Christmas-y

We have had a wonderful Christmas season here in Hyde Park.  Jay and the kids have had a nice, long Christmas break and we've had loads of family time and activities.  Everyone was healthy again just in time for Christmas.

The kids went sledding in all the new snow we got. They watched movies and played games. We made cookies and drank hot chocolate. We even took a trip down to Salt Lake City to see the lights on Temple Square.

It was cold and a little breezy but we had fun seeing all the lights. 

Only a few more days of Christmas vacation.  Jay goes back to work on Jan 2nd and the kids go back to school on Jan 3rd.  William has started working on a project he is doing for his GATE class and Henry needs to work on a book report due next week.  Tessa is reading up a storm and preparing to take 5 or 6 AR tests once she gets back to school.

Me?  I'll be taking down Christmas decorations in the quiet that will be my home.  Anyone want to go to lunch?  I think I'll be a little lonely.

Proof That Jay Reads This Blog...

A desktop file entitled Tessa's Dance Recital magically appeared on my computer this morning after I came back from the grocery store. 

So, for your Christmas entertainment, I give you LaShar's Holiday Revue.  Sorry for the quality, but you can still get the gist of the performance.  If you listen closely, you might even hear Jay warning Henry to be quiet and behave or he won't get any Chick Fil A for dinner!

 

 

 

 

 

Frowny Face

William's newest catch-phrase is to say "Frowny Face" when something displeases him.  It's like he's texting from his body.

Anyway, our little family has been sick all week long and so I'm way behind on stuff.  No neighbor gifts have been delivered.  No Primary teacher/Scout leader gifts have been delivered.  I shouldn't feel bad - we'll get to it this week and hopefully tomorrow - but I do.  I'm usually really on top of these things.

I would also post video of Tessa's Holiday Dance Revue.  I'd like to see the video myself, actually.  It was this past Wednesday and I was in bed with the stomach flu.  Literally.  I don't think I moved from the bed for more than 15 minutes total all day.  Anyway, Jay came home, got Tessa ready and took her to the recital.  He took video with his phone. 

You see where I'm heading with this, right?  Jay often takes pictures and video from his phone that I never see.  Paris is the one exception and only because I stood over him while he transferred the pictures to a jump drive for me to have.  Like most of the things that he records on his phone, I have yet to see these videos.  And I want to.   But I don't want to nag because I hate doing that.

Maybe they didn't even go to the dance recital.  Maybe they just drove around Logan for a while and then came home to check and make sure I hadn't succumbed to the plague that had gripped me that day. 

Probably not.  But I may never know for sure.

No Words

Since this blog is very much a family journal, I was going to write a fun post about all our holiday preparations - the tree, the treats, the games.  But I'm too sad.  Every time I get on the computer to do something innocuous like check my email or google ideas for my Primary Sharing Time I see more horrific details about those poor children in Connecticut.  Every single one of them were in 1st grade.  They were Tessa's age.  And then I get teary and sad and have to turn the computer off again.

I don't know how you ever get over something like that.  I really don't.  I don't know how you even start. 

Today Jay took the kids to a movie and I wrapped presents and watched a stupid movie on TV to pass the time and I just kept thinking about those families.  It seemed like a long few hours until my family was home again and the house was noisy and happy and I was so grateful that all my kids walked in the door and started fighting about whose turn it was to play on the computer.

There really are no words.

...Since Sliced Bread

Gingerbread houses are not my favorite things.   Oh, my kids love them and we make one every year because Jay's mom is thoughtful and more fun than me and gives us a kit every Thanksgiving.  But I don't like them. 

It's not that I don't think it's cute or fun.  It's not too messy.  It's the building of the gingerbread house that gets me every single year.  Most kits have all the precut pieces but you still have to put the actual house together with the icing.  And I'm terrible at it.  The house is always crooked and lopsided and half falling down, even if I follow the directions and let it sit for hours before letting the kids attack decorate it with frosting and candy. 

Not this year.  Because this year, the gingerbread house came preassembled.  What a brilliant idea!  We just lifted the house out of the box, got all the decorations ready and  let the kids go for it.  The house didn't shift positions as Tessa was painstakingly applying her gumdrops.  It still took a long time - mainly because Tessa doesn't do anything quickly - but it was much less hassle and much more fun.

The tree did have to be put together so it is, of course, crooked.  but still.  Yay for pre-assembled gingerbread houses. 

1:03 pm

Today was William's 9th birthday.  He actually counted down most of the morning so that he could know the exact time that he turned 9 - officially.  We had just begun our sacrament meeting when I looked at the clock and motioned to him to check it out himself.  He got a big smile on his face, happy to have finally turned the corner.

