I'm sorry

Well folks, I'm sorry that I don't check the mafia blog every couple of hours. I had no idea that people wanted me to explain anything. Unfortunately, all of yesterday I was at a friend's house and had no access to the blog at all. Oh well. This makes my life easy until the end of the game.

All I can say is: HA!! I was a townie!! WRONG PERSON

Neener...

~Jim

HELP!

I'm trying to make a seperate user name for Charlie to use on the Mafia game. I can't seem to be able to do it. Can someone please help me?

Our Cute LIttle Boy

Here is a video we shot tonight with him "talking" for you. It is almost 2 minutes, but he is soo cute. Plus he starts with a smile. Tomorrow I"ll try and upload one with him smiling even more. Enjoy!

Lexi and the math competition

The math competition was on Tuesday. They wouldn't allow parents to come to the competition portion but did allow us to come to the awards ceremony at the end. So I didn't get to see how well they did, but I got to see them not receive an award. They awarded the top 10 individuals and then the top 4 teams with plaques. Lexi nor her team won anything. Her teacher said she saw their test answers and that they were in the thick of things and actually did very well, just not well enough to win. At least they weren't in the bottom portion. I thought this was a statewide competition, but it turned out to be only the Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties. There was still quite a few teams there, though I don't know how many. Lexi said she had a good time. It was a good experience for her. Here's a picture of the kids she went with from her school.

New Job

Heather how did the first week of work go? How is Harvey liking day care?

mafia

The game has now begun. Check your emails to find out your roles, but keep it quiet. After tomorrow at midnight, check the mafia blog regularly to stay up on the action!

www.hutchinsonmafia.blogspot.com (I feel like a perpetual advertisement...)

Good News

Yesterday Eric got an email from the dean of the masters program he applied to at the school in Missouri, and they want to interview him. YAY! His interview is the 26th of this month-2 weeks from today, so we are scrambling to find the best airfare at the best times. I want to go with him, but we're not sure we can afford it. The good thing is that they make a decision at the beginning of April, so we will know pretty soon after the interview whether he made it or not. So please keep him in your prayers because if he makes it into the masters program, it's pretty much a guarantee into the medical school if you do well. We are just very happy that this one seems to be going somewhere. :)

MAFIA UPDATE

Ok, I would like to start the mafia game this week. The more the merrier, but it would be best if we had at least 10 people to play, besides myself, and this is who has said they'll play so far:

Hillary
Charlie
Kari
Eric
Jason
Heather
Mom

I am still waiting to hear from Kurt, Jim, and Dad. I will email a couple other family members today to see if they'd be interested. Also, I will need SEPARATE email addresses for every individual playing so I can communicate with you without your spouse knowing-- everything in this game needs to be very secret, except for what is said on the blog to try and figure out who is the mafia. I need Charlie and Eric's email addresses.

I will plan to start the game Thursday morning, if we can get a couple more people to join. Don't be afraid! It really doesn't take very much time to play, you just have to read the blog and comment as to who you think is mafia. If you have a role, you'll have to email me every other day to do your night role. That's it, it's simple! It really is a lot of fun.

Jana, so when do we start this mafia thing? Charlie said he'd play.

Wrong again!

Of course I voted for Kurt. It's pretty sad when you don't even recognize your own face! Merrit just saw it and said it was himself. I thought that was pretty funny.

Banana Phone

We showed our friend Michele the Harry Potter skit that was on the blog a couple of months ago and this came up with it. We all really like it, especially Harvey. Enjoy!

Hutchinson mafia, anyone?

Jason and I have loved playing online mafia via a blog with his brothers, sister, and cousin. It finished a couple weeks ago, and I think it would be fun to try and play with our family. I believe I could even get Sarah Lester and possibly some other cousins and aunts and uncles if there is enough interest. It would be a fun way to stay in touch. Let me know if y'all would like to play and I'll gladly set it up.

It's just like the regular mafia game where you sit in a circle and randomly choose who is mafia and who is the detective. The rest of the people are townspeople. Mom and Dad are probably not familiar with this game, but read on. I would be the blog moderator (at least for the first game because I know how to play it) and would randomly choose the roles from whomever is playing-- two mafia members (who conspire together to kill off townspeople one by one), a detective (who gets to find out member roles), and a doctor (who can, with a little luck, "save" the townspeople from being killed). The townspeople then try to figure out who the mafia is and vote them off. If the game ends with mafia, they win, if the townspeople figure out who the mafia is, the town wins. It's like being in a mystery novel. Mom, you'll love it!

Anyhow, that's a brief summary. All communication about the game is done on the blog using the comments. You can check out our old game at www.hairmafia.blogspot.com to get a feel for how it went. (There was one post that had over 200 comments. That is NOT normal, it usually does not take up that much time, Jason's brothers were just bored and sat on there all day.) It's a lot of fun and I think we'd all really enjoy it. You just have to be able to check the blog at least once a day to see what everyone thinks, but most of us check this blog that often anyway. We'd have to have at least 10 people, so if we got everyone (including Jim) and their spouses, that would be enough, but like I said, if we get enough interest in our family alone, I would love to invite some cousins and aunts and uncles. Let me know what you think! I was thinking of starting the game in about a week.

