3 days until Christmas

Lincoln

We are delighted to announce the arrival of Lincoln Joseph on Tuesday, December 15. He arrived at the new Riverton Hospital at 5:03 p.m. weighing 6 lb 6 oz and 19 inches long.

The labor was longer than we had hoped, but when it was time, Lincoln came very fast. We were happy to have followed our birth plan and delivered him without an epideral. Jeremy is an amazing coach; I'm especially grateful for him, and also for our awesome nurse, Vicki, and the fabulous Dr. Jane Bowman.

We are so tickled that Lincoln gets to share his birthday with his cousin, Zoey Kaye, who arrived earlier in the morning! She was 7 lb 12 oz and 20 inches. It was fun to share my pregnancy with my youngest sister, Sarah, and such a treat to have our babies the same day.

The new hospital is very nice and the nurses arranged for the cousins to have rooms next to each other.

irreverence?

Is it irreverent for an adult to eat Transformers fruit snacks in Sacrament Meeting?

when the trees grow apples...

...make applesauce!

Thanks to my tremendous applesauce crew, we bottled applesauce and apple juice this morning while the snow fell! Anna, Griffin, and Jane all had specific jobs which they fulfilled beautifully. I love to eat warm applesauce, not heating in the microwave applesauce, but sauce that's newly pressed, warm, and sweet. Yum.

baby shower

Last weekend we had a baby shower at my mom's house for my sister (since it's her first) and it was great to see so many ladies from my home ward (and my fam, too... pictured are Colette, Hollie, Sarah, and me). It made me reflect on the women who have impacted my life by doing small things, by being amazing young women leaders, by loving me for me, and by simply being good women and showing me the path that I knew I wanted to be on. Thanks to Annette, Susan, Janie, Marsha, Yvonne, Lynette, Verlynn, Ruth, Jeanne, Betty, and all the others who helped me be who I am today.

Fall

Nothin' says FALL like pumpkins, hay bales, and old tractors.

Halloween sampling

It's tricky to pick just a few pictures to put on the blog (since there are so many good ones!) so I've chosen a few to give a sampling of our Halloween festivities.

On parade/class party day at school, the 5th graders had Mall Day (instead of a Halloween party). The kids used their money that they've earned since the first of the year to buy a business license, set up a business, and buy and sell various goods or services. Zachary sold hot dogs (cooked in his hot dog toaster) for $50 each. The sign says "warm cooked hot dogs with a choice of ketchup or mustard. Estimated three minute wait." He sold hot dogs as fast as they'd cook and he made over $1000 in 5th grade cash.

We enjoyed a delightful evening celebrating El Dia De Los Muertos with family and friends. My mom and Anna were both witches.

I had to throw in a picture of the pregnant nun and pumpkin. :)

Saturday night we went trick-or-treating and got a ton of candy. As you can see, Jane is a butterfly, Anna a witch, Griffin is a cowboy, Seven (our little friend) is Buzz Lightyear, and Zachary is Shaggy.

It was a fun holiday weekend!

Jane's Halloween program

Jane's preschool class had a fun Halloween party and then performed some songs for the parents. Miss Tiffany, the preschool teacher, teaches sign language along with the curriculum (so Jane is signing and singing) (yes, I know, I forgot to turn the camera the correct way to film until after I'd started filming. I'm pregnant, work with me). Because the weather was cold and drizzly, we enjoyed the program inside. Jeremy, as you might guess, is the make-up artist for our butterfly.

free time

I've finished my grape juice for the year! It's all boxed up, labeled, and organized in the food storage room!

The 10 buckets of green grapes (pictured here) make the pinkish colored grape juice and purple grapes make the pretty purple grape juice. Thanks to Jeremy and Griffin for picking all of the grapes. Thanks to mom for giving me one juicer (I bought a second one several years ago). Thanks to the retired ladies in the ward for the bottles they've donated to me over the years (including the anonymous one who snuck in and placed several boxes of empty jars by the garage door). Thanks to mom and Donna (who lives down the street) for most of the grapes this year. We bottled nearly 80 quarts. Wow.

My tasty recipe:

1 quart grape juice

1 cup sugar

1 packet lemonade

fill the remaining 2 gallon pitcher with water

Midge, my amazing next door neighbor, mixes in Sprite or 7Up. Yum!

Hollywood Hullabaloo

Anna was cast in the Midvale-Copperview Theater Arts Program play entitled Hollywood Hullabaloo, in which she performed last weekend. She was the youngest cast member and had a fabulous, fabulous time! I think it takes a lot of courage to get on stage, act (she had a speaking part) and dance on stage, and sing a solo. She did an amazing job and we're so proud of her!

