The End of November and Beginning of December

 There are a few pictures from October that didn't make it onto that post, so here they are:

Peter at the pumpkin patch.

 

Peter wolfing down pizza at Grandma's house. We do our best to eat healthy, but if there is one junk food this family loves, it's pizza! Generally the five buck version from Little Caesar's. We end up getting one at least once a month, probably more like twice if I'm honest. Ah well. Perfection evades us all! 

I can't remember for certain, but I believe Luke's parents finished installing new cabinets (and re-staining the bottom ones) in October. Aren't they striking?

The pumpkins we carved at the Perkins' family annual Halloween Party at Sarah's house. So much fun! I did the haunted house on the far left, Luke did the inside ghost on the far right.

And our costumes from Halloween! Isn't Luke a genius? Love it!

For those of you who are not familiar with Cars II, my costume is of Holly Shiftwell, a classy British car who ends up falling in love with Mater (Luke's costume). Isn't she lovely?

Peter loved the costumes, but he liked playing with them more than wearing them. Here he is, using Mater to make Potty-Time more entrancing.

A few more of our pictures come from November, before Thanksgiving I believe. In the series below, Peter is playing with his stuffed cat (which used to be Luke's stuffed cat). He hasn't shown any permanent attachment to any of his toys, but he will go through phases where he prizes one above the others for a day or two. At this time, it was the cat.

 

 

I was also so excited, because the cat seemed to help him get over his dislike of the small slides. He has been happy to go down the big, twisty one, for quite some time, all by himself. But the short little orange ones pictured below? Not a chance. However, having the cat with him, and seeing how the cat (aided by Mom), enjoyed going down the small slides, seemed to help him decide he'd like going down the small slides too. Hooray!

 

These two are random pictures of Peter that Luke took, showing the delights of childhood. First, lights. All children love them, and seem most to enjoy pointing them straight at their own eyes or someone else's.

Second, silly faces. Peter seems particularly to be practicing the Wright family grin, which involves jutting out one's lower jaw while screwing up the eyebrows and all other facial muscles as much as possible. Invented by my elder brother Ronny (who was possibly inspired by my mother's goat faces...), each of us has a version. This moment was particularly charming though, because Peter was outside with his dad, when he saw his reflection, and of course this had to be his immediate reaction. "An outdoor mirror? What a perfect place to practice my face-making. Don't mind if I do."

Four of the Perkins' family (including Luke) have their birthday in November. For Luke's birthday I tried to plan a surprise, inviting several of his high school friends over for dinner and games without his knowing. I was outed by technology. Luke happened to glance at a text that made mention of said party, and it was over. So annoying! Another time, dear, another time. It was still fun to see everyone though, and we played Bananagrams, which I had gotten Luke as his birthday present.

A week later we went to Sarah's house to celebrate all the birthdays. We had the favorite dish of one of Disneyland's restaurants, deep-fried ham and cheese sandwiches dipped in jelly, and made gingerbread houses. Luke didn't quite finish ours, and perhaps you can see why. Isn't it lovely? Just what a gingerbread house ought to be.

On to Thanksgiving. We spent it with my family this year, who were spending it with my dad's side, so we saw about thirty members of the Wright clan. I got to do the rolls, but I was a bit embarrassed, because I made them the day before, and they got all smashed on the trip to Layton. Nothing like a smashed, whole wheat roll, to try to chew and wash down with water. Or sparkling cider, or eggnog, characteristic of the holiday season at my house. Anyway, the food was divine, the company most enjoyable, and it was a great day. My aunt Jackie (my dad's younger sister) had recently made a humanitarian trip to Africa to help install some water wells and teach women's hygiene. She had an incredible experience, and showed us all a slideshow of the trip and told us about her experience.

This is a picture of my uncle Derek (my Dad's brother) playing with Peter by tying him up with exercise cords, while my brother Ronny laughs in the background. Peter enjoyed the first round, but decided he didn't want a second.

The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the day to deck my parents' house with boughs of holly and all their other Christmas decor. It's a big job, but we all pitch in, and a few hours later it looks like this:

The banister is generally my job, though Luke has done it for me the past two years since Peter was too wee to allow me to do much of anything. This year I was especially proud of it, though, because one of the bows was too rumpled to use again, and after my sister Heidi and I consulted YouTube and figured out how to make it, who do you think accomplished the task? Indeed, I managed a bow not too shabby, and feel extremely crafty because of it.

This is my parents' 12-foot tree that goes in their formal room. For years we have put it up and thought it looked a bit odd. This year, we ended up switching one of the boxes that we usually used for the family room tree, and when we put it up we suddenly realized it finally looked right! We must have switched out the boxes years ago, and never realized the mistake until now. Luke proudly reports that he always thought this tree looked awful until this year. Ha!

