More Pictures of Peter!

Peter has arrived!

Overdue

Luke has been so good about keeping this updated while I've been busy being pregnant, finishing school, etc. And this pregnancy is stretching out so long, that I decided he deserved a "pregnancy" picture, to show how well he has taken the whole thing. Here's Luke at a little over 9 months:


Doesn't he look great? Hardly any wear-and-tear at all. Ha ha ha! And here's me:


We are both so excited for Peter to get here, and are anxiously awaiting his arrival, but we're not the only ones! My fam can't hardly wait to meet him, and on Sunday night after we had a birthday dinner and vigorous game of volleyball, my sisters and mom got to work on some of my pressure points to encourage him to come:


Our darling baby is a little over a week overdue, but that just means that every day he's a little closer! Meanwhile, both mom and dad are feeling great, and are finding ways to keep busy while waiting for him to come, such as deep-cleaning the house, watching the entire Star Wars saga along with several other choice films, taking walks each night, practicing our relaxation scripts, playing with friends and family, and enjoying our time together.

We love you Peter! Please come soon!

JULY

Hi. It's Luke again!

First of all, here is Andrea at pretty much 9 months of pregnancy. She's huge in a very tiny way! We are so excited to have Peter in our arms. The official due date is tomorrow, but we both have a feeling that it'll be another week.

The other thing we are excited about is our move! We applied to the student housing at the U several months ago but as I corresponded with a girl that works there in the office, we were thinking that our chances of getting in right when we wanted to were slim, so we prepared a plan B and asked Mom and Dad Wright if we could live with them until we were offered an apartment at the U. They said they'd love to have us, and we were even getting kind of excited to live with them, but then the U called and offered us an apartment that we could move into on August 20 which works PERFECTLY!!! We were both so happy! We went and looked at the apartment immediately and although it is very small, we both feel like it is absolutely the perfect thing for our little family and we accepted the offer. So now we won't have to move in with parents after all and we will have much more time together as a family since I won't have to travel down to American Fork after my night classes. It was such an immense blessing and we're so overjoyed that it's going to work out!

New subject. The fourth of July was fun. We went and spent it with Mom and Dad Perkins and also Caleb and Lauren, and a hint of Andrew and his girlfriend. We just had a very nice relaxing day. We slept in, ate breakfast and talked until noon . . . Andrea napped, I washed our car for the first time in a year . . . we had a calm little barbecue and later that evening Lauren's parents invited us all to watch fireworks with them at Davis high. It was the first time we had seen a firework show to music and it was great! Here's a picture of the little Ho-Ho firecrackers that my Mom always makes, Andrea made them this year though.

The weekend after that we had a lot of birthdays to attend and a shower for Andrea with her family. It was a lot of fun too. These are pictures of Jackson and Alanna's combined party:

This is Jackson's Death Star cake that Caleb Made for him.

This is Jackson's other Skateboard cake with doughnut wheels (lucky boy!).

This is Alanna's Monkey cake.

When we were growing up my mom would make fun creative cakes for our birthdays like cookie monster cakes, baseball cakes, dragon cakes, etc. Sarah has definitely made the creative cake making a tradition for each of her kids birthdays. they're always really fun to see.

The first present that Alanna opened was . . . FINGERNAIL POLISH! I was amazed because she's just two years old, but she knew exactly what it was, exactly how to use it, and it was as if it was the only thing she ever wanted out of life! She tore into the package and I don't think anyone expected her to get very far but she picked some blue polish, unscrewed the lid and started trying to paint! People tried to persuade her to hold off until she had opened her other presents but she didn't care about them at all! she squealed and screamed and said her favorite word (No!) whenever anyone tried to take the polish from her so eventually we just gave in and patiently watched as she painted her nails. It was the cutest funniest thing ever!

And then here's one of the finished hand:

And while we're talking about Alanna, I have to mention that since she turned two she has immediately started liking me and acknowledging my presence etc. She'll hug me now, smile and laugh in my presence, let me hold her, wash her hands, and play with her. It's nice ya know? it's nice to try to give your niece a hug and not get stiff-armed in return :)

Sunday we had Ashton's birthday. I have to include this picture of Wilson and him:

We spent the afternoon helping with the quilt that Grandma Wright is making for Peter. The whole family got in on the quilting action. Here's Mom and Heidi:

It's going to be a really cool quilt with nine completely original and authentic patchwork illustrations by a really great guy called me :) I can't believe that Mom Wright is undertaking this huge task! It's going to be hard but she insisted on doing it so we all gave a big push to help her.

