September

We blessed our precious baby last Sunday. My mother-in-law still had the blessing outfit Luke wore, and Peter was barely able to squeeze into it, so he got to wear it! Just like Daddy. So cute!

Parenting has been amazing! So much has changed in our lives, and all for the better. It is without a doubt very challenging, but 90% of the time it is fun to meet the challenge. Even waking up several times a night isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. The only time I find myself waning in enthusiasm is when Peter wakes up at three in the morning and decides to stay up for an hour or two. Luckily it doesn't happen often, and even when he does I am usually able to take a nap later on, so it's fine. Here are a few changes that are great in our lives:

We get up in the morning. Sometime between five and eight a.m. Peter wakes up, and therefore so do we. And it's wonderful! I have always struggled getting up in the morning, but once up I love it! And now that I have a baby to require it (sadly, school and work were never enough motivation for me to wake up on time), I wake up and get on with the day relatively early. Thank you Peter!

I am fearless. Just today I killed two spiders and a fly, and only let out one screech. Anything that threatens my baby will immediately be exterminated; questions will be asked later, if at all. Luke appreciates not having to wake up or come running every time there is a menacing insect now, although sometimes I still call him just to polish his knight-in-shining-armor skills. Thank you Peter!

We are far more relaxed about "gross" stuff. Poop, pee, burps, and farts no longer phase us. I am frequently soaked in spit-up or my own milk, and I just wipe it off with the nearest burp cloth like it's nothing. Thank you Peter!

We shop at the farmer's market. This is less as a result of having a baby than because we moved to Salt Lake to be closer to Luke's school, but it's a wonderful thing nonetheless. Salt Lake has the biggest farmer's market in Utah so far, and it's awesome! We are very much about supporting local farmers, and hope to learn a lot about gardening ourselves so we can have our own garden/orchard someday.

Here is Peter looking with great interest at Luke's friend Cory Smith:

Peter is a very smiley boy, but it's hard to catch him on camera. Here are my attempts:

And here I'm trying to catch him sticking out his tongue:

He has started to suck on his fist and notice his feet, which is adorable!

He also has a brand-new cousin! Blaze Williamson:

Who is much smaller than he ever was!

Peter and his Daddy are completely enamored of one another, as is apparent from the photos below:

P.S. I apologize that several of the pictures need to be rotated. By the time I figured out how, it wasn't worth redoing it.

Quizzes

What is the purpose of a quiz?

I say quizzes are an attempt to assess whether a student has learned the material. After a quiz, a grade is given which reflects how well a student did on the quiz, and how well the student learned.

Yeah yeah, we all know grading can be subjective etc. But I've just about had it with professors preaching that grades don't matter, because we all know that they do matter for several reasons.

I took a quiz this week (a take home quiz) and I was astounded when I got it back and saw that I had gotten only 7/10 right. Upon further examination, I saw that the questions that were marked wrong were something like this:

1. Instead of "fewer," I wrote "less."
2. Instead of "upper halves of the letters," I wrote "the tops of the letters."
3. Instead of "increase the leading so there is more space between lines," I wrote "adjust the leading so there is mores pace between the lines."

At first I thought "I wonder what dork in here graded my paper . . . how could you possibly not understand that I answered the questions correctly?"

I took it to the teacher and the teacher said "Um, yeah . . . I actually graded yours. You know, since it was a take home quiz, I kind of wanted it to be exactly what was in the book, so . . . yeah."

So apparently I was to fill in the blanks, not read and retain information so that I could explain it to someone if they asked me.

And so I ask, what, my friends, was the purpose of this quiz? It doesn't seem like it was to learn . . . because I did in fact learn, but anyone who saw my grade would think that i had learned poorly, and that's not the truth at all.

Poor teachers. You have difficult jobs and I think we all get frustrated with the grading system and having to kind of conform to it in the way that we teach, but I exhort you, please ask yourself from time to time "what is the purpose of this quiz, assignment, or project?" If the purpose is one other than to learn, to gain experience, etc . . . you know, a valuable use of time . . . then reconsider what you are doing.

I don't have hard feeling against said professor, said professor is great and I enjoy said professor's class. I'm sure it is difficult to always have that passion for teaching and learning burning all of the time. But maybe with a little effort we can really improve the quality of the time that is spent in the classroom.

Thank you.

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.