Not that we refused to celebrate his birthday until after the time had passed.  Last night we went bowling and out to dinner - his choice.  I offer him the chance to have a birthday party each year and each year he refuses.  I can't say that I'm too upset - it's way easier for me if we just do a family celebration. 

This morning he opened his presents - a new Wii game (Madden 13) and a new Utah Jazz jersey.  He was very excited.  We had cake and ice cream after dinner.  His friend Calvin dropped off some yummy cookies as a treat.  He received some birthday money as well and he is carefully considering future purchases.  Tomorrow at school he gets to write with the special birthday pen.  All is well in William's world.

Happy Birthday, William!  We love you!

School Days

Tessa likes to play school.  Now that she can read well she reads all the time - to herself, to her dolls, to her stuffed animals.  After running a load of errands this morning, this is what I came home to:

In case you can't tell, she was reading to Berry Bear and Rainbow Bear.  Rainbow Bear was wearing Tessa's reading medal from last year.  She had brought stacks of books, stickers and other miscellaneous things and put them on my bed.  Apparently her class was moving and she was trying to get them all organized.  All I could do was laugh.  As much as the boys loved reading at this age, they never, ever read to their stuffed animals just for the fun of it. 

Scared Straight

So apparently the fabulous Disney On Ice date from last week had a snag - Tessa got lost at Energy Solutions Arena.  Jay took her to the bathroom and somehow she found her way out of the bathroom and back to their seats without him.  She wandered back to the bathroom (seriously, I don't know how she did that - it's a big place and how she found her way around without ending up somewhere completely far away is beyond me) and found him.

Anyway, I didn't know about the little hiccup in  their date together until last night - almost a week later - when Tessa randomly said that she was scared she was going to get lost again like she did at Disney On Ice.  She had tears in her eyes and everything.  When I asked Jay about it, he laughed but then felt bad because it had obviously had an impact on her.  We both talked to her about how we could all be more careful and how she wasn't going to get lost again.  But today, when she and I were out running errands, she brought it up again.  I can't tell if she's just being a drama queen or if it is really bothering her that much.  Maybe a little of both.

Something tells me that she won't be going on another Daddy-Daughter date anytime soon.

Date Night Saturday Night

Tessa is not a sports fan.  She attends her brother's sporting events when she has to but if there isn't a friend or a playground nearby, she can be whiny because she gets bored.  We don't even bother trying to take her to the big-league sports stuff that the boys love - Ute games, Jazz games, Yankees games.  Oh, she's been to a Yankees game.  In 2009, we went to Southern California and ended the trip with a Yankees/Angels game.  I ended up spending $30 on stickers for her to play with at the game and she still got bored.  She still gets to do fun things - Wright Boys Sports Days tend to turn into Wright Girls Night Out where she and I go to dinner and other fun things, like manicures and Barbie movies.

Last week, however, Jay came up with an idea to get her to a big-ticket event.  Someone he knows through work offered him tickets to Disney on Ice, which was playing down in Salt Lake City.  Jay snapped up two tickets and treated Tessa to a Daddy-Daughter date.

Here they are before the show:

Jay said she liked the show fine but didn't like the drive down too much and kept asking him when they would be there.  Dinner was a huge disappointment to Jay - with the whole of Salt Lake City to choose from, she chose......Carl's Jr.  He tried to talk her into pretty much anything else but she resisted. And so he caved.  Carl's Jr. it was.  As you know, you never argue with your date.  Especially when your date really, really wants to try star-shaped chicken nuggets.

The Birds

We have a lovely picture window in our living room with a beautiful view of the mountains to the east of our home.  We don't have any window coverings on it because we love it so much.

This window has become a death trap.

 We have a nice flowering pear tree in our front yard that flowers in the spring, gets nice and leafy and green in the summer and turns yellow, red and orange in the fall.  Once the leaves fall, the tree retains a large volume of berries that are quite popular among birds.  They come in clusters, sometimes dozens at at time, and perch on our tree to eat our berries.

Unfortunately, the birds that fly around, eating berries off this tree, keep flying into our window with a thud.  It's actually quite loud and startling.  They leave little bits of feathers and other bird-related stuff on the window. 

Sometimes they just bounce off.  Sometimes they are stunned for a minute and fly away.  Sometimes the poor things break their necks and die.  This happened twice today.

In case you can't tell, the dark blobs on either side of the picture are dead birds on our porch.  I actually didn't even see the one on the right for a long time, until a neighbor boy came up to inspect the one dead bird I knew about.  I opened the door and told him not to touch it.  His response?  "What about the other one?"  Uh, what other one. 