That evening we all told Ashton what we love about him and then we played a killer game of volleyball. I never had realized that there were enough people for a five on five game, and it was the most fun ever! Andrea and I can't stop talking about what a perfect, fun, friendly game it was.

And then we had this week which was fun as well but I'm done now so thanks for reading and goodnight.

SUMMER!

Well, It's Luke again. Picking up the slack, again. Andrea IS very busy being a wonderful wife and pregnant person though, and it's not like blogging is a chore, so come with me friends as I paint you a picture of our recent lives . . .

First of all, I need to get the mandatory pregnancy progress picture out of the way. Here she is, 7 months pregnant . . . and she's just beautiful.

Completely graceful, elegant, charming, and beautiful . . . and she's mine, HAH! So is the little one inside of her, HAH HAH! I LOVE watching them grow! It's my favorite. Peter kicks around all day long and keeps things interesting for Andrea at night as well. She is such an awesome girl, she hardly complains, she's just been happy as a clam through the whole thing. The guys at work ask me all of the time if she's "changed" or been acting "differently" yet and all I can say is "No, she's wonderful!" So there's that.

Next, Andrea GRADUATED! Mostly. She's on track to finish her last two online classes by the beginning of June, and then she'll be officially done. She got to do the ceremony already though. That was a fun day! Her parents and mine were able to go and watch her walk. The speakers had brief and interesting talks, and they read the graduates names very quickly so that the whole thing was over in two hours or less.

We had planned to meet some other family at the Texas Road House to have a celebration lunch, but it was closed. We went to the Olive Garden . . . it was busy. So we ended up going to Flour Girls and Dough Boys, a quaint little bakery type place here in American Fork, which ended up being the best place of all. They have delicious soups and sandwiches, and they have wonderful desserts.

After lunch Sarah, Caleb, Alanna, and the boys came to hang out at our apartment for a while. They played with my nerf dart, colored, and jumped on bubble wrap. It was a lot of fun, I love being around all of them.

This is a picture of Andrea with her graduation gifts. Mom and Dad Perkins bought the cool painting of Christ walking on the stormy sea, I got her the tulips, Sarah gave her a baby bouncer, and Mom and Dad Wright gave her the other flowers and a card with a little something inside if you know what I mean ;)

I'm very proud of my wife for working so hard and finishing school! I'm so happy that she has a degree and that she persevered even though it was really hard and miserable sometimes. Congratulations Andrea!

Now me. My school came to an end as well, I didn't graduate yet though, that's in three years. How fun, huh?

This semester was awesome! I love my art classes. At the end of the semester usually people have papers and tests to do . . . I had paintings and sculptures to do. The sculptures are pretty fun but they aren't really my thing. Here's one of the sculptures I made with paper.

Now painting . . . WOW! I have always been pretty good at drawing . . . and through the year I've found that in just about all of the media I've drawn with I'm pretty good, but painting is another story! I found painting to be incredibly difficult, frustrating, impossible . . . and completely AMAZING! I hate it and love it, it's just so fascinating! I'm determined to be good at it someday. The painting below was a final assignment where we were to imitate the technique used by Chuck Close in his paintings. It was HARD! Mine doesn't come near the quality of his, or the quality of half of my class's paintings, but I worked my butt off on it so there!

So now we're having summer. Andrea has been spending her time working part time, doing online classes, and doing a water aerobics class with her two good friends Britney and Amanda. I have been working a lot. I work for a company that sells power tool equipment, including lawn care equipment, and it's spring. We are busier than it's ever been before and it's been great because I've been able to work overtime! Besides that, we are both going through a Hypnobabies course every Saturday morning and we're trying to keep up with the homework! Hypnobabies is a birthing method for those of you who haven't heard of it. We love our teacher and we love the classes.

So there you have it. Thanks for reading. Goodnight.

Nothing big, just an update

Hello all. It's Luke again, filling in for my very busy and nearly 6 months pregnant wife. Look at her! Gorgeous isn't she?

A lot has happened since we last posted about that homemade butter. I won't go into too much detail but I'll try to touch on everything a little bit.

