December Fun

Anna's Dance did a December performance and she did a very good job. Here is one of the dances that she performed. Something cute that Anna said during her prayer one night is "And please bless everyone in the whole world except Santa that they will sleep well, because Santa has to work hard." She is just growing up so quick. I love to hear how her day is at school and who likes who.



Kate's dance also had a winter performance. She also learned the itsy-bitsy spider dance, but she didn't end up dancing it. She is such a doll. When she plays I noticed that the words are in her head, but she does the actions. Sometimes when she asks me for something she will sing the last word. It just makes me laugh. She is now up to Anna's eyebrows, but I think she is slowing down because she doesn't want to eat as much lately.

Daniel is my little cuddle bug. He will come up to me and say "Huggie." He is right now going through the "I'm Mommy's Echo" stage. Anything I say he will mimic. His vocabulary is expanding quickly. Yet he will still come up to me and look at me like I'm suppose to read his mind. He loves to hold Lizzie and visit Grandpa Bill's house. One night at Grandpa's he and his cousin McKay looked like two peas in a pod. As of right now they get along pretty well.

Lizzie loves to smile. She is trying hard to keep her head up when she is on her tummy. She will stay on her tummy longer if I am lying right next to her and talking to her the whole time. I sure love her and love that she sleeps well.



BJ and I enjoyed his Christmas party this past week. We had very good food to eat and we enjoyed talking to his colleagues and their spouses. I'm enjoying my job still. My unit had our Christmas party and I think it went well. I'm glad it is over because it is the second Christmas party this season I had to help plan. The hospital I work for was awarded the "Best in Value Award" for our hospital size. That award includes quality, affordability, efficiency and satisfaction. This award was a national one, so we must be good.

Busy couple of weeks

It has been a very busy couple of weeks at the Wright house. Its hard to think about what to write that we've missed. I guess I'll start with Thanksgiving.

THANKSGIVING
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving we had the annual Pie marathon night at my mom's house. We had a fun time. Amanda mixed all of the pie crusts this year, while I focused on the apple and pecan pie filling. We didn't have to stay up too late this year.
We had Thanksgiving dinner at my Uncle and Aunts home here in Payson. It was a nice dinner, with a lot of my extended family there. Anna and Kate were a little sad, because the cousins their age were at a different party. We also ate a Thanksgiving dinner at Amanda's parents house the next day. It was fun. We were able to see a lot of the family, and had a nice time talking after dinner. Later in the evening I skipped out on going to the gym, and Amanda's sister, Amanda, and I played a few games on the Wii.

Lizzie's baby Blessing

After a busy week of Thanksgiving dinners, we wrapped up the week by blessing Lizzie. We had a small dinner before the meeting. It was nice to visit with family, again. We had a lot of kids in the house. Amanda's family had Desmond, Genevieve, Itylee, and Vienna here. My brother brought his son, McKay. Add our four kids to the mix, and we had 9 in the house! There weren't too many mishaps, though Desmond did end up pushing Daniel down a few stairs. Luckily Daniel bounced right back up, and didn't cry for too long.


OK - now for the individual updates.

Elizabeth is doing well. She decided that she doesn't like bottles right now. When Amanda has been at work, I've been able to warm up a bottle and feed her. This past week she has been refusing to eat from a bottle. She's starting to think about it again, which is a good thing. It makes it a lot easier than having to take her into Amanda when she has to work. Lizzie has also been enjoying "playing" this last little while. She smiles a lot, and loves to babble back at you when you talk to her.

Daniel has just discovered he likes to be read to. He'll bring a book, climb on your lap, and say "story!" It is fun to read to him. He's also getting to be a big tease. He'll run away as fast as he can, when he knows he shouldn't. It actually ended up getting him hurt this week. He took off running away from Amanda, and she grabbed for him. She caught his arm, but the force of him running away caused his elbow to come out of its socket. We took him to the doctors, and got his elbow set. 5 min later he forgot that his arm was even hurt.

Kate is getting very teary. I am not looking forward to this stage. I was hoping Anna would have grown out of it a little more, before Kate hit it. Right now they feed off of each other, and get each other crying harder. Kate is enjoying school, and is doing really well with counting things. She loves to listen to Anna read too.

