Olive Cart

Today in the car we were talking about back to school.  I was telling Henry that he should plan to eat lunch at school this year, at least for the first little bit.  For the past two years he has barely eaten lunch at school.  The lines are long, he doesn't like the food, he'd rather play basketball or whatever during lunch, and he got home so early (before 2:30 most days) that he could just eat a quick snack during the day to hold him over.  Whatever.  I wasn't going to force him to buy a lunch that he wouldn't eat so I dutifully sent peanut butter crackers in his backpack and figured he was old enough to not starve himself.

Anyway, he told me that he was, indeed, planning to eat at school because they had an olive cart.

Huh?

He meant, of course, that they have ala carte dining at his new school, where they can pick and choose from different offerings.  He is thinking that the lines will be shorter and he will have more choices.  But "olive cart"?  Seriously?  When I stopped laughing I asked him why he thought an olive cart would be good, since he doesn't like olives anyway.  He had heard me talk about ala carte options and just misunderstood the term, obviously.

William, aka Mr. Vocabulary, was quick to point out the correct term.

Jay, on the other hand, would love a lunch offering from the olive cart.  He'd be thrilled.

Henry, not so much.  I'm hoping to just get something more than peanut butter crackers in him during the day.  If he gets it from an olive cart, who am I to complain?

Shop Til You Drop

This past weekend Tessa and I attended what my sister-in-law Laura terms Estrogen Fest.  It is a fun weekend where all the ladies in the Wright family get together for food, fun and shopping.  We missed it last year because we were on our way home from Disneyland, but this year the stars aligned and we made the trip to Salt Lake City for some fun.

We shopped at City Creek Center.

 Went met Swoop at the Farmer's Market.

 We shopped til we dropped!

 We tried to go to see Music and the Spoken word, but settled for watching it in the Theater next to the main hall of the Conference Center since you had to be eight to be admitted to the live broadcast.

 We did go see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing their last song after the live broadcast was over.

It was a fun weekend, except for Elizabeth's tooth infection that sent her home early Saturday morning.  We are anticipating more fun with the Wright clan next summer.

While Tessa and I were gone, Jay took the boys over to Bear Lake for a day of boating with his boss.  They had a blast.  William got to drive the boat and only complained a little bit about "almost drowning" when the tube they were riding on flipped over on top of him.  Jay left his phone in the car so no pictures, unfortunately.  Oh well.

Teenage Dream

So Henry's a teenager.  I know conventional wisdom says we are supposed to dread the teenage years and he's been an official teenager for less than a day but I have a good feeling about teenage Henry.  He is really a good kid.  I know the next few years will bring a lot of changes to his life but I'm not worried about it now.  He is, generally speaking, a kind and responsible young man who doesn't seem to be on the road to rebellion.  At least not yet.

To celebrate I took Henry and a few of his friends to the Logan Aquatic Center today.  That is what is so great about a summer birthday - the weather is typically perfect for outdoor activities like swimming.  We spent the afternoon at the pool with pizza and snow cones.  He picked out an ice cream cake for tonight.  Easy-peasy.

His gift from us was a phone.  Not just an old phone that he can use as a glorified iPod.  A real, activated phone.  With his own number.  Jay was surprisingly resistant to the idea but eventually gave in.  There are lots of ground rules that he has to follow and heaven help him if he gets it taken away for breaking his school's cell phone policy.  He seems happy, though.

The birthday quote of the day goes to Tessa:  "Now that you are 13, Henry, I hope you don't turn into a punk."

Amen, sister.

Happy Birthday, Henry.  We love you!

Undefeated

William's Little League team played in the Cache Valley North Division Championship game last night.  They were undefeated leading into the game and William was nervous.  Heading into last season's playoffs they were undefeated as well and lost in the playoffs.  This year, they made it to the big game.  It was played in North Logan and the Hyde Park Rays played the Smithfield Reds.  It was a good game but the Rays prevailed, making them the champions!