I guess I'll start with Passover. My Mom obtained from some neighbors that used to be in our ward a little booklet of a passover ceremony, LDS style, and she has made it a tradition in our family to celebrate passover every year near the end of March. It's really cool because it goes through all of the things that the Jewish passover ceremony does like leaving a door open and a place set for elijah at the table, eating bitter herbs dipped in salt water, matza, drinking wine (we use grape juice of course), eating horseradish (if that's how you spell that), all the while reading different little things that talk about the bondage in Egypt, etc. etc. The difference is it's been modified to talk about how the saviour has already come n'stuff I think. You know, to tell you the truth, even after doing it 3 or 4 times I don't really know what happens, and Andrea and I showed up late this year so that didn't help . . . I guess it's time that I started paying more attention. At any rate it's fun, alright? Eveyone gets to read, sing, and eat their little bitter herbs n'things in turn so it's a very involved and non-boring ceremony in my opinion. It was extra fun this year because along with our family we had Andrea's family and a few of the Sparks family as well. It was a ton of fun.

It must've been that week that I turned in my portfolio and application to the U of U Graphic Design Program, and that friday I found out that I had been accepted! Woo-hoo! We were pretty excited about that.

Then it may have been the next weekend that it was easter. On Saturday Evening we went to Layton so that I could go to priesthood session with my Dad and brothers. That's always nice. It's fun to see old friends from high school there at the ol' stake center. When we got home we dyed eggs with Caleb, James, Paul, Jackson, and Alanna. That was really fun too. I was trying to teach Paul how to put the egg in the dye without splashing or breaking the egg and he kept pulling away insisting that he could do it himself. Later, I splashed the dye and HE told ME to be careful and not splash. That was humbling . . . he's only three (right sis?) Alanna kept sampling the dye, and Jackson had fun experimenting with as many colors as possible on one egg. Mom bought doughnuts as is tradition (she always buys them when we go to priesthood for a treat when we come back). Andrea spent the entire evening making hot cross buns. It took FOREVER! Luckily while we were waiting for the darn dough to rise in-between stages of the recipe we got to watch "The Blind Side" cause Lauren brought it with her. We ended up not getting to bed until like two!

That morning we woke up to watch the kids go and do their easter egg hunt. Grandma gave them silly string to play with as well, so we shot each other with that a bit and then Jackson and Paul said we should use the rest on Caleb's car, so I helped them as any uncle would.

After that Andrea and I went to her house to watch the rest of conference, and it was also Dad Wright's birthday. So we had a fun time there and then as is tradition in the Wright fam, we all sat down and told Dad something that we really love about him. It is such a cool tradition! I love it. It's weird, cause I'm definitely an introvert (those of you who know me can attest to that) but on these birthday things in the Wright fam it's pretty easy to express your feelings to each other. I dunno how to explain it, it's just awesome and I'm glad we do it.

Besides that it's just been a lot of school. OH! Andrea is going to do her graduation ceremony next week I think it is! She's still one class short but they said she can do the ceremony if she promises to finish by august, so she's going to do it! We're both very excited and I'm very proud of my wife! So that was the big news for this week.

Do you all like how I put in every detail that crosses my mind? One last picture. This one is almost candid . . . Andrea told Kaden that if he touched her tummy he might be able to feel Peter (yeah, his name's Peter) kicking, and immediately everyone had leapt across the room to put a hand on Andrea's belly!

Looks like Peter won't be wanting for attention for a loooong time!

Well I think I've said enough. Have a great week everyone!

WAIT!!! ONE MORE THING!!! I have to tell you about banana treat. It's an amazing dessert that Andrea and I have been making. Get out a pencil and paper, cause you're going to want to remember this recipie. You will need . . .

Sliced frozen bananas

Milk

Put sliced frozen bananas in a blender. Put milk in the blender. More milk makes more of a milk shake texture, less makes a soft serve ice cream texture. However you do it, don't submerge the 'nana's completely in milk, just almost. I'm sure that any sort of milk would do (rice, soy, cow, whatever). Blend it up. Serve.

IT'S AMAZING!!! You don't even put any sugar in it or anything, it's just a completely wonderful dessert that may even be good for you!

We encourage you to try it.

NOW I'm done.

Homemade Butter!

I saw instructions on someone's blog on how to make homemade butter, and had to try it myself. It seemed deceptively easy, but when I tried it, it turned out to be just as simple as it seemed! It was too much fun! All I did was pour almost a quart of heavy cream into my bosch blender (a kitchen aid, food processor, and etc. would work just as well), turned it on, and about 7-10 minutes later it was butter! And buttermilk, too! After rinsing it of as much buttermilk as I could in cold water, we took a picture.

Wonderful, isn't it? Luke keeps checking on it every once in awhile. He keeps expecting to find it turned all soupy or something, he can't really believe we made butter! Ha ha ha! If you want to take a similar plunge into adventure, the post about making it can be found here: http://www.kozycarrierblog.com/search/label/Homesteading.