Fall Festivities

The last week of October is always busy and fun at our house. Lydia has her birthday the day before Halloween. We always need more time in the week to get everything done. Needless to say, we have never carved pumpkins before Halloween. We carved them tonight, and the girls had a lot of fun. (Some of my pictures are crooked on the wall. We rearranged our dining room furniture, and need to rehang the pictures!)

Fall 2012 - how to create a free slideshow

John Woodruff Wright

John Woodruff Wright was born on Tuesday, June 12th!  He was 7 lbs. 13 oz. and 20 inches long.  We are so glad to have him in our family.  He is a very happy, calm baby.  John was named after Aaron's Grandpa Woody.  When the girls first came to see him, Ellie was asleep and wasn't very happy when she woke up and saw a baby.  After about five minutes, she fell in love with him.  She loves to look at his fingers and toes!  We are all doing well and love having a boy in the family!

John Woodruff Wright - how to create a free slideshow

The picture of the lake is thrown in there just for fun. We had some friends tell us about a man-made beach in Grandbury Texas. They imported beach sand from a real beach and created a nice place to play with the family. We went down last weekend to check it out before John was born. The girls loved it! We hope to go back soon.

Our New House!

For those of you who don't know our lovely story, I will tell you a tale.  There once was a family with five girls living in a beautiful three bedroom house.  The parents in that household felt like they should have another child join the family.  They soon were expecting a new addition and decided that there house was too small.  They didn't want to have to change schools and lose the wonderful Suzuki program that there kids participated in.  So, they looked into remodeling their house and adding on two bedrooms.  However, the interest rate was too high. 

Next, they looked into building a house that would be in the school zone.  They put money down on a lot so that they could build a four bedroom home.  This was done in December.

In January, they talked with a realtor and put their house on the market.  It sold in three days!  Yeah, right!  There were some set backs.  The buyers wanted to have the house in two and 1/2 weeks.  Yikes! (I am changing to first person now...) We were looking at rentals to stay at while waiting to build.  Everything was going to be super small and squishy, and we would be stuck in a rental agreement for a year.  We weren't quite sure what to do.  On a whim, we decided to look at what houses were for sale to see if we could find something.  We found something the next day!  We were so excited.  It was even a five bedroom house which was good because we are having a BOY!  They accepted our offer and we were ready to move.  They would be able to let us into our house, the day after we sold ours.  We made arrangements with some friends to be able to stay the night while waiting to move into our new house the next day.

We were closing on our house on Friday.  We had everything packed up and loaded on Wednesday.  While loading the Uhaul truck, we got a call from our realtor with some bad news.  The house we were supposed to buy couldn't appraise for what it needed to. 

We were thrown into a whirlwind of unknowns.  Our friends told us that we could stay with them.  They were incredible!  We tried to buy another home and the inspection was terrible.  Then, we tried to buy the first house again buy getting an apraisal review.  It still fell short.  We were at our wits end.  We had to buy a house in our school district, or our kids would not be able to continue learning the cello and viola.  I was devastated.  There were plenty of nice houses that we looked at outside of our district, but not a lot of options in our district.  We decided to look at one more house before we gave up our Suzuki program.  It was lovely and it appraised!  It took six weeks to find this house, but we feel blessed to have it.  Our new ward is very nice and welcoming.  We live about 5 minutes away from Aaron's work.  We are privileged to live in a culd-e-sac again, and we have sidewalks!  The only downside is that the girls have a fifteen minute commute to school.  We are so grateful that everything worked out.  They are able to transfer to our old school and will continue their lessons.  We have a house that fits the needs for our family!  We have a loving Heavenly Father who helped us.

With out further ado, here are pictures of the house!  I am posting pictures of the downstairs this week.  Hopefully next week I will have pictures of the front, back and upstairs!

Our New House Downstairs edition - how to create a free slideshow

Hannah's Baptism

Hannah was baptized in April.  We are so proud of her.  She bore her testimony in sacrament meeting today and did a wonderful job.  I am playing a little bit of blog catch up here, but I wanted to document this special day!  My sister Genevieve and her family came from Georgia to be there with us.  The Smith family was also there (They feel like family--we stayed with them for six weeks while transitioning between houses.  They are wonderful people!).  Since we didn't have a house, we stayed with the Nelsons at a hotel.  The kids had fun swimming, but the water was so cold!  Here are some pictures of Hannah's baptism day!

 Hannah and Aaron

 Hannah's Baptism Dress

 The Fam

 Hannah with the Smiths

 Hannah with the Nelsons

 Cousins and Friends

The Nelson /Wright Clan

Spring recitals

This year was exciting because Jenny started playing the viola!  Here are their solo recitals!

Jenny Played Mississippi Stop-Stop Twinkle

Lydia Played Chorus

Hannah Played Rigadoon

We were worried about Jenny because she cut her finger really bad the day before.  Half of her fingerpad was cut and she needed to use it to push down on the strings.  She pulled through and was able to play.  We are proud of all of our girls!