Yuck. 

I immediately texted Jay to Come Home Right Now!  and get the dead birds off the porch.  He was stuck in a meeting (something unimportant I'm sure) and couldn't leave right then.  So I fretted about it on the phone until my friend Nicole sent her son (who is Henry's age but much more brave about shoveling dead birds off neighborhood porches) to help me out.  It's a good thing, too, because a cat was suspiciously hanging around and the last thing I wanted was to watch that cat eat dead birds on my front porch.

We're not quite sure why these birds keep flinging themselves at our window.  I'm guessing it has to do with the light and the glare and they are in a frenzied state after gorging themselves on the berries off our tree but really?  I wish they'd just knock it off.

Who You Know

So Henry has this friend Max.  He is awesome.  They have known each other since 1st grade and share an interest in all things sports.  Max's dad works for our local paper and asked Henry a while ago if he would interested in being The Guest in the Pigskin Picks section - you know, where all the local sports guys pick games, from high school to the NFL. Henry said, ''sure", and left it at that.

 

 

Turns out he was serious.  So Henry, random 6th grade sports fan gomer at Cedar Ridge Middle School, was in the newspaper last week.

 



 

It was kind of a week of upsets and so I doubt he did too well, although I haven't done the math to check his percentage.  He had fun, though, and a couple of people from school and church recognized him from the article.

Could this be the beginning of a career in sports journalism?  According to Henry, only if his contract with the Yankees falls through.

Fall Pictures

My friend Melissa once again managed to coax some pretty good pictures out of my kids.  She is amazing and generous and kind and I love her! 

Brag Alert

Henry received his first report card this past week.  Where we live, the kids don't really bring home report cards until middle school, which is 6th grade.  I get progress updates and know how they are doing, but they don't receive letter grades.  So I was excited to see Henry's first official report card at the end of the 1st Quarter.

As you can see, he did great!  He made all A's and made Honor Roll.  He was proud of himself, and rightly so.  Middle school has been an adjustment.  He went from basically having little to no homework every night (because he finished it during school) to having homework at least half the time.  He has 7 different classes to keep up with and it has been a bit of a challenge. 

He was quick to tell us that he had friends who were paid for making honor roll - he was throwing out numbers like $50.  I'm sure that works for some families but Jay and I don't want to pay him for making good grades, which we expect anyway.  We did, however, want to make a big deal out of his success and make it clear that we were proud of him and his accomplishment.  Our compromise was to take the family out to dinner, with Henry getting to choose the location.

His first choice was Pizza Pie Cafe.  Gross.  I hate that place.  Honestly, I would rather not eat than eat there so I smiled and said, "your choice, Henry" and planned to eat dinner before we headed out.  Jay took pity on me and started lobbying for other choices.  I think his main argument was that the kids had just eaten there with Grandma while Jay and I were in Paris.  Whatever he said, it worked, because we are now going to Black Pearl, a Chinese place in Logan. 

Congrats to Henry on his first inclusion on Honor Roll.  And thanks to Jay for making it possible for me to enjoy a dinner out with my family.  Everyone in the Wright family is a winner today!

Halloween 2012

The weather on Halloween can be so unpredictable.  Some years it rains, some years it is cold and windy, some years it snows.  This year was perfect.  Literally the best Halloween weather we've had in years.  It was sunny and warm (think 70 ish) during the day and mild and clear in the evening.  We had a ton of trick or treaters and very little candy left over - thank goodness.

This year Tessa was a "Pink Vampire".  That really just means she wore vampire teeth and put together a hodge-podge or dress-up clothes together as a costume.  Whatever - it was easy.  She wanted sparkle makeup so we tried and it.  I may have sparkles in my bathroom for the next 10 years.

William couldn't decide what to be for Halloween this year.  He was trying to be funny and put an empty box over his head and said he'd just go as a box, which morphed into a Box Top.  It's probably my fault - I'm one of two Box Tops for Education Coordinators at the kids school this year and had Box Tops on the brain.  Anyway, he liked the idea because it was different and weird.  I thought it was just quirky - like William.

 Henry was a basketball player.  Actually, Henry wasn't even going to go trick-or-treating this year at all until about 10 minutes before he left.  His friend Jack texted him to see if Henry could go with him so he put on some basketball shorts and took off.  I think the lure of free candy and hanging out with a friend was just too much for him to handle.

Now it's November.  Time to gear up for the holidays. 

Hope your Halloween was great!