A view of the family room tree, a bit shorter and fuller than it's been in some time, and my mom and aunt Melanie chatting.

Our own decorations aren't nearly so grand, but we do have some beautiful things. Luke does a lovely job with our little tree each year, and last year my sister Samantha gave us a beautiful Nativity set she brought back from Ecuador. I tend to like the more abstract versions of the nativity, like this one, best.

The weekend Luke finished his classes, we got to go help decorate his parents' tree as well. Of course we forgot to take pictures! But it's very beautiful, with all the sentimental ornaments of the past, and a garland of sparkling popcorn. So fun!

On this same day, Grandma Ce Ce got out this Seuss-like musical instrument for Peter. It can be rigged up in a variety of ways, and Peter had a great time puffing out his cheeks and blowing his different horns.

Now I will embark on personal family updates.

We'll start with Peter. Peter is delightful. He is learning and developing so much every day! I can't remember why I took this picture. Possibly to show our typical breakfast (toast and fruit). Possibly trying to get a shot of his lovely hair. Possibly trying to show one of his favorite fruits, Cutie oranges. Possibly just basking in the wonder that is my son. At any rate, my mother-memory has no idea, so choose your own adventure.

Peter continues to be very helpful around the house. This is a picture of him helping take out the garbage, one of his ongoing chores. He likes helping with the dishes and always makes a grab for the broom whenever we take it out. We have to set a timer to let him see when it will be his turn, so he'll allow us to do the job!

He is not, however, always enthusiastic about putting away his toys. I get a little overwhelmed with the task sometimes, too.

He loves playing with friends (in this case, Aaron)...

and cousins (in this case, Silas).

And we continually find him mimicking mom and dad. Here he is, trying on dad's belt.

And here he is pulling a similar face.

He likes to copy everything, right down to our less-desirable qualities. I'm afraid I can blame no one but myself when I hear him saying, "That's soo-pid, ha?" (Stupid. Sometimes things just are, and I express my knowledge of this out loud.)

Overall, we couldn't be luckier to have such a charmer. People are always saying that being Grandparents is way better than being parents, but I'll have to see it to believe it. I love this little boy! And we are so excited for his brother to come in a few short months!

On to Luke. Luke has just finished one of his hardest semesters, and I am so grateful! He tried to dedicate as much time as possible to homework, while working part time to provide for us, and still having fun and helping out, and it was just a lot on his plate. People insist that life only gets busier, but I am certain that those people do not have a clear memory of working and going to school. We are also assured by some of our friends who have already graduated that their lives have indeed become less hectic since graduating and entering the work force full-time. So I remain hopeful. Life shouldn't be as crazy this next semester, because Luke is only taking two classes instead of three. Our baby is due the beginning of April, so that could get fun, but graduation will come in May, and then we will finally be done! So excited! Here is a picture of Luke and Peter. So handsome.

Since finishing the semester Luke has been busily engaged in making really cool Christmas presents. He picked my sister Samantha's name this year, and decided to do the 12 days of Hogwarts Christmas for her. She and my family have all been delighted opening his brown-paper packages each day, and say they have taken pictures, so perhaps I'll be able to show them off in the next post. He has also spent a good deal of time in secret working on a present for me, which he continually tells me I will probably love, and he's so excited about. I really need Christmas to get here so I can finally see what it is!

This year is the first that I have really gone Christmas shopping for Peter, and I can now understand why people have trouble staying within their budgets. I went to Toys R Us for one of his gifts, and it was so much fun to walk around and see everything! There are sooooo many things that would be fun to get him! However, I have hit upon a strategy that hopefully will serve me well. I heard of a family who does three presents per person, per year, because that's how many Christ got, and they theme them by body, mind, and spirit. I thought it was a perfect idea, and have defined the themes to suit me, so that "body" will be something for fun, "mind" will be something enriching, and "spirit" will be something to help build their testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For me, limiting the number of gifts and theme-ing them takes a lot of pressure off of getting the one, perfect gift. It also should help keep me in check from buying all the wonderful things that could possibly be bought. We'll see how it goes.

Most recently, Luke has tried his hand at cutting hair. He gave Peter a cut one night while Peter enjoyed a few episodes of Curious George, and didn't do too bad. The back was the tough part, and we've decided to call in the expert (aunt Heidi) to manage it. Luke is determined to watch and learn. He was pretty put-out when he found it wasn't as easy as it looked, which made me feel better about my own botched attempts in the past. Here are the results of his shearing skills:

This last picture was one Luke took for his Dad. The tiny dots in the snow are a herd of deer. I love the way our apartments are set up here! And winter is an awfully beautiful season in Utah, despite the extreme cold.

