Halloween 2018

Well it's only a couple of weeks late but hey I'm actually blogging so give this gal some credit.  

Halloween this year was kind of sad.  We're old.  Nate and I that is.  Our kids are moving on and it totally stinks.  

Dilon worked on Halloween and when he did show up at home he was there for a whopping 5 minutes before he took off for a corn maze with friends.  

I did make him stop and pose for a picture with Baylor, he was thrilled about it

Grif spent the night at home handing out candy.  

He had a very eventful night.  

Dax actually went with me and Baylor to the trunk or treat but he ditched us as soon as we got there to go with friends.  What the heck happened to me being his BFF?!?  

 We didn't see him again for the next 3 hours.  Huge shout out to the dad who took 4 nine year olds trick-or-treating.

Baylor was my main man for the night.  

1 kid. 

I was down to one kid on Halloween. We made the most of it and partied hard until 7:00!  

 Stephanie and her clan saved the day and met us at Grandma Taco's house so Kennedy could take Baylor around and actually have another kid to go door-to-door with.

It has been 2 week and I still have a plethora of candy sitting in my house.  Strange considering the fact that I live here. At what point do I get to say forget it and throw it all away?  

Here's to enjoying these holidays with the littles who still want to hang with me. 

These days are going to be gone before I know it.

Fall Break 2018

Not to mention any names but a certain father-in-law of mine made me feel a tad bit guilty about giving up on my blog.  I know I should be keeping up on it better, so much happens around here.  But because so much happens around here I can't keep up.  It's a vicious cycle.  So here's to hoping I'll start doing a better job at it again.

Fall break did not disappoint this year.  We decided to take a little road trip to see the before mentioned in-laws who are serving a mission in Kingman, AZ.

But first, a pit stop in Vegas, baby!  What the hizzle were we thinking?  Vegas is not the place for 4 boys.  Scantily clad women everywhere.  At one point we passed a lady with just 2 pieces  of tape placed strategically over her chest. And drunk people. So many drunk people.  Baylor had one guy walk by him and say: "how's it going, little f***er?".  Great.  Baylor gave him knuckles and kept on walking without a care in the world.

^^this looks like a tender picture with Dilon and Baylor holding hands right?
Nope.They were being naughty and running off so this was their punishment.
 Also, how much have you missed my blurry pictures???

See ya later Vegas, now off to the Hoover Dam to meet up with Nate's parents.
We've missed them!
Hoover Dam was much cooler to see than I thought it would be.  I was petrified and dizzy. So dizzy.  Bay felt the same and made sure he kept his distance. 

 ^I showed Nate this picture and it took him a few seconds to recognize himself.
Losing 100 lbs. can do that to a person.  Can I just say--hello, hot stuff.

 

We got our kicks on Route 66

And did a little exploring around Kingman.

Elvis was in the building

I think the kids would love any vacation that included a pool.  Me, not so much. 

Last but not least we made our way to Lake Havasu to see the London Bridge.  

We ended the trip by going to sacrament meeting at a small branch in a small AZ town that I can't remember the name of. 

 It's good to know the church is true wherever you are. 

(is anyone else besides me a little teary-eyed that Dilon is now taller than me? Grif is getting real close too.)

Thanks for the fun getaway Scott and Karen. 

Also, I'm going to just remember that the trip was as fantastic as the pictures show it to be and forget all about the fighting/crying/laughing/yelling car ride that took too many hours.

I do NOT heart Mexico

My blog has definitely been neglected lately because life is crazy. But sometimes life is just crazy enough you have to take the time to blog about it.

So Nate and I took a little adventure to Mexico last week. What did we do? Something fun and exciting you ask? Not quite.  

Nate decided to change his life and opted to have weight loss surgery:

-No this post is not about that (we'll save that for a rainy day).

-No the decision to do it was not made lightly. Trust me, we have heard from plenty of people why they thought he shouldn't do it. Don't judge us, we won't judge you (probably).

 All went well with the surgery and I survived my outing for a street taco so win/win.

I have never seen Nate sleep so much in my entire life.
Daaayyyyysssss. The man slept for days.
 Anyway, he finally woke up enough for us to return to the beautiful U.S of A.  So off to the airport we go.  We were in Tijuana (again, stop judging) and flying in and out of San Diego.  Our hotel was probably about a 15 minute drive to the boarder (Mexico side). It took us 2 hours.  Holy traffic, man.  Two depressing hours of people standing outside your car window wanting you to buy their authentic Mexican goods. Anything from tacos to tiaras. They offered it all. As we were waiting for our turn to cross the boarder we are asking our driver if she has ever seen anything crazy there.  She has lived there her whole life and crossed countless times.  Not one issue for her.  Nothing.  Leave it to the Wright's to make it a first for her. 

Finally we hit the boarder, hand the lady our passports and expect to go on our merry way.  She scans mine, all clear. A+ gold star student here. She scans Nate's looks at him and says:

 "Nathan......do you have something you need to take care of in Gerogia?" 

"Nope, never been to Georgia before."

"Uh huh, follow the yellow line, sir."

We got taken out of the 2 hour wait to cross the boarder and had to follow the yellow line.  Not the yellow line. Anything but the yellow line.  

I see a little bit of fear in the drivers eyes and start to get a little concerned.

We pull aside.  

Several agents look at Nate, look at a computer screen. Look at Nate, look at a computer screen....lather, rinse, repeat.  Multiple agents, multiple looks. 

They come ask us several questions and at this point I'm wishing I would have put on a double layer of deodorant for the day. 

Then they say the words I never thought I would hear in my life time.  "Nathan we have to arrest you and take you in for questioning."  Excuse me?!?  What am I supposed to do?  I need more deodorant so bad at this point.  

