Summit School Happenings

We absolutely love the elementary school that William and Tessa attend.  The teachers and staff are amazing and we have had so many good experiences at Summit.  Both William and Tessa have had fun activities this month.

William is in the Gifted and Talented program at Summit and had to do a research project on a subject of his choice.  This year his topic was the French Revolution.  He did a lot of research and wrote a two page paper on the subject.  The culmination was a presenting a PowerPoint presentation on the subject to his 5th grade class.  He did a great job!

Tessa's 3rd Grade teacher has spent a bit of time during December teaching the kids about The Nutcracker.  They wrote reports, learned about dance and music and decorated their classroom with a nutcracker theme.  Today they performed a version of the story.  They all had parts with costumes.  Tessa was Marie/Clara and she did a great job!

We are so lucky to attend Summit Elementary!

William's 11th Birthday

Today is William's 11th Birthday.  To commemorate the occasion I decided to write down a few things about William as he turns 11.

• He is the most curious kid I know.  He is interested in so many things and takes the time to learn about them on his own time.  His interests are diverse and include sports, video games, astronomy, history and coin collecting.  
• He has been dying for his own electronic device and received an iPod touch for his birthday.  So far he loves it, although I hope it doesn't get too crazy.  This morning I called him upstairs to get ready for school and he texted me that he was coming.  Sigh.
• He is funny.  And not just funny as in "ha, ha" funny.  He is clever and creative when it comes to his sense of humor.  Anyone who knows William at all can attest to that.
• He is looking forward to going to middle school next year.  I'm not looking forward to having three kids at three different schools, but William is excited.

William is such a great kid.  He never wants a birthday party - he just wants to go out to dinner with our family.  This year he chose Buffalo Wild Wings.  Tonight we are having a cheesecake for his birthday dessert - no regular birthday cake for William!  

I kind of feel bad that he almost always has school on his birthday so it makes it hard to fit everything in on his actual birthday.  But he seems to like having his birthday dinner the weekend before, opening his gifts the night before (so he doesn't have to wait until the night of his birthday) and having cake (or cheesecake) after dinner on his actual birthday.  It kind of turns into William's birthday week of celebrating, which is fun.  

Happy birthday, William.  We love you!

Store Bought Mom

Hey, look at that.  I took pictures at Halloween.  Notice that the only costumed Wright this year was Tessa (as Hermione from the Harry Potter books).  The Wright kids are getting older, I guess.

I was able to help with Tessa's class party this year.  When Henry was little class parties stressed me out but at this point I'm pretty chill about it.  Lots of moms are willing to help so all I had to do was organize and buy treats.  I went with pumpkin shaped sugar cookies and frosting from a local store.  The kids were able to decorate their cookies and eat or take them home.  It was fun.

One of the kids asked me if I made the frosting for the cookies.  Before I could answer, Tessa piped up and said, "no.  She's more of a store-bought mom."

Yep.  That's me.  But at least I bring cookies from the store.

High Roller

William likes to take online quizzes.  I have to be really careful about the websites, though, because well, you know - the internet.  But he will take random quizzes about which animal he would be or which state he should live in.  You see links all the time on Facebook and lots of people take them, but since William doesn't have a FB account I'm not sure where he discovered all these quizzes. I never take quizzes like that, mainly because I'm not on Facebook that often but also because I am quite sure I won't like the results.  I took one.  Once.  I wanted to know what state I should be living in, according to the internet.  I got Wyoming,  I wasn't impressed.

Anyway.

The other day he took one that supposedly matches you with the country you should be living in.  According to the quiz, William should be living in Monaco.

Seriously?  Because his almost 11 year old responses indicate a propensity for martinis and gambling?  What kind of quiz is this?  He took it again and got Dubai.  William is apparently quite the cosmopolitan man of the world.

I really want to take this quiz.  I want the internet to tell me that I should be living in France so I don't feel bad when I peruse Paris Real Estate websites, looking for the perfect apartment in the 6th Arrondissement.

I won't give in, though.  I have a bad feeling my answer wouldn't be anything nearly as fun as France.  Or even Monaco or Dubai.

I think I'm probably a Canada.  At least according to the internet.

Fall Pictures

My friend Melissa does a great job taking pictures of my kids.  They will listen to her and we generally get some good shots.  Here are some from last week:

17

Today is our 17th wedding anniversary.  I wish I could say that we did something to fun to commemorate the occasion.  But, you know, stuff gets in the way.

Henry had a campout with the scouts last night and since Jay hasn't been able to go to many of them this year he wanted to at least camp out with them.  Unfortunately he had to work late and had to drive up Green Canyon in the dark, looking for the group.  The boys did a 10 mile hike today and Jay helped shuttle cars to the finish point so he didn't make it home until early afternoon.  By the time he got some yard stuff done around here, it was almost 3 and Henry was home.  Off the boys went to the USU Homecoming Tailgate Party, where Jay runs a booth for USU Student Services Marketing.  They will come home about 8 and I'm sure head right to bed after last night's campout.

Tessa abhors anything to do with football and although I think it would be fun, I would end up entertaining her so we stayed home.  She wanted Wendys for dinner.  Yum.

This is where Jay and I were 2 years ago today, celebrating our 15th anniversary:

C'est la vie.  

Back to Reality

Well, September has certainly gone by fast.  With school back in session, you would think that I would have all the time in the world to recount our days, but no.  Really no.

Back to school was a little rough this year but things have smoothed out.  Henry started a new school and other than the bus ride to and from seems to like it.  William and Tessa have gotten back in the swing of things, finally.  It took a while but we seem to be settling in for the school year.

September is always busy.  Between the big school PTA fundraiser and the Primary program, there is a lot to do.  But as September winds down and those things are over, I am finding time to clean and reorganize and get things done that probably should have been done over the summer but weren't, because, you know, summer!  It's much more fun to take the kids swimming than to clean out my closets.  Plus I find I can get a lot done in a much shorter period of time if the kids are occupied at school.

Now we are gearing up for fall.  Bring it on!