McKinlee 1st Day of School - 2nd and Last Year of Preschool

McKinlee started her last year of Preschool this year. She goes Mon-Thurs for 2 1/2 hours each day. She's going to Happy Day Preschool again (the same preschool Tucker attended) and she loves it! I've been very impressed with their preschool for anyone who is looking for a recommendation in this area. They have lots of fun with the kids, but they are always teaching and emphasize early reading. They take each student at his/her own pace and won't go any faster than the child/parent wants to go.

McKinlee is a very, very smart little girl and started beginning reading last year in her 3-yr old class! She's doing well again this year! I am so proud of McKinlee and for her excitement to learn! It's contagious and it makes me proud to watch her!

Lazy End of Summer Fun

We went up to Kolob with Sean & Lesley to get away and spend a night up in the mountains! It is so beautiful up there and I only took one picture the whole time we were up there! :( I was too busy stuffing my face and chatting away. We headed up to Kolob without Yates because he was playing cops and robbers with the marijuana gardners.
Lesley's parents have a cabin and a big shout out to them for being so gracious and letting us come crash their pad every once in awhile. I really like her parents...we got to spend time with them at our Disneyland trip last year too. They're GREAT!
It was Yates and I's responsibility to do dinner that first night and we had decided that we wanted dutch oven chicken, potatoes and cobbler. I always help prep and prepare, but Yates is ALWAYS the one who tends to the actual cooking. He thought he might make it up, but wasn't sure so we waited as long as we dared wait and then started prepping and getting stuff sliced, peeled and getting stuff going ourselves. Just as we got to the point we were going to have to get stuff into the dutch ovens and get them cooking, guess who drove up??? Yates, and he had some good stories to share with us about all his adventures that day while we finished dinner! ;) Dinner turned out great, although we haven't quite perfected the cobbler yet...we're getting closer. We had lots of fun and the kids ran around and got plenty dirty. We got them all tucked in for the night and then us adults went outside and told stories and laughed until late late. What fun we always have when we get together!
Had a scrumptions pancakes and bacon breakfast the next morning and then we just hung out and let the kids play some more before we grudgingly packed up and headed home. It was a great weekend!
Here's little Maci and Titan enjoying the swing! THIS is the only picture I got...haha!

Tucker 1st Day of School - 2nd Grade

Holy moly! Second grade? For real?

Our oatmeal on the 1st day of school tradition...THEIR request...at least he has a shirt on this year! :)

Lookin' Good

At the bus stop with Draygen

Heading off

Tucker's New Hair Cut and a Close Call

Tucker got a new buzz for school this year. He loves it! I can't even honestly remember why, darn me for my blog update procrastination, but he just about split his head open the day before we took him to get the buzz. Sad that I can't even remember the story! I'll have to ask the boys and see if they recall and update if they remember what happened.

Play Dates

McKinlee has received the short end of the stick when it comes to play dates. There really aren't a lot of little girls her age in our ward and absolutely none in our neighborhood. She always ends up stuck having to play with Tucker's friends as a tag-a-long or just with her brothers. I tried to make a point to invite a couple of girls over this summer for play dates. McKinlee had a blast with both girls! Lots of silly giggling, teasing, dress up and pretend tea parties...something she rarely gets to do! We made sure to have a fun little photo shoot at each one and boy do these girls have some personality!
Don't mind that McKinlee's wearing the same clothes! She has her favorites, and it isn't unusual for her to dress herself the same every day until I finally put a stop to it. At least she's got the matching down, we're still working on that with Tucker. :)

Cute Chloe and McKinlee:

Cute Aelie and McKinlee:

Kellie Stilson Photography

This amazing photographer is having a giveaway for a free family photo contest on her blog at http://kelliestilsonphoto.blogspot.com/
Check out her photos and enter to win...but not too many of you so I have a better chance! LOL!

A Sure Bet that Summer is Here!

This is what you will see if you visit the Wright household during the summer months. My little lizards out sunning themselves on the cement after a dip in the cold water of the swimming pool. :) It always makes me smile!

Burned!

