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.