Nate steps out of the car and gets cuffs slapped on his wrists.  Careful fellas, he just had half his stomach cut away, lets not hurt him please. 

So off he goes.  Will I ever see my husband again? Should I wait for the father of my children or head for the airport to get the hell out of there.

I opted to choose the "wright" (ha, see what I did there?) and stay behind with my man.  

At this point I'm sure days have passed.   

The driver and I have been asked to exit the vehicle and they bring in the dogs. All clear!

Finally, an hour later,  he emerges from the depths of hell.  Hallelujah.  I know, I just know, I heard angels singing. 

Handcuffs - check

Fingerprints - check 

Body search - check

Ankle chained to a metal table - check, check

Handcuffs and ankle chains on Saturday, Bishop suit on Sunday.  That's normal, right?

Apparently there is a Nathan Wright in Georgia who is wanted and must look similar to my man. 

I can't tell you the relief it was to get on that airplane and head for home sweet home.
 The biggest downside to all of this....I didn't think to hurry and snap a pic of him getting hauled off in handcuffs.  That could have come in real handy at some point in time.

Never again Mexico.  Never, ever again.

Happy Love Day

Valentine's Day this year was a heart breaker for this mom.  

Half of my boys, half of them, decided they needed to get a girl a "real" valentine.  

Should I be more concerned about my 14 year old who has a girlfriend, or the 6 year old? If it's starting at 6 what's going to be happening when he's a teenager???  

 Dilon actually chickened out with the flowers because, "nobody gives girls flowers at school, mom!"  Okay then. You're wrong kid, but whatever.  She still got a bear and candy so that's good enough.  Grandma Taco got the flowers instead. 

Baylor picked the perfect 6 year old present.  A chocolate shark that says you're Jawsome (that there is hilarious).  

She brought him back a Valentine and I forgot to get a quick pic but it was so dang cute. 

Then there's this kid

According to Grif, "ain't nobody got time for that" when it comes to Valentine's Day and girls.

It's only a matter of time before Dax realizes girls are cute, but not as cute as him.

Then my man scored major points bringing me home my favorite treat (oh who am I kdding, I have a billion favorite treats)

and 5 minutes later.....

Happy Love Day!

4th place, baby!

Another year of wrestling.  

The stress of this sport may give this mama bear a heart attack.  For real, it feels like it's going to explode some meets. 

Dilon has made huge improvements over the last few years.  

The wrestling team up here is massive. Like 60-70 kids. So that means there are multiple kids in his weight group.  Varsity is out of the question right now as a freshman. We thought JV wasn't going to happen, but it did.  He wrestled like a champ all year.

Ended up 4th at JV State. I know every parent says this but he seriously should have been 1st.  

Dilon had the kid who got first pinned several times.  We have it on video and it's torture to watch.  They told Nate as a coach that all the refs there were new and still learning so Dilon got robbed, but it's okay. He has come so far.  I'm super proud of this kid. After that loss he had to wrestle his way back to the top so he had 8 matches. Some of them basically back to back.  He was one tired kiddo, but he killed it.  Now on to off-season wrestiling....heaven help this mom.

Cutest little four-eyes I've ever seen

 This cute kiddo got him some new glasses. He didn't pass the eye exam at school so off to the eye doc we went.

Turns out Baylor has a lazy eye that needs fixin. 

Good news is he only has to wear them for 2 hours a day. The good eye has a bad lens in it he can't see out of to try and strengthen the bad eye (did that make sense?). They make his eyes look HUGE and it's hilarious.   He was encouraged to watch T.V. while he is wearing them to help strengthen it.  The problem with that is.....

 ....he literally has to sit right in front of the T.V. to even remotely see it. 

Hopefully he only has to do this for a few years then we may be able to ditch the glasses if it gets strong enough.  The problem is the little stinker doesn't like the blurry vision.  I caught him the other day watching T.V. with them pushed all the way to the bottom of his nose and him peeking over the top of them. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of corrective glasses. 

If he keeps doing that they are going to give him a patch to wear instead (arrghh matey!).

It probably is best we fix the vision problem because the other day he put his own tie on for church and this was the outcome. 

So close buddy! 

Love you, little four-eyes.

All the holiday happenings

So I don't mean to sound like a bah humbug but I am not really a fan of the holidays. 

A lot of unnecessary stress in my opinion which probably means we are doing something wrong. 

 I just really dislike the worldliness of it all.  We forget the whole point because we get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of everything.  Like I've mentioned in previous posts we did Disneyland for Christmas so the kids weren't getting anything.  The whole family agreed to it.  It made my life so much easier. No shopping, no spending unnecessary money on stuff we don't need (instead we just spent it on a vacay.  Totally fine).  Or so I thought.  

This mom heart couldn't handle her kids getting absolutely nothing for Christmas so I caved.  They definitely did not get anything big and spectacular but they did get a little stocking and a couple of presents.  And it was perfect. A little harder for the older kids who have friends that got big, expensive gifts but it's fine, they'll survive. 

So here are our holiday happenings.

 Thanksgiving was pretty low key.  It was at our house this year with Bern & fam, and Steph & fam.  If anyone knows a good way of splitting the holidays evenly with family I'm all ears.  It stinks. 

Christmas morning

 ^^ those 2 are more thrilled than they actually look. 

 All this boy wanted were his two front teeth.  Santa couldn't quite make that happen.

 ^^Bingo baby!

New Year's was kind of lame at our house.   I had to work early (so, so early) on New Year's Day so we hung out at home.  I made them all play Phase 10 which resulted in 2 hours of pure torture. All they did was whine and complain and boo hoo about how stupid of a game it is.  So of course I made them all suffer through it instead of just calling it quits after 15 minutes.  One freakin game people. All I was asking for was 1 game.  

So Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year from our crazy clan.