Merry Merry Christmas

 Another Christmas come and gone.  It seems so crazy.  My kiddos had a great time, I had a great time.  We are so blessed.

Here are a few (and by few I mean a lot of) pics of our fun

 Grandma Taco's fish pond

 Sorry mike and amanda for destroying your beautiful new house by letting the kids decorate their own sugar cookies

 Christmas morning

 The big debate each year is whether or not Santa should wrap the presents.  I say no, nate says yes.  Nate won this year.

 The 13 grandsons in the pj's from grandpa and grandma squeaker....seriously, someone needs to get some pink in there.   I call not it.

A one-man band

So in my last post I wrote about how I thought that on Nate's last day of class there should be a big to-do.  Confetti, a marching band, noise makers etc.  But he got nothing more than me doing the happy dance.  Well turns out he must have had the same thought.  Let me rewind a bit to explain why.  We spent the whole day Saturday doing whatever we wanted.  No plans, NO HOMEWORK, nothing important scheduled.  We just rearranged rooms for the kiddos.  Nate was whining about needing a Dr. Pepper, so me being the great wife that I am went to get him one.  When I got home and walked in the door I heard some sort of music/screeching coming from the bedroom.  This is what I found:

Nate had found his clarinet and, for everyone's amusement, was rockin to Happy Birthday.  Turns out he got his marching band after all--sort of.  A one-man band that consisted of himself.  I still wished I would have had confetti.

I think I am most happy about him being home so he can help me with this little monster.

Why do I not remember my other boys doing stuff like this?  Baylor colored on my walls this week too but I wasn't so happy after that so there is no pic to document it.   When you are cooped up all day everyday I guess you make your own fun, which is extra fun when mom has to clean it all up.

Spring, how we long for you.

Where's the confetti

It's finally here!  After four and a half years Nate is finally finishing up school.  Two more finals then freedom.  He had his last class on Thursday night.  I have envisioned, many times, him walking in the house after his last class and having streamers and confetti flying.  A marching band playing "for he's a jolly good fellow".  Balloons and noise makers.  Lots of cheering.  Instead he walked in to me doing a happy dance.  All by myself.   I was imagining the streamers flying all around.  That has to count for something.  I wanted to throw some sort of a party for him but did that actually happen?  No.  I suck. 

Now what am I going to do with him being home at night?   I'm going to have to share the TV.  Hmmm, maybe he should go for his Masters after all.

random photos

I don't think I take a ton of pictures but I probably take more than is necessary.  I was going through them the other day so here are some of my favs. 

 Someone please freeze time. Please.  Love these moments.  The best part is how Baylor would rather watch his brothers laugh than watch the iPad.  They do love each other. 

 Oh my dear grif.  So sweet, yet so full of hell. How boring life would be without him.

 I had to take pics one Sunday morning because Dax found my grandpa pete's bow tie.  It looks cute 3 sizes too big, doesn't it? Bay decided he couldn't be outdone by Dax so I guess he figured a photo bomb would be his best option.  I had no idea he was even there. 

So it seems to look like I favor baylor a bit.  I don't mean to but 2 is such a cute age.  Plus he gladly lets me take pictures of him right now so i'm going to get as many as his willingness will let me.

Time to wrestle, boys

So i'm always trying my hardest to find something Grif likes that will get him active.  He can't sit in his room and play with legos forever, right?  He agreed to sign up for wrestling this year and was actually pretty excited about it. Then we got to the first practice and he cried.  The other kids were hurting him and he didn't want to be mean back.  Funny because he has no problem hurting/wrestling his brothers.  We convinced him it was okay to wrestle back and that it would be fun.  Well he stuck with it for a few weeks then decided the last week he was done. I could not for the life of me get him to get ready for practice or compete in the tournament.  I guess when the kid knows he doesn't like something he's not going to waste his time.  According to him he is never, ever wrestling again. Ever.  At least he gave it a good try, now he's back to legos on the floor.  Maybe i'm raising a future engineer.  

Dilon, on the other hand will play any and all sports if I let him.  He wanted to play basketball so I told him no wrestling then, it had to be one or the other.  Then I discovered that wrestling was about half the price of basketball so me being the super awesome mom that I am convinced him that he should wrestle instead.  Luckily he went along with it.  He wrestled when he was 5 or 6 but not since.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well he did.  He only lost twice all season and it was to the same kid. 

Their team got 2nd place in the tourney and the coach was nice enough to come find grif and let him get a medal with the rest of the team.  