I'm not sure why I filmed her the way I did, but in order to rotate the video I have to upgrade my video player to the tune of $29.99 plus shipping. So, tilt your head to the left and enjoy 38 seconds of Anna singing. :)

caring=

Webster: caring: compassionate or showing concern for others

Zachary: caring is being nice to people and helping people out

Griffin: caring is playing nice with your friends and picking up junk off the ground

Zachary and Griffin were both recognized in the Character Ed assembly for being caring. It's a blessing to have such nice kids. Griffin is standing next to his good friend, Lucy, and Zachary is with the principal, Ms. Houlihan, and his friend, Garrett.

The boys got to miss a little bit of class after the assemblies to enjoy a cookie with their parents. :)

Scarecrow Festival

Last week we were at the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point, a two-day fall party with carnival rides, dancing, festive Halloween decorations, entertainment, and lots of people. Anna's performing group entertained and it was quite nice.

I had a funny chat with another mom about the green pants. We came to the conclusion that it's fabulous for 8 year olds to wear brightly colored plastic pants, and good that they don't make them in adult sizes since some adults would try to wear them. Don't worry, I'm not tempted.

I like this second picture of Anna because she looks so tall and lean. How can she be 8? Honestly, where does the time go?

pregnant sisters

My sister, Sarah, who is ten years younger than me, is pregnant with her first baby (girl!) and is due 3 days before me! I don't think you could really plan due dates so close; it's been pretty cool to share this experience with her. My other two sisters had babies (girls!) in the spring.

Interestingly, two of my Wright sisters-in-law have baby boys due in the next couple of weeks. So, my little buddy will have lots of cousins his age.

2009 is a good baby year. :)

Halloween skirts

I thought it would be fun to do some sewing with Anna so we pulled out some coordinating Halloween fabrics and made up a pattern based upon a skirt that we saw that Anna thought was cute. Anna did all of the sewing on her skirt (with the exception of the bottom band) and I am so proud of her!

The fabrics are the same in both skirts, just in different patterns. Cute sisters!

Book of Mormon Retreat

Last weekend we had a Book of Mormon Retreat with the young women in our ward.

We were challenged by the stake at the first of the year to read the Book of Mormon by November. Many of our girls haven't read (or aren't planning to read) the Book of Mormon yet so we planned said Retreat.

We went up to the cabin property (thanks Grandma and Grandpa Wright) and started with a Murder Mystery Dinner, then applied it to the story in Helaman 8-9. We then each took turns sharing the highlights from start to finish. It was an awesome experience for all of us. We stayed up way too late (the youth are good for me) and wow, we enjoyed our time together.

My little family had fun while I was gone, too, eating pizza and also staying up late. Kudos to Jeremy and the kids, they arrived on time Saturday morning to two soccer games and one flag football game, and two of the three games we had half-time snacks and end-of-game treats.

We all got home about the same time, early afternoon, and after lunch Jeremy went to help a neighbor put in his sprinkler system. I feel fortunate to have a calling that is fulfilling and especially, and more importantly, to live with such great people.

trip to California

So a few weeks back Jeremy mentioned to me that he felt like we should go and visit his Grandma in California. We discussed logistics and punched the numbers and decided that UEA weekend would be a great time to go.

We got a good (and early) start, as planned, and just outside of Primm, Nevada (on the Nev and Cali border) about 5 minutes after I took over driving, the fuel pump went out on the van. Long story short, we were towed back to Henderson, Nevada, where we spent the day while waiting for the new fuel pump. The second leg of the trip was long, but we made it.

The next day we spent a few hours at Downtown Disney wandering through shops and checking out the Disney holiday decor, which was a lot of fun and then to Grandma Chalker's house. The kids played in the kiddie pool in her backyard while the adults visited. Later on we went to the beach (fully dressed) and played until the kids were drenched and watched the sunset. It was beautiful.

We spent a couple of days in San Diego with Jeremy's brother and his family and we all had a grand time. We spent some time at Cabrillo National Monument where we wandered through the museum and watched a movie about the tide pools. Then we got to investigate the tide pools at low tide which was really cool.

We spent a couple of hours at the beach body surfing (the boys got very good!) and playing in the ocean and sand. This was definitely a highlight of the trip!

We spent a day at Legoland and thoroughly enjoyed it as well. It's amazing what you can do with legos!

We enjoyed Sunday General Conference with Grandma Wright and GrGrandma Chalker. It was relaxing and nice.