Curlers

Yesterday all of the girls wanted curlers in their hair.  Ellie kept coming over and wanted to participate.  She wanted curlers like Lydia.  She looked so cute!  The curlers stayed in for a while--even through a bath.  However, she took them out before bed.  =(

Sprinkler Fun

Aaron needed to try out the sprinklers in our new house.  The girls loved playing in the water!

On a side note, we didn't turn off the sprinkler system and it came on early Friday morning.  It wouldn't be such a bad thing to water twice, but some of the sprinkler heads are broken!  Needless to say, we need to quickly learn how to repair them!

Spring Concerts

Lydia got to play in an orchestra this year. It was very fun and exciting! The school district celebrated its 10th year of Suzuki String instruction in their schools. To celebrate, the had the composer of this song to come and conduct them play. Lydia played in an elementary Spring Orchestra which played with the Elementary Honor Orchestra, Jr. High Orchestra and High School Orchestras. There were 300 students playing all together. It was very neat!

Here is Hannah's recital piece. She decided to play "Song of the Wind." The students are supposed to pass of 6 songs a school year. Hannah passed off seven. We are proud of her!

Lydia played "Etude" for her recital piece. She also passed off seven songs during the school year. She also completed the first book for Suzuki. She has started working on the second book. Lydia is progressing very well!

Character Book Dress-up Day

Lydia and Hannah got to dress up as characters in a book for school. They both picked which book they wanted to dress up as, and then we put together costumes. Both of them won an award in their class and got to bring home a book!

5K or Bust!

I think that I will probably bust, but I am going to participate in a 5k this coming Saturday (May 14th). The best part of it is---it is in Utah! I am so excited to come home for a weekend! The race is for my sister and her husband. If you are in the area and want to run with me, registration information can be found at www.poundthepavementforparenthood.com
I can't make it link up--please copy and paste the link =)

***If you register with a postmark by May 11th, you are entered into a raffle! It should be a fun day and a good way to get some exercise!

What happens when two heads collide?

1. A baby with lots of blood and a fat lip.
2. A frantic mother.
3. A mad dash to a friend who is a doctor, to see if we need stitches.
4. Missionaries stuck in the car, trying to get home, while mother is at friends house with Ellie.
5. Missed ward temple night.
6. Night destined to lots of rocking and holding baby.
7. Friends forever!

Valentine's Day Ball

Every year we celebrate Valentine's with a Valentine's Day Ball. Since Valentine's is on Monday, and a school night, we had our dance on Saturday. We started this tradition when we moved away from home and we all look forward to it. This year instead of corsages (previously we wore corsages made from fake flowers) I made some flowers out of zippers, and some valentine necklaces. We danced to Frank Sinatra, did some line dances, celtic music and played a little bit of Just Dance Kids. We all had a blast!

School's out!

We have no school today or tomorrow! We do have snow and ice! The girls last about 5 minutes outside before they decide it is time to come back inside. We will enjoy our artic blast inside our home!

New Blog

One of my sisters recently found out that she would need to try invitro to have children. To help earn money for this, she has started a blog to sell handmade items. If you would like to check it out, the blog is two infertile turtles!

Interview with Jenny and Rachel

Rachel and Jenny got quite excited during the filming of the older girls' room. Aaron did this short interview with them about Christmas. I think they are pretty cute!

Lydia's room

I did a bit of work in my room, and I would like to show you a tour of it.

Lydia

Hannah's side of the room

This is a tour of Miss Hannah's room. She worked very hard to make it clean. She will give you a two minute tour. We rearranged and got a few new things for it. You may not notice, but if you look very hard you might see a monkey picture. I hope you enjoy this video. Good night, have fun, enjoy! Love, Hannah

Out with the old, in with the used...

These last couple of weeks have brought some changes to our house! Everything is used, but new for us. The girls have been wanting a pet, so I told them I could handle birds. I know that they are not the most exciting as far as playing goes, but they are fun to look at, and I don't have to worry about pet messes. I found the cage on craigslist.

The girls named the birds Blueberry and Heart

Jenny is modeling Aaron's used treasure. He traded out his scooter for a nice used Mini. Now we need to sell our scooter!



The girls were given this Jeep from someone in the ward. They love it, and want to drive it every day.


Lastly, we got rid of our couch about a month ago, and were needing something to sit on as a family. I found this couch on craigslist for free. I know that it is missing some elements, such as cushions, but decided to go with it. You can't always pass up free. Anyway, our Labor day was spent picking out fabric and making new cushions and pillows for our couch.

Today was spent cleaning the couch and carpets. The cushions show up lighter in the picture than they look in real life. We all enjoy the couch, as we can all sit down at the same time!

Ellie's smiles and the first day of school!

Ellie has started smiling, and noticing us a lot more now. I tried to capture a few smiles on camera!

Lydia and Hannah also started school today. They were so excited, they woke up at 4:30 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. When we let them get up, they rushed to get dressed and do their hair. They even helped make their lunches. I think that they both enjoyed their first day. We don't always get a lot of feedback around here. We will see how tomorrow goes!

Ellie's Blessing

Ellie was blessed last Fast Sunday. We took a couple of pictures that morning of her in her dress, but she wasn't very happy. I need to try to take some more of her. Here are pictures of her with Aaron and me.