Bird Watching!

A few weeks ago, we noticed a couple of birds hanging out around the house, a lot. Then we noticed twigs and trash all over the front yard. One day, while I was out doing some yard work, I walked under our arch, and a little finch flew out of it in a mad rage. After screaming, I looked closer in the arch, and found a little nest. The mother was protecting her property! A couple of days later, I was mowing the grass, and a robin flew out of a tree.Again, after being startled, I took a look in the tree. Another nest! Since then, we have been watching and listening for babies. Just the other day, I was mowing the front yard. I was around the tree, when I looked down, and saw a baby robin on the ground. Cory and I put it back in the nest, and the kids have been on watch ever since. Yesterday, we had a nasty wind storm come in. A baby robin kept falling out of the nest. The kids did a great job checking on it and putting the baby back in. But, this morning, I found a dead baby at the base of the tree. Kelli is pretty upset about it. She has it on a paper towel in the house and keeps looking at it and touching it. The other 2 or 3 babies are doing well. This morning, I took a peek in the nest while the Mom was out. One of the birds put it's head up and opened it's mouth really big for me. It was so cute! Mommy bird was upset when she saw me though. Tim took some pictures of the birds in the nest in the arch. We think they are Finch babies. None of them have fallen out. Thank goodness because under the arch is cement. Tim says there are four birds. Can you see them?

We will continue to watch the nests and make sure no more birds die. It is quite exciting to see nature at work all around us. The kids have really enjoyed the birds. In fact, Tim was up early this morning before school to check on all the birds!

More posts to come on K&K's last days of kindergarten and the McConkie Family Reunion we recently attended!

Metal Mouth Club

Well, Mak is officially part of the "metal mouth" club! Her spacer was put in this afternoon. This is just step one of what will be a long process to straighten out her teeth. After this top spacer, she will need to get a bottom spacer, and then most likely braces. Oh boy!Mak at the orthodontist! She is quite grown up. I love watching her and spending some one-on-one time with her:)
Check out the hardware! Everyday I have to make an adjustment to the spacer. In 28 days, she should have a gap between her two front teeth!

Toby

Toby is almost 8 months old. He is a fun dog! He has learned to sit and then go down on his belly for a treat. He is almost house broken. There are still a few accidents now and then though. And just the other day, I taught him to say "please" when he gets a treat. I tell him to sit, go down, and then to say please. Toby will do a little bark! It is the cutest thing:) Now I am trying to teach him to roll over! So far, he just goes crazy on me:) He has quite the attitude too. Whenever I am gone for "too long," Toby will let me know about it. When I get home, he begs to be held, then he will proceed to howl and cry as I give him loves. Whatever!
This is Toby this past weekend while we were camping. He did okay, except that he tried to get too friendly our friend's female dog and we had to put him on a leash so he wouldn't take off and find a snake to play with!
Toby got a summer hair cut the other day. He looks like a completely different dog. Don't worry, the weirdness will go away, soon hopefully!

Memorial Day!

What would Memorial Day Weekend be without the Wrights going camping and having some sort of an adventure? Pretty boring if you ask me. We didn't go camping the entire weekend-we had some things to get done, like my awesome bathroom and cleaning out the boat. So, we left Sunday after church for Five Mile. We were across the road from last year's camp site. We had to set up in an easier place due to the bigger trailer we have this year:)
We went camping with our friends, the Douglas family. What a great night we had Sunday. Tim and his friend Luc raced each other around a little motorcycle course. Now that they have basically the same bike, the competition is on to see who can ride better and faster. They go at it all the time. Mak and Haylee also rode around on the track or checked out the fort they built last year. Amazing that it's still there and that they could find it when all the trees look the same! K&K and the two little Douglas girls played in the back of the trucks and in the sand with sand toys. After stuffing themselves with smores and marshmellows, all the kids watched a movie in the trailer. The parents stayed outside for some "grown-up" conversation around the camp fire. This is Mike Douglas attempting to chop some wood with is very girly hat on!Monday morning came way too early, especially when Luc started chopping wood at 7am! All 12 of us finally went for ride around 10:30! First stop, the hill climb! Both Cory and Mike were a little hesitant to do much, but when a pack of youngins showed up, the guys rised to the challenge and sort of showed the babies what to do. Of course the youngins had to answer the call and pretty much showed Cory and Mike what old age does to you. The testerone levels were very high! This is Cory going up the easy part of the hill climb.

Here we have all the girls watching their Daddys climb the hill and praying that they make it up without injury! In the back is Haylee, Kelli and Mak. In the front is Katie, Whitnee and Sydnee.

After the hill climb, we headed up a narly pass that required the Dads to ride the girls bikes up to the top. I hauled a lot of little ones up to the top! We ended up at Sunshine Mine! The kids were so excited to be there and walk on top of the shafts. Thank goodness for the rebar! This is Tim and Luc checking out the old jeep at the bottom of the shaft. It was just the coolest:)

Here's all the kids at the mine!

The ride lasted for 3 hours! When we got back to camp, we had some lunch, then chilled for awhile. The kids rode around some more before we packed up and headed home. We had fun, even without eating snake or rushing a friend to the hospital like we did last year! Sunday night, we did see a snake when just the six of us went on a ride. It was just a little deseret snake that Cory accidently ran over:)

New Master Bath!

It is finally finished! My new master bathroom is complete and I love it! Cory and I had a discussion about 2 months ago about the bathroom. Somehow, I convinced Cory to let me "redo" the bathroom and we came up with a budget for the 5'4" X 4'7" area! This is what the bathroom looked like before!Yep, you saw right, a pedestal sink in a master bath! Whoever heard of such a thing? And a tiny mirror and very little light! Talk about no storage or counter space. You can't see it, but behind the door, we had a storage thing that we bought at Target for all our bathroom needs. It worked, okay, but we still had to put stuff in the girls' bathroom.
Another look at the sink. I guess we did have some kind of "counter space." The lovely glass shelf! It would work for one person, but not for two:) Now onto the "redo!"Wow! I actually started by recaulking and resealing our shower, which you cannot see. That was a chore because the first caulk job only lasted through maybe 4 showers:( I also took the shower door and turned it around to open to where the towel rack hangs. Then came the sink. Cory tore out the pedestal sink. My Dad and brother moved the water and drain pipes for me so they would fit under the new vanity. The new vanity is actually a buffet that I painted white. The day after I ordered a vanity top from Home Depot, a neighbor found me this granite top for free. She saved me the price of the ordered top and then some. It was an amazing find. The size was perfect, and the piece was polished and rounded off already.
Cory cut holes in the granite and vanity for the new vessel sink and faucet. The vessel was an amazing find. I had my eye on it the minute I walked into the plumbing store. But I figured it was way too much. Then the lady told me it was on sale for $150 from $700. I was sold! I LOVE it!! The faucet was actually the most expensive piece in the bathroom. But it was worth it! And guess what? Water comes out of the faucet and the vessel drains the water with no leaks. Way to go Cory!! With some help from my Mom, we hung the new, bigger mirror and light fixture! Here's another look at the bathroom from inside the shower. (If you look close enough, you can see the toilet in the picture. It is in a little nook behind the bathroom door.) Like I said before, I LOVE the results. I can't get over how much bigger the bathroom looks and feels now. I have lots of light, storage space, counter space and mirror. It's also nice that both Cory and I can be in the bathroom at the same time and not fight for the mirror and little glass shelf space we used to have! And best of all, I was only $250 over budget!