Anna is having a blast decorating for Christmas. She has been a little too helpful, breaking a couple of ornaments. She feels bad, but then goes on playing with another one. "I was just trying to help." she'll say. Anna is also having a fun time at school, though she came home upset this week almost every day, because the Gingerbread man kept getting away. I am glad that the gingerbread man was found on Friday.

Amanda has turned into an event planner whether she like it or not. We are in charge of the activities in our ward, which had us planning our Christmas party the last month or so. It went well, and Amanda is glad to have that stress out of the way. Now she has her work party that she is in charge of coming up. Hopefully things go smoothly for her.

BJ - I have had fun getting the Christmas lights up outside. I have always liked getting the lights put up at night so that I can see what it looks like as I am making progress. This year I had to put them up during the day. It went a lot faster, and the lights look just as good. Maybe I'll start a new tradition of putting them up in the light.

Well, that's about it from us. I hope that you are all doing well. I will leave you with one more picture of my kids, who had fun decorating the Christmas tree this evening. I hope that you appreciate the picture, as it took about 10-12 tries to get the kids looking at the camera and smiling at the same time!

The story of the "Three Little Sick Ones"

Once upon a time there were two parents who had four children. One day the parents woke up and three out of the four children were very sick! Now what were they to do? Though this story may start like a fairytale, our week this week definitely was not a fairytale. The silver lining is that next week can only get better!



Elizabeth amazingly stayed healthy. Daniel has been trying to be very attentive to her. It has been hard to keep her somewhere where Daniel isn't. This week I was playing "Pat-a-cake" with her, and she started laughing. It was very cute. She sure smiles a lot, and it was fun to hear her laugh.


Daniel was very offended that he had to stay in his room. We put up a baby gate in his doorway, and "trapped" him in. He threw a couple of tantrums, but eventually got used to the idea. He spent most of his time figuring out how to escape. He never succeeded, though was very close a couple of times. He did enjoy eating in his room however.

Kate was happy to be sick! She was a little jealous of Anna being able to watch movies all day in the basement. When we finally decided she was sick too, and let her go down, she went quickly. She actually was the sickest of the kids. She had several other secondary infections, but is almost back to her healthy self today.



Anna said this week, "I love being sick, cause I get to watch movies all day long!" Once she had watched every movie in the house, that no longer was her opinion. She is better, except for a cough, and is excited to go back to school on Monday.

Amanda is barely sane after a week of playing nurse both at home and work. The kids have been OK, but have been really pushing their limits with Mom. I think it has been their goal to get Mommy to yell. We finally went out for an hour or two of shopping yesterday. Amanda doesn't usually like shopping, but said that it was great to finally get out of the house.

I spent the week trying to avoid getting sick. I tried to spend most of my time at home in my bedroom. I did help Amanda out, though we agreed it would be better if I didn't get sick (I think I am a bigger baby than all three kids put together when I am sick). At school I had my class put on a small play for several of the other classes in school. My class loved it! They want to do more. I am not sure how much more time I can devote to it, but am sure we will be doing another play or two this year.

So that was our week. The Big Bad Wolf didn't huff and puff and blow our house down, but the Big Bad Swine Flu did make the kids huff and puff, and cough a lot. Our house did look like a tornado had hit it, but I think that we are all going to live happily ever after.
The End - - - of this week at least!

A Mostly Happy Halloween!

The Halloween season came and went rather quickly. Halloween day found Anna with a fever and today (Nov. 1) Kate is not feeling the greatest as well. Hopefully we can get them healthy as soon as possible. I can't believe how fast time seems to fly. The last few weeks have been full of fun, hopefully I won't leave out anything important! Sit back, grab some trick-or-treat candy, and enjoy the Wright Family Halloween blog!


Elizabeth was a little flower for Halloween. She really didn't know what was going on, but smiled a lot and was happy just to sit around and be held. She is starting to get bored when by herself. Time to find something that will entertain her.

Daniel is too busy for his own good! He is everywhere and into everything. He has recently learned how to open doors, and is very proud of that achievement. We were able to get him in his cowboy costume for about 3 minutes. Long enough to take this picture. He kept wiping his beard off and throwing his hat away. He enjoyed trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, but had to eat the candy as fast as our neighbors put it in his bucket.