The game made the local paper - here is a link:

http://news.hjnews.com/allaccess/hyde-park-rays-go-undefeated/article_543be518-13bf-11e4-93a1-0019bb2963f4.html

William had a good game.  He made it on base twice (he was hit by a pitch and walked) and stole home both times.  On his last at bat he hit a line drive that the first baseman jumped up to catch in a nice play.  He made two nice defensive plays as well - he chased a ball out from center field and held the runner at 2nd base with a nice throw to the shortstop and while he was playing shortstop he fielded a ground ball and threw the runner out at 2nd base.  

William loves playing baseball.  He really improved his hitting this year and was comfortable at several different defensive positions.  His coaches really worked hard with the kids and they all improved over the course of the year.  

Congratulations to the Hyde Park Rays!  

Safety First

I hate fireworks.  I don't think it makes me a bad person.  I just don't like them.  My friend Lara said that, to her, you might as well light a $20 bill on fire and watch it burn in the middle of the road.  I knew there was a reason we were friends.

Once a year, however, I cave and we do fireworks.  I make Jay buy them because I just can't.  We join our neighbors in the center of the cul-de-sac for 30 minutes of loud, smoky fireworks.  We have our system down and use our wheelbarrow to clean up the mess and it's all over and everyone is in bed by 10:30.

On July 5th, we awoke to this:

See that yellow stick with the charred ends?  It's our push broom!  Apparently something was still actively burning when Jay shoveled it into the wheelbarrow and caught our broom, the remaining fireworks and possibly the wheelbarrow on fire.  We didn't notice a thing until the next morning.  Thank heavens it wasn't windy - I keep picturing a roaring fire out in our front yard that very easily could have turned into a grass/house fire.

Next year, everything gets doused with water, if we even do fireworks at all.  Fireworks and me - we're not friends.  After his I don't think we ever will be.

Separate Lives

The Wright Family split along gender lines during the second week of June.  The boys went to Seattle, the girls stayed home.

It isn't as inequitable as it sounds.  Before Jay's surgery we were planning a big family vacation to Seattle.  We were going to see a friend of Jay's, catch a Yankees game, sight-see in Seattle and take the ferry over to Victoria Island (or is it Vancouver Island?   I don't know) for a day or so.  Plans changed after Jay didn't have quite as much time off as he thought and we didn't have quite as much disposable income as we thought.  But Jay's good friend Scott was able to get tickets to the Yankees/Mariners so Jay took the boys to see the sights and watch some baseball.  They were actually able to see two games, see some sights in Seattle and meet one of their favorite players in the whole world.

Henry on the field during batting practice:

The boys on the Space Needle:

A signed ball by Derek Jeter.  

Here is a picture of Derek Jeter signing their balls.  The lady in the striped skirt noticed Henry, William and Scott's two sons and brought Jeter over to give them autographs after he finished batting practice.  They were thrilled:

Since Tessa has little to no patience for baseball - she can barely make it through a little league game - we decided to stay home.  We took a little trip to Salt Lake City for an overnight trip and had some fun of our own:

We went to the planetarium.  Foucault's Pendulum kept Tessa occupied for a while:

While at the planetarium we saw the IMAX movie - Madagascar: Island of Lemurs.  It was fun.

The best stop of the day - Build A Bear Workshop so Tessa could pick out a new friend with some money from her birthday.  Meet Jade the Panda!

All in all everyone had a good time on their respective adventures.  Tessa would not have been happy spending 6 hours at the ballpark on two consecutive days.  William and Henry would not have been happy spending over an hour in Build a Bear while Tessa shopped for her new stuffed animal.  Everyone's a winner!

Summertime

The end of the school year is so crazy!  Lots of projects that I help on at the elementary school come to a head and culminate all at once.  There are programs and parties and carnivals.  It is crazy busy.  But then it's over.  And school is out!

William and his awesome 4th grade teacher Mr. Lish:

 Henry helped at the Summit Carnival.  He was a huge help and worked hard all day, at least until he had to go to school for a Utah History test:

Tessa and her wonderful 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Adams

 First shaved ice of the summer from our favorite place - Pinks: