that she broke. Lately I've been teaching Snitch some tricks and one of them is sitting on a boat in the bathtub. She also likes mirrors, listening to Wicked, waking up at 7:45 a.m., attention, scout, eyelashes, bells, and chewing on glasses. Scout is mom's bird. We got her about 1 and a half years ago. She is best friends with snitch. Scout doesn't snuggle and she certainly isn't yellow. She is white with black and blue marks. She is mellow and likes less attention. She also likes staying up late and waking up later than 9:30. She also likes Eliza's taste of music, the tallest shoulder, water and playing in water, being in her cage, bells and balls, hoods, music coming from the piano, and sitting in the tree.

Christmas Eve

Part 1 -- The Pizza
Homemade pizzas have been the tradition for sometime now in the Knowles family. We buy about any topping you can think of and everyone gets their own pizza. Rhodes dough is the crust. Spaghetti sauce for the base. Then the sky is the limit (or the amount of toppings we bought). Eliza and I do soy cheese. Homemade pizza is the best!! And the leftovers get us through Christmas Day and Boxing day!


Part 2 -- The Treasure Hunt
For some years now, I (Todd) have put together some kind of "treasure hunt" for a special Christmas Eve present -- which, remarkably enough always turns out to be pajamas. I think it's now officially called the "Pajama Treasure Hunt."
It's gets harder and harder each year to come up with creative places to hide them and creative clues to get them there. Last year was a "National Treasure" theme -- complete with a secret message written on the back of our framed copy of the Declaration of Independence (or maybe the Constitution -- I'll have to check. But I would have to check with a special light that will reveal the "invisible ink"). This year the weather limited my hiding places and my ability to go get special things for clues -- like ideas for invisible ink. I finally decided to work with the weather. I've included a video clip below of the discovery -- you'll see what I mean about working with the weather.
This year's clues centered around movies that each of the kids have watched . . . over and over again (usually as younger children). So each child got to be an expert for a clue. Nothing too spectacular -- but the clues were rather tough, very much riddle-like that took some thinking. But, as usual, they solved the mystery and uncovered the treasure.















Part 3 -- The Puppet Show
As a new feature this year, Abigail and Thaddeus put together a little puppet show that was sort of a take off on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Thaddeus' contribution also included a "Boise State Bronco" puppet -- which he helped make. (All puppets were homemade by Thaddeus and Abigail from the cardboard core of a toilet paper roll. Mr. T.D. Knowles contribution to the dialogue was that when the reindeer games were played, they "played football." 2 other times in the story Abigail paused and Thaddeus added, "And they played football" and the stage went crazy for a minute. Pretty much had us in stitches. You might notice, by the way, the Boise State theme colors for the tie-dyed pajama shirts for the older members of the family. Pink tie-dye for the younger girls.















Part 4 -- The Christmas Message
I (Todd) finished the evening with a Christmas message from Luke 2. I emphasized the role of the angels in this story. It seemed to me that the last General Conference had a more-than-usual discussion of the ministry of angels. We had talked about it some in our family in the previous couple of weeks and this was one more opportunity.

We thought we had snow . . .

I've been reading weather sites a little more often lately. I noted that in Seattle, Dec. 20 and Dec. 21 are equally the shortest days of the year. I believe it's the first day of winter. Not too hard to believe. See photo and video of outside our front door.

It started snowing about 4 p.m. on the 20th. It had more or less kept up until now (7 p.m.) on the 21st. Who knows how many inches. Church was cancelled. The Bishop made phone calls and got people in the ward together with others who live close and encouraged them to have sacrament meeting in designated homes. We only have one couple within hiking distance. They are in their 90s and mostly homebound anyway -- we go over about twice a month and bring them the sacrament on a regular basis. Taft and the Bishop's son went down and visited them and did the sacrament for them.
We did try to go visit somewhat as it let up a little this afternoon. We couldn't get the car on to the road from the side of the road -- we just spun and slid. Abandon plan. We might have made it if Trey and Taft both pushed, but we would've got stuck somewhere else. And we don't own chains.

The good part is that it really is pretty. And we didn't get another windstorm with it. Everyone has power. We just can't go anywhere. I suppose that's not entirely bad.

We may stay here until Christmas. Hopefully not, since Grandpa and Grandma Knowles are flying in on Christmas Eve and would like a ride from the airport.