A little of this and a little of that

 We had a great holiday season.  We spent Thanksgiving in New York with the Grandma and Grandpa and then hurried home to move into our house the first week in December.  It was a little overwhelming but I buckled down and got things put away just in time to get our Christmas decorations up and welcome Ian and Grandma and Grandpa H here for Christmas.  

Hyrum's brother Ian visited for a few days and then kids loved playing with him.  They were constantly asking for him to chase them around the basement.  He is a good sport.  We hope he'll come and visit again.

Hannah and Ian washing cleaning the kitchen.  I really hope he comes back again.

Grandma and Grandpa helping Spencer open his Christmas Eve pajama present.

Ready for Santa

Christmas was lovely.  It was fun to host it at our house and have my parents here too.  Between my mom and I, we made over 13 different kind of cookies and treats.  Those were multiple dozens of them too.  Let's just say there was some major belt loosening going on after Christmas.  

We also visited the Carnegie Science Center over the holiday break.  I love going there and so do the kids.  We stopped in to see the Miniature Railroad they have set up.  It's pretty neat.  There are little people moving, there was one guy chopping wood and a child swinging in a tree.  It was neat.

The railroad display covers things of Pittsburgh as well as all four seasons. 

Hyrum also worked on his traditional year-end sewing project.  It was fun to see him put all the patches together from the past year.  He had a great time putting together the map.

The 2012 Wright Family Adventure Patch.

We celebrated a couple birthdays between Hyrum and I. 

After Christmas, things calmed down a bit.  We have lots of projects to keep us busy.  Hyrum spent his winter Saturdays working on electrical projects.  We are working on networking our house so there are network ports in each room, plugging things into a central hub in our basement for internet access.  This frees up the wireless for things we can't or it isn't practical to plug into the network.  He's also re-worked some of our electric wiring and is gearing up to put ceiling fans and lights in teh kids' bedrooms and our living room.  He is enjoying this opportunity to be handy and learn new things.  I think he really enjoys it because he gets to buy tools, especially the power ones!

I am trying to keep things normal around here while throwing in a few projects too.  A couple months ago now, our neighbors gave us two twin beds.  I decided to paint them purple and make the girls a butterfly garden bedroom.  It's going to be a slow project but I'm excited to see how it all turns out.  I'll post pictures once I'm done.  It may be a while though : )

I started cloth napkins a year ago and just finished those.  The kids love picking out the color.  We have double sided napkins with pink/green, blue, yellow, red/tan.  It's kind of fun to have cheerful napkins though slightly painful to see my kids wipe their faces on something it has taken me a year to sew.  Oh well, that is why I made them. 

Then there are just the random moments of life.  Those are shown below.

Spencer discovered the joy of hiding under a blanket.  He's happy until the exit disappears.

Hannah had a snow day so, she decided to make a moose puppet and as the saying might go, "if the older sister makes a moose puppet, the younger brother will want to make on too."  Then of course Charlotte couldn't be left out so Jonathan made her one too.

Since Thanksgiving Hannah has lost four teeth.  They have all finally come back in and now she says there is another one loose.

An after church picture.  Charlotte was getting mad at me : )

One Friday we needed a fun activity and the kids wanted to make a craft so, I pulled out the Friend to see if there was an Easter craft and I found these sheep.  Thankfully I had enough cotton balls so we made some Easter Sheep.  It was fun and they loved doing it. 

This is everyone supervising Hyrum's hole in the wall.  He was working on opening the wall to put in a network port.

We visited Grandma and Grandpa for Easter.  The kids had a great time with the customary candy hunt, making cookies and candies and coloring pictures.

Then it was a visit to the cousins.  As a bonus, Grandma from Texas was there too.  Hugs with everyone.

These are the Wright cousins, and there is one more on the way in the Fall for Nate and Margaret, another boy.

This was the silly picture.  Hannah is trying her typical pose.  The littler boys were just done taking pictures and the littlest ones were just hanging out, waiting to be released.

Spencer celebrated his first birthday.  I can't believe a year had gone by.  What a year we've had.

The weather has gotten so beautiful, most days.  This Friday night, I packed a picnic dinner we packed the car and as soon as Hyrum got home from work we headed to Blueberry park for dinner, some baseball throwing and playground time.  It was a great night.

Charlotte trying to play baseball.

My Spencer-man.

Things are going well.  We have more projects than we think we'll ever get done. This weekend we chopped down all our hedges out front and I get to work on prying out the roots this week.   I hope to make it look a little more inviting and happy outside our house.  We're hoping to get a real landscaping/hardscaping plan put together so it's not just our uneducated ideas.  I'm excited to get it all done.

Jonathan is playing t-ball and Hannah is going to take a gymnastics class this summer.  We're planning on staying pretty close to home with a few day trips thrown in there and a visit from Grandma and Rachel later this summer.  Hurray for life.