The Wilkins Family

It has been a fun, busy, fast summer for us. We started June with several of the kids participating in various day/overnight camps. My siblings and their families began arriving during the last week of June for the Dosdall Family Reunion. We spent three days together with our much-loved Dosdall relatives at Bear Lake, about four hours’ drive northeast of Spanish Fork on the Utah-Idaho border. We had a great time, and though we never get much rest when we’re together, we wish everyone could live near. We love having Kristen and her family just a few blocks away – the kids love playing together and never seem to tire of each other – and it would be so nice to have that closeness with more of our family. Anyway, we sure appreciate the efforts everyone made to be there; we know it is a sacrifice. This reunion was kind of a last hurrah before my parents leave on their long planned for and much anticipated 1 ½ year mission to (drumroll please)......Bangalore, India! We will certainly miss them when they leave at the end of September, but we are excited for them to have this opportunity to serve and learn and experience new things, and we appreciate the example they are setting for us and for our children.
We are also looking forward to seeing Hugh’s siblings and parents this coming weekend. I can’t honestly say that I am looking forward to camping, as it is so much work to pack and unpack, as well as to keep track of all our little ones in the great outdoors, but the kids love it and I’m sure would feel like their summer was incomplete if we didn’t go at least once.
Steven (reluctantly) went to Scout Camp in June and surprised himself by enjoying it. While I wouldn’t accuse him of being an overachiever, he did come home with five merit badges. Steven and Daniel have done some yard work for a neighbor on and off throughout the summer, which is a good thing since Steven and Michael have decided to start saving up to buy a Nintendo Wii. We increased the kids’ allowance and upped the reward for doing extra chores to $.50. While I am not anxious to have the boys spend more of their time playing electronics, I do like this exercise in setting a goal, having a plan, and staying focused on that goal until they achieve it. I still allot only two to three hours of time each Saturday morning for the kids to play electronics, but since they would like much more than that, the boys tend to use the piano practice rule (2 minutes piano= 1 minute electronics) almost every day. Since we got high-speed internet a few weeks ago, Steven has spent a lot of time reading through and downloading a bunch of cards to expand playing options for Talisman, the game he bought with his birthday money. He has not been as creative about keeping himself busy this summer, wanting to play with friends or play electronics most of the time, but he really is a good kid. He is acquiring some great people skills. He is complimentary without being a sycophant, he is generally helpful rather than whiny or demanding when he wants something.
After nine months of scrimping and saving every penny (except those spent on other people,) Daniel finally found a good deal and purchased a Nintendo Gameboy DS on eBay. I worried that he would be disappointed after all his hard work, but he seems very happy with his purchase, even though he has only one game and would have to save for another six months to earn enough money to buy another one. Of all the kids, he has complained the most about me being a slave driver – making him continue piano, reading, chores, etc. through the summer. He wanted to quit piano altogether, but I explained to him that since we don’t live on a farm, and since Hugh and I are not drill sergeants, we have to create something at which these guys have to work hard. So for now, piano is it. His attitude has changed somewhat since he was asked to accompany one of the songs for the Primary Sacrament Meeting Program coming up in October. He went to work on it right away, and can play it quite well now, though it’s a different thing entirely playing it when people are singing, and having the composure to keep going even if he makes a mistake. Daniel talked the six older kids into scraping their money together to send Hugh