We (thankfully) had an uneventful drive home and arrived home to find all well here. It was such a fabulous weekend and a treat to be able to spend time with Grandma and with cousins.

cousins and retirement

Congrats to my little sister for retiring from her paying job effective this Friday afternoon! She's swapping out her old title and changing to full-time-stay-at-home-mom. I'm happy for her. She came to SLC on one last "business trip" a week and a half ago and we got to play with Emma. We won't see each other as frequently since there's no company bank rolling her visits, but this is, of course, the greater good. The kids had a ball playing with their giggling, smiling cousin.

The Cat From Outer Space

We checked out an old classic from the library this weekend, Disney's The Cat From Outer Space. I watched it gazillions of times as a kid and thought it was great. It's amazing how computer graphics have changed since 1978. And it's interesting to me that the parts of the movie that I recall laughing at, my children also thought were hilarious. Good fun.

wheels

Zachary started flag football this week and his first game was delightful fun! He's on a new team with a coach he's not played with before and a few kids who he knows from soccer. He played very well. With five minutes left in the game he caught an interception at mid-field and ran it in for a touchdown! Then a few minutes later, in a trick play, the QB threw the ball to Zach who then completed a pass to a teammate. It was a fun game to watch and he had a great time!

Bridger Lake

We had such a fantastic summer and a great first week of school so we went on our grand finale, goodbye to summer trip with just the 6 of us to Bridger Lake in the Uintahs.

We had a very nice campsite, roasted hot dogs and smores, played games, enjoyed a good rain storm, walked around the lake, and slept in.

We went to the Mountain Man Rendezvous at Fort Bridger. We toured the original buildings, saw reinactments, looked at cool gear, listened to a storyteller, pet (and fed sunflower seeds to) the Sheriff's horses, learned about beaver trapping, and lots of other cool mountain man stuff.

We hiked part of the Red Mountain trail which was beautiful. Griffin had a little mishap with the mushy mud, Zachary and Jeremy pushed over some dead trees (feats of strength), and we enjoyed the cool (and perfect) hiking weather.

We drove home along the Mirror Lake Highway. It added an hour to the trip home, but it was well worth the beautiful drive. I appreciate that Jeremy appreciates beautiful things and that he provides good opportunities for our children (and me) to value God's amazing creations.

"costume"

If you were wearing "costumes" and "period clothing" you got into the Mountain Man Rendezvous for free. There were some really cool, very authentic costumes and some people really took it seriously and looked the part. Others, however, took the Rendezvous as an opportunity to express their creativity. Zachary's favorite "costume" was the little dude with feathers sewn onto his underpants. There were other various very-caucasian women in scantily clad Indian buckskin and a family with four small boys and the dad (toting a beer) all without shirts. Not sure how that's a costume, but okay. Who walks around barefoot at an outdoor fair anyway? Were there really ladies of leisure wandering around the Fort in the 1860's? We saw this "Indian" who, quite possibly, was wearing (?) the most over-the-top costume. The pictures speak for themselves.

5th grade

At dinner tonight Zachary mentioned that his teacher is requesting that they all wear deodorant to school. We enjoyed a good laugh.

3 simple steps

Step 1: plant a garden













Step 2: pick ripe tomatoes













Step 3: bottle said ripe tomatoes

I tried something new this weekend: I dehydrated some tomatoes. I read that if you include dehydrated tomatoes in soups and stews that it acts as somewhat of a thickening agent. Let me know if you've tried it with success.

first day of school

The first week of school was a good one; three days for Zachary and Anna and two for Griffin. Griffin said of his new teacher, "I think she's going to be great, but I don't know if she'll be super great."

So far, no homework and the chocolate milk is better than last year. It's a good start.

goal!!

We're back into a routine! We started school, soccer, and dance this week. Jane is playing her first season of soccer and had a ball the first game! Go Watermelons!


Here's a picture of Jane scoring a goal!











All three of our soccer players scored goals in their first games. It was a great first week of soccer!

Lagoon

The week before school started we went to Lagoon. We played at Lagoon-a-beach for a while and Jeremy played sand volleyball with Sam and Rachelle.

The kids rode ride after ride and had a grand time. The lines were quite short so it was an ideal day to go. Griffin, of course, picked the labrador on the Carousel.

I love this picture of Rattlesnake Rapids; Grandma LeiLani is such a trooper. She spent the whole day with us and got drenched on RR.

Our kids enjoyed riding rides with their cousins; this is in Pioneer Village.



Michael spent the day with us as well. He and Zachary rode lots of big kid rides together.















Zachary spent some of his hard earned money to drive a race car. Money well spent, he said.

It was a great grand finale to a good and eventful summer.