Kate is getting to be quite the little lady. This is her version of Cinderella, I called her Katerella and she laughed. She has had a fun time "making things" this month. She even took one of our projects to preschool for show and tell. At the bottom of this entry I'll include a picture of a couple of our projects. Being the caring sister she always is, she made sure that Anna's trick-or-treat bucket was filled up because Anna couldn't be out and about Halloween night.


Anna discovered that it "isn't fun to be sick on Halloween!" She was in tears because she has a temperature and had to stay in her room all day. We hooked up a TV in her room, and she was very careful to stay in there so she didn't get everyone sick. I laughed, and told her that she should be "Sleeping Anna" instead of "Sleeping Beauty." She also enjoyed making many of our "projects" this month.
Amanda has had a lot of "nursing in excellence" classes to go to this month. It was interesting trying to juggle so many schedules together, but she found a neighbor girl to come watch the kids a couple of times. Amanda was also adveturous in the kitchen this month and tried a couple of new recipies. They turned out pretty good! You'll have to ask us if you want the recipies.

Survived October! I didn't realise how busy this month would be. Between Saftey Week, Red Ribbon Week, and Halloween I didn't think there would be time to teach much! I was suprised how much the students and I were able to accomplish. I had fun carving pumpkins with my kids, and even toasted some pumpkin seeds! Kate and Daniel enjoyed them with me, Amanda and Anna are still not quite sure about them.

These are bats we made out of toilet paper tubes.
We made quite a few, and gave them to family members.
We kept two to put on our shelf.


We made Jack-o-lanterns to hang on our door.
Anna's is on the left. She cut it out herself.
Kate's is on the right. She dictated what the face should look like.
Daniel tried to help with his, the one on the bottom. He mostly just ripped the scraps of paper up, and threw them around the kitchen.

October's Here

This past week we had three Saturdays in a row! BJ and Anna had fall break from school, and were home a lot more to make bigger messes with Daniel, Kate, and Liz. Amanda was glad to have them home, but will also be glad to see them go back to a more regular routine on Monday.

Elizabeth is sleeping through the night now! She goes down about 9:30 pm and gets up around 5:30 am. She is also starting to smile a lot more, and loves it when Amanda sings to her.

Daniel is starting to jabber non-stop. We don't understand much of what he says, but that doesn't stop him from trying. Most of the time it is something about "Baby Lizzie." He still thinks that he is the only one who can take care of her. I get lectures from him when I try to hold her when she is crying.

Kate is loving preschool and dance. She also loves Lizzie, and asks to hold her a lot. It is cute. When Amanda is feeding Lizzie, Kate has to get her baby doll out and feed her. Kate has become very emotional lately too. Hopefully things will even out by the time she is a teenager ;)

Anna loves to read and write. She writes letters all the time. Last night she wrote many invitations to her "Diamond Party." She always has some writing project going on.

Amanda already has gone back to work. She wasn't quite ready, but enjoyed it once she was back. Before returning to work she got a lot of scrapbooking done, as well as working on several of the quilt projects she has going.

I am enjoying my class this year. They are great! There have been some frustrations at work, but have found that going to the gym everyday helps to relieve a lot of stress, so I am able to handle those frustrations better.

Here are a couple of pictures taken during our annual hike to "The Grotto" this year!

Onion Days

Hello! So here's a shot at a first blog post. We've had this set up for a while now, but are just getting around to posting :) It has been a whirlwind of a week! The Payson celebration, "Onion Days" has just wrapped up. We've had fun in the parade, going to the carnival, and having a couple of picnics with BJ's family.

On 9/2/09 Elizabeth was born! She is healthy and doing very well. She doesn't have much hair, with each kid they have a little bit less.

Daniel is very attentive to Elizabeth, and calls her "MY baby!" He has to hold her and comfort her when she is crying.

Kate starts preschool this week. She is very excited. She says that now she is a big girl like Anna. She loves to draw pictures, and even drew the baby a picture to bring when visiting her at the hospital for the first time.

Anna is loving Kindergarten. She comes home, and says she learned "nothing," yet is full of stories of the activities completed during the day. She is trying to be a better helper now that the baby is here.

Amanda is doing well, and glad that she has work off for the next few weeks. She is already itching to get out and do "something" though. She never has been one to be down too long.

I guess that leaves me. I walked the parade today. It was hot and long, but fun. The school I work at is having its 50th anniversary this year. We have a lot of fun activities planned. I am sure there will be more about that posted here!