My life has largely been covered while I talked about Luke and Peter's. I did get a haircut, back to a rather short pixie style. It's been very nice to have my bangs at the appropriate length! I spend my days making food and taking care of Peter. Luke has been a gem and has done most of the house-cleaning over the past month or two. I have been bitten by the organizing bug, and am hoping to reorganize and clean our house over the break so we have a fresh start for the new year. This pregnancy has been great, only I am soooo itchy! My belly is, anyway. I've been moisturizing it every day just about, and still it itches! It didn't itch like this last time until at least the last two months, so I'm pretty annoyed about it. Any suggestions would be welcome!

So there's the update. We are all happy and well, and so looking forward to Christmas!

October and the Beginning of November

October was so fun and busy! The first weekend was General Conference, which we so enjoyed! There was an especially exciting announcement this time: young men may now be called to serve missions after they complete high school, or turn 18 years old, and young women may be called at 19 years old. It's so exciting to be living during these important times of growth for the church!

That weekend we also visited a small pumpkin patch, as pictured above, and feasted on Grandma Wright's famous cinnamon rolls, as pictured below. Delicious!

The picture below is of my attempt to make cooking easier. It involved buying all the produce for the week, chopping it up all at once, and separating the ingredients into their respective bags, to be pulled out of the refrigerator on the day they were needed and quickly whipped up into meals. Alas, the effort to chop everything at once wore me down after only the second try, and I'm back to just doing all the meal-making on the day of the actual meal. I still think it was such a great idea though! 

Here's Peter out playing for one of the last times with his little friend Addie. She and her family just moved to Japan, and everybody around here misses them! She was definitely a bright ray of sunshine among the kids.

Here I was trying to capture Peter playing peek-a-boo with me by emerging from behind the towels again and again. So cute!

For Halloween this year we got hold of some boxes and spray paint and fashioned cars for all of us to wear as our costumes. Not just any cars, of course. Peter was Lightning McQueen, Luke was Mater, and I was Mater's love interest, Holly Shiftwell, from the second movie. Luke took on the project of making the cars, so of course they turned out fantastic! They were certainly a big hit with all the little kids at our ward Halloween party. Awesomely, I do not currently have a picture of us in our costumes. Luke may have some on his phone, so hopefully I'll remember to get it and put them on here.

Here is Peter playing in one of the boxes.

Earlier in the month we had our annual Halloween party with Luke's family at his sister Sarah's house, where we carved pumpkins, had a pie-eating contest among the kids and adults, and a donut eating contest. So fun! I carved a haunted house, pictured on the left, and Luke did the ghost on the inside of the pumpkin.





Halloween was also the day we found out we're having a boy! It's going to be so perfect for Peter to have a little brother. It will also be so perfect that our baby will have a cousin just a few short weeks older than him in the Caleb and Lauren Perkins family! And his cousin Silas on the Wright side will only be a year older. Perfect, perfect, perfect!

Near the beginning of November Peter's friend Isaac (pictured below on the right in the green t-shirt) turned three and invited all the neighbor kids to his birthday! The kids shot off a faulty rocket (it only actually shot into the air every three or four tries), played "pin the horn on the dinosaur" and ate an awesome lava cake with ice cream. The cake was so cool! Isaac's mom mixed red cake mix (red velvet?) with chocolate for the actual cake part, frosted it with chocolate frosting and some red frosting dribbling from the center. In the center she cut out a hole big enough for a small plastic cup to be put down in, then put dry ice and water in the cup so that it frothed out and looked like the cake was an actual smoking mountain! Brilliant! Thought of it all on her own, too, which I was especially impressed with since I tend to get most of my "creative" ideas from books, magazines, pinterest, etc. Despite the incredibly cool nature of the cake, Peter hardly touched it, far preferring the excellent vanilla ice cream. It's pretty much ice cream or nothing for that boy.

Also at the beginning of November I launched a book club in our ward. I am so excited about it! We're starting off by reading The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin, and I'm really enjoying it so far. Our first meeting to actually talk about what we read is tonight. Wish me luck!

At any rate, having started the club, I've been trying to get a few minutes of reading in each night while Luke is reading to Peter. Sometimes (all the time) I have a hard time putting my book down though, and Luke and Peter have to come remind me it's time for prayer and bed. Here is Peter, giving me his version of a scalp massage as he and daddy try to distract me away from my reading. :)

This fall has been beyond beautiful, and we've been able to get outside with the other neighbor kids a lot and play! Here was the last day the kids could play in the leaves before the blowers came and cleaned them up. And not a moment too soon, as the big snowstorm came that very weekend!

Here is Peter enjoying his toast while luxuriating in the playhouse.

Last, a beautiful picture of our beautiful boy, taken by Addie's mom, Rui. Miss those guys!