GNO

Today is the Wright boys annual pilgrimage to Salt Lake City to Mecca, aka Rice Eccles Stadium.  It actually did turn into a Wright boys trip - with Jay, Henry and William picking up Brad and Boston in Ogden and meeting Andrew and Colin for some pre-game pizza and fun.  Actually, as I type this the game hasn't even started yet since it was a late kick-off.  Thank goodness we don't have church until 1 pm this year since I doubt Jay and the boys will make it back to Hyde Park much before 1 am.

Tessa and I did our annual Girl's Night. This year we started at the Green Canyon Corn Maze, where Tessa's dance class performed their Halloween dances. I got a little on video but am having trouble uploading the video right now.  I'll try again later.

After the performance we went out to dinner.  She chose Apple Spice Bakery.  I was kind of surprised but she has apparently been wanting to try it and she loved it.  She had a grilled cheese sandwich and shared part of my chef salad.  After dinner, we rented a video from Redbox (her choice again - the new Barbie DVD The Princess and the Popstar) and made brownies. 

She kept talking about how it was "just the girls" today.  She even informed me during dinner that I was pretty lucky because I had her to talk to while the boys were gone.

She's right.  I'm pretty lucky.

Pumpkin Walk

Over UEA my friend Nicole and I took our kids to the Pumpkin Walk.  The weather was absolutely perfect and we had a good time.

Henry thought this one was cool until he realized it commemorated the Utes loss against the Aggie this year:

 People are so talented with their pumpkin carving:

 The Robinson and Wright kids:

 Of course Tessa had to be Snow White...

 ...and Cinderella

Other than the Pumpkin Walk, we really didn't do much for UEA.  Jay and I had the post-Best Vacation Ever grumpies so we just hung out, which was kind of nice. 

Reflections

Now that we've been back from our trip for a few days and are (mostly) back to normal, I've been thinking about a few things.

*Thanks to Jay's meticulous research, we were able to do most of what we wanted to do with little to no fuss.  We left the airport with our 2 Day L'Open bus tour tickets and our 6 Day Museum Pass, which saved us a little money but a whole lot of time, since we didn't have to stand in too many lines.  We knew roughly where we wanted to go and how to get there with minimal fuss.  I've been teasing Jay for a year about how much he has researched and read about Paris, but it really paid off. 

*We were originally planning to both leave and return on a Saturday but before we cashed in Delta Skymiles for our plane tickets Jay suggested that we leave a day earlier, giving us an extra full day in Paris.  It was a great decision, because that Sunday was the best weather day that we had.  We ended up with 8 total days for the trip - 2 travel days, 1 day in Normandy, 1 day at Versaille and 4 days in Paris.  We could have easily filled more days in Paris because there is just so much to do.

*Museums are great but it was good to break them up.  We did the Louvre on one day, the WWII museum on one day, Versaille on one day, the Orsay on one day and the Pompidou on one day.  We spent the most time at the WWI museum (and we could have spent more time there, but we were on a schedule with a tour guide) and Versaille, but they also required the most travel to get there.  It was nice to break up the inside, crowded museum stuff with just walking around, enjoying the city.

*Trip Advisor is your friend.

*As far as the hotel is concerned - location, location, location.  We had a great one (again, thanks to Jay - as you can tell, he did 95% of the planning for this trip) and it paid off.  Even in bad weather we were close to restaurants and the Metro and there was always somewhere close we could go in the St. Michel/St. Germain area.  We used hotel/American Express points to pay for our hotel.  There were other choices that would have worked - maybe had a bigger room - but the location we had couldn't be beat.

*It's OK to cry when you are leaving your kids for 8 days as long as you relax when you get there and have a great time.  I'll leave you to figure out which of us cried most of the way down to the airport. 

So, Paris.  Great trip.  Jay even managed to get an audio tape of me agreeing to go to Cambodia for our 30th anniversary.  In my defense, he had just surprised me with my replacement wedding set and I was overwhelmed emotionally.  I would have agreed to any number of things at that point. 

Oh well.  I've got 15 years to change his mind.  Or just give up and go with the flow.  As long as he does all the planning again.

Au Revoir

Our last day in Paris was decent weather-wise.  It wasn't raining (although it did rain a bit later that evening) so we decided to do the Tower at Notre Dame (we were going to on Thursday but the line was around the block and we wanted to go to the Orsay) and then just spend some time walking around Paris.  The line to get into the Towers was really long - over an hour - because they let 30 or 40 people go up every 10 minutes.  But the views were worth the wait:

After we left Notre Dame we walked a bit and came upon the Pompidou Center, which holds a fantatsic collection of modern art.  We originally were thinking that we didn't want to do any more museums but we changed our minds and we were glad we did.  The building itself is apparently quite controverisal - it is very  modern in a Renaissance era city - but the museum was wonderful.  If you like modern art, this is a must-see.

This video shows the Blue Series by Joan Miro' - we really like Miro and have two prints of his paintings in our home:

For our last night in Paris, we ate at Little Breizh, a cute little cafe specializing in crepes, then we went to visit the Sacre Couer.  It had just finished raining when we got there and so not too crowded but it was really dirty, with broken bottles and trash everywhere.  We walked around a bit and bought some cheese at a kind of farmer's market that they were having, then headed over for one last look at the Eiffel Tower:

15

Thursday, October 11th - our 15th Wedding Anniversary.  We have now been married about 1/3 of our lives.  That seems crazy to me! 

We spent the morning touring Notre Dame, then  walked over to the Ile St. Louis (one of the two islands in the Seine) and found a little cafe for lunch.  It started raining while we were there and it rained off and on the rest of the day.  After a long lunch (most meals in France were long, we found) we headed over to the Musee d'Orsay.  This museum was on my must-see list.  It is in a restored train station and houses some beautiful examples of Impressionist paintings, including Monet, Manet, Degas and Renoir. 

Again, it was fairly crowded but the layout of the museum made it seem much less crowded than the Louvre.  We stayed there for a few hours and bought prints of some of our favorite Van Gogh paintings.  I felt kind of bad - according to the audio tour, the paintings that we liked best were done during the period when Van Gogh was teetering on the edge of insanity.  I'm not sure what that says about us, but there you go.

Notre Dame:

 A statue of Joan d'Arc, inside the cathedral:

 Inside Notre Dame:

 Musee d'Orsay:

Thursday night was our big anniversary dinner.  To celebrate, we went to Guy Savoy, a restaurant in the Champs Elysee area of Paris.  I don't even know how to describe the it as anything other than a once in a lifetime experience.  We were there for over three hours; there were tables there that were there when we arrived and still being served when we left.  The food was amazing.

The cheese tray:

 Jay loves his fromage - as you can see:

 Here we are, 15 years later:

At dinner, Jay was acting weird.  It was more than just "I'm so happy to finally be eating this dinner that I've been planning for months".  I finally called him out and said he was making me nervous.  I seriously thought that he had some bad news to tell me - like, "hey, enjoy your dinner because I'm being reassigned to a new Utah State campus in Siberia for three years" or something. 

It turned out he was just excited because he had managed to surprise me.  About a year ago, I lost the main diamond in my engagement ring and so I haven't worn my rings since then.  I was sad about it but since diamonds can be kind of expensive I figured it would be a while before it was replaced.  Jay decided to replace the diamond before our trip and give me a new ring for our anniversary.  I was so relieved (that we won't be moving to Siberia) and happy (because I missed wearing my rings) that I started crying right there at the table.  He did good! 

Originally he was going to take me to the Eiffel Tower and give me the ring there but it was raining (again!) so we just headed back to the hotel.  It was the perfect end to a perfect anniversary.

Only one more day in Paris! 

Versaille

On Wednesday, October 10th we took another day trip - this time to Versaille.  It was a quick 30 minute train ride out of Paris.  The palace itself is located in central Versaille but it seems like another world away.  The palace, again, was crazy crowded.  It was incredibly interesting to see the State Apartments but it felt a little like being herded along through small passageways.  Once we got out of the palace, we spent hours in the gardens.  They were gorgeous, even though most of the flowers had faded and many of the fountains were drained.

The ceiling inside the chateau of Versaille:

 The Hall of Mirrors:

 One of the paths in the gardens:

This is a farmhouse the Marie Antoinette used to come to when she wanted to escape from life at court.  This may have been our favorite area of Versaille, partly because we had to walk a long way to get here and it wasn't very crowded.  It was full of cute little buildings like this - almost like a little French village set away from the tourists.

 You can see it was overcast and drizzly this day as well.  You can kind of see behind us how vast the gardens at Versaille really are:

We spent about six hours at Versaille.  We had dinner in Paris at a little place attached to a great little chocolate shop - Un Dimanche de Paris (which, translated, means A Sunday in Paris).  The food was really good - French cuisine, again - and we had a nice evening.  We walked around Paris a bit after dinner and took a few more nighttime pictures of Notre Dame:

We had to rest up because the next day was our 15th Wedding Anniversary and Jay's long awaited dinner at Guy Savoy, plus a big surprise for me.