Brett Favre to RETIRE!

I know the whole world must be in mourning just like we are here in Wisconsin. Favre was the highlight of the whole world, even if you didn't watch football. Oh wait, let me pinch myself and come back to reality. It's really hard to do that here when ALL you hear about is Brett Favre. The people here are treating it like he's dead or something. It's really a strange world. The local ABC station did a spur-of-the-moment tribute to him lastnight during prime time TV. I mean come on, the world will move on, football world will move on, even the Packers will move on. Besides, now the Lions have a better chance of winning their division, right:)?!?!?

HAPPY ANIVERSARY MOM AND DAD!!!!

Tell Me What You Think

This is a picture of Mehmet Okur-he plays for the Jazz and used to play for the Pistons. Everytime I see him play I think of Jimmy-tell me if you think I am right...I think the resemblance is uncanny.

A Great Time!

Time Out for Women was this passed weekend. I drove down with the lady who invited me. We went Friday night and came home and then went back on Saturday morning. We figured it saved us hotel stay, but I don't know how worth it that was because we didn't get home until about 11:30 pm and then had to leave at about 6:45 am in order to get back there for the beginning. It was hard to stay awake at some points on Saturday for lack of sleep. I'd probably go for the hotel stay next time. The conference was very good. I was surprised because the one that Mom and I went to in Toledo last year really didn't stick out to me as being all that special. I don't know if the speakers were just that much better, or if I'm at a point in my life that I needed it more now than I did then, but this one was better. I'm so glad I got to go. The points that stuck out to me the most were these:
I need to make more time for just Charlie and I, even overnights, without the kids
I need to teach my kids to govern themselves more, I even bought a book that will help me with this
I need to incorporate service into our family culture
I need to slow down and treat people like they are humans - for example, not yell at someone who has just cut me off, but try to put myself in their shoes and not get so worked up about their actions or don't be so impatient with people in check-out lines at the store because I'm not really in that big of a hurry, am I?
And finally, if I feel like I'm not feeling the spirit or receiving inspiration, what am I NOT doing to keep me from feeling those things? I think this one is pretty important because it's easy to get out of the habit of reading the scriptures and saying your prayers but those things help us to stay spiritually connected.
So overall, I got a lot out of this weekend that will help me improve many aspects of my life.

We received a new bishopbric yesterday. Our previous bishop has served for almost six years. They called his 1st councelor to be the new bishop and the young men's president is the new 1st councelor and the 2nd councelor also came out of the young men's program, but I'm not sure what his old calling was. Needless to say, there will be some other major changes in the ward in the next couple of weeks, but Charlie and I feel pretty confident that we are safe in our callings. It's pretty exciting to be a part of such changes. I'm looking forward to see what comes about because of them. The new bishop is such a great guy. His wife is just outstanding. She is the one that invited me to Time Out and is one of the ones in the ward that I would actually consider my friend (which is saying a lot because I don't really feel befriended by many yet, although I am trying).

Add it to the Collection

Here are two pictures of our beautiful baby sleeping. He has just starting figuring out that he can use his fingers to calm himself down. We took them and then thought about Dad's collection of sleeping pictures and would like to add these. We just couldn't resist-he is too cute!

Jim's big day

I finally got around to scanning Jim's newspaper article and will see if I can post it and you can read it (sorry, I did everything I could and can't make it large enough to read). We finally completed the bag pick up yesterday. We dropped off the bags a week ago, approximately 1200 bags and picked them up yesterday, as mentioned and had maybe a 10% response to the bags; the living room looks like a mini-store, with all the merchandise stacked around in boxes etc. Jim is in the process of estimating the value of what we gathered; he is already over $1000 and still has more to estimate. All in all, the Active Faith director should be very pleased with what she will receive as will all those in the South Lyon area who are in need who will benefit from this effort. Now we just need to get him through all the paper work (which is a bunch) and scout reviews that go along with receiving an Eagle Scout award and then we may have a nice party to celebrate. It just occurred to me that we might be able to schedule the Court of Honor about the time he graduates from High School and we may be able to arrange things to get most of you back here for both big events; we'll wait and see how it works out. Love to all.

Change of Plans

The company I took the job with requires a physical but they didn't let me know that until Wednesday of last week. So I had my physical first thing Thursday morning but the lab is backed up so they won't get results until Wednesday of last week. Long story short, I'm starting work on the 10th rather than the 3rd. Not a huge deal except that we already have daycare lined up for Harvey and all the little kids there are super excited about him coming. He's going to go for half days this first week which will give me a chance to give the house a really good cleaning before I go back to work. That's the excitement here.

adelyn bo badelyn...

Yesterday Addie was being particularly cute. We got a ton of great pictures, and I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you. Oh yeah, on our Hair Blog we uploaded a cute video of her talking if you want to check it out. She started attacking the camera and it's pretty funny (well, at least it is to her doting parents).