We had a little scare this summer. We tried to head off to have a dinner with the Adams family up at Red Cliffs Recreation Area, but when we got up there found out the road was closed and we couldn't make it. We weren't about to waste a dinner trip so we headed to the Leeds City Park instead. The park is actually very nice. It is very big with big grassy areas, a little cooler than here with big shade trees and the sun goes behind a little hill creating shade in the park quite a bit earlier than dusk. They have a big fire pit set up for use as well.

We had brought tin foil dinners so we got the fire going and cooked up our food. We finished eating and played around in the park for quite awhile before we decided it was time to head back home. I'm sure anyone who knows Tucker knows that he absolutely CANNOT stay away from fires!!! We've joked about it before, but have gotten upset with him plenty of times. We were packing up the trucks to head back home and Tucker decided he wanted to throw one more tiny little stick into the fire...not just anywhere in the fire but in the "perfect spot" in the middle. The fire pit is kind of tall and a cement encircled ordeal. It sits in the middle of a pad of red square "tiles". There were some small pebbles from the parking lot that were all over the tiles and when Tucker leaned over to put his stick in the middle his feet slipped on those pebbles and dumped him into the middle of the fire!!!
Brandon and I saw him about the same time, but he reacted much quicker and hurried and ran over and grabbed him out of the fire. Tucker had instinctively put his right hand down to catch him when he fell and his knee had stopped him as well. We tried to turn on a hose by the fire pit, but the water must have been turned off...no water came out! Brandon rushed him over to the back of his truck and opened up a cooler full of ice he had brought drinks in and shoved his hand into the ice...anything to try to get the heat out. His warm-up pants he'd been wearing had melted, but thankfully not to his skin. We kept some ice with us in a bag and headed home to wait and see if it was going to need to go into the Dr. It ended up not being as awful as I anticipated and his hand healed really well and never ended up getting infected. We actually still had some stuff at our house from when Titan had burned his hand on my parents' stove so we immediately started putting that stuff on it and keeping it covered until it healed good.

I just remember being sooooo scared!! I know Yates was too, because he got really upset with Tucker and started yelling at him while his hand was in the ice chest about what a horrible decision he'd made and even spanked him in the back of the truck. Tucker was so scared he ended up pee'ing his pants (both because Yates was upset and because he was scared about what had happened). I don't put that in here as a negative against Yates at ALL! We were all scared and anyone who knows Yates and Tucker knows that if anything ever happened to Tucker it would be a life-altering thing for Yates to deal with.

Lots of talks about fires and what COULD HAVE happened and we'll see if Tucker changes his ways. Hopefully he'll be a lot more careful in the future!

Sleepyhead

My kids can fall asleep in the wierdest places at any time of the day. You can tell when they've truly had enough. Case in point:


Titan just thinks I'm weird for thinking it's worth taking pictures of.

My Baby Turns 2!!!

Titan turned 2 on June 5th. I couldn't even begin to tell you just how much I love this little character of mine. He came packed with so much personality in such a little body and is starting to talk so well and clear that it makes me sad to see that he won't be my baby much longer. He's never really been the most cuddly baby...he'll hug and give kisses but he doesn't just want to snuggle up and STAY THERE. Heck, he doesn't stay ANYWHERE for very long. He's busy and on-the-go and I love him just how he is!
We were in Kanab this year again and just had a little birthday celebration over at JD & Jeri K's house. So much fun and it was so cute to watch McKinlee and Tucker give Titan presents they had picked out for him themselves.
Titan Craig...Happy Birthday little boy! We love you!

Tucker and Machine Pitch Baseball

1st post back...feelin' good! Let's begin where we left off, which was Summer 2010. Tucker played Machine Pitch baseball this year for the first time. He really enjoyed it actually. There was one game where the machine was being a little crazy and it actually hit Tucker with a pitch right in his hands! He had tried to duck and put the his hands up (holding the bat) to deflect the ball. He was a bit wounded for awhile, but it was toward the end of the game so he didn't miss too much. He played quite a few different positions this year: catch, shortstop, first base and in the outfield a little bit. He liked shortstop and outfield the most, but he was the BEST at catch and first base because he does well at catching and keeping the ball. It's so fun to watch the boys grow and progress through the years. I kept trying to encourage him while he was playing catcher because he did sooooo well, but he said it made his knees and the muscles in his legs hurt. I just laughed and then groaned remembering the same thing!!! The boy has a point!