Again, I am a super awesome mom and have no pictures of grif actually wrestling.  I thought it would be most convenient to just take them all the last day.   Lesson learned--always, always take pictures the first week just in case.  You never know when a strong willed child will decide the season is over.

Dilon is super excited for next year when he gets to advance to the older group of boys.  Then he gets to start rocking the singlet.  Another reason it is probably best Grif decided not to wrestle.  Can you imagine the fight we would have trying to get him to put one of those things on.  They couldn't even get him to take off his shirt when they were doing shirts vs. skins.  I do love that when he makes a decision though he sticks to his guns instead of letting others sway him.  That will come in handy some day.  I know it.

Happy Diaversary, not so Happy Sabbath

Well we made it through our first year of dealing with diabetes.  Happy Diaversary Dilon!  Sure it may seem strange to some to celebrate diabetes.  It's not something really worth celebrating is it?  Heck yeah it is.  If you have to check your blood sugars every time you eat, feel funny, go to bed, or exercise by poking your finger you darn well better celebrate how awesome you are.

(This picture doesn't really do much justice but no, those aren't dirty finger tips.  Those are his battle scars.)

If you have to count carbs just to stay alive and have memorized numerous portion sizes along with the number of carbs, you darn well better celebrate.  If you have to wake up every couple of hours during the night because your blood sugars are crazy high just to make sure they are coming down, you darn well better celebrate.  If you have to wear a permanent accessory (aka insulin pump) just to stay alive, you had darn well better celebrate.  Okay...i'm done. 

  At this time a year ago we still had no idea how sick he was.  Fast forward an hour later to a doctor appointment and being told  "your son has diabetes, I can either call an ambulance or you can get in your car and head straight to Primary Children's Hospital" can sure turn your world around quickly.  

Me and dil spent our night last night fighting high's just to have him crash at 3:30 am.  Then we started fighting lows.  We finally got some uninterrupted sleep at about 4:30.  I've decided having diabetes is like having a newborn in the house again.  Some nights you sleep, some nights you don't.  

Nothing like chilling with mom and drinking juice at 4am. 

 Okay, confession...I made him re-enact this so I could get a picture.  Obviously, right?  Seriously though who in their right mind thinks to take a picture at 4 am when they are basically a walking zombie just so they have something to blog about.  Just pretend its a little darker and he is not so bright eyed and bushy tailed.

I can't say enough how proud I am of Dilon and the battle he is fighting every day with this disease.  He's much stronger than me that's for sure.  One day there will be a cure.  I just know it. 

On a completely unrelated topic Grif decided to start the Sabbath day by kicking another hole in my wall.  This destructive behavior is going to be the death of me, so we need to come up with a solution very quickly on what we can do to help him control his temper.  Seriously, I will take any and all suggestions right now.  My OCD can't handle another hole in the wall. 

who needs to study anyway?

So Nate only has about 3 weeks left this semester.  This is a super fun time when finals, lengthy papers, and projects are all due.  He has plenty of info he needs to catch up on and study. Basically a lot of reading to do. So what was his topic of choice last night? Something of the Dr. Seuss sort.

Kudos to this super busy dad for taking the time to read to his kiddo.  Really I think he was just procrastinating again but who cares.  I love this....I love that his boys take priority.

Did I mention there's only about 3 weeks of school left?! Woo Hoo!

Happy Halloween!!

It's that spooktacular time of year again.   I love Halloween.  Not just because there is a plethora of candy in the house, that is just an added bonus, but because it's so darn fun.  I love dressing up the kids.  The only downer......it is too stinkin cold.  Halloween should be switched to a summer holiday. Here are my little monsters.......

 This has got to be the third or forth time grif has been a vampire.  To each his own, I guess.

Second year in a row that dax wanted to be the dragon.  We really like to change things up here at the Wright house if you can't tell.

 This pretty much sums up how Baylor felt about dressing up.  At least I was able to get the clown costume on him. 

I tried and tried and tried to get dilon to be Alfalfa.   He can pull it off perfectly right now.  I lost that battle. What's so cool about a zombie anyhow?  Okay, seriously though it was fun putting the make-up on.  Not so fun to get off.

 The cousins were nice enough to let us tag along at their trunk or treat. 

Nate and I went to the Hardy's annual Halloween party.  One of these years I will remember my camera so I can get a group shot. 

Lesson learned....I make a horrible looking morticia addams. Nate pulled off uncle fester pretty good though.  

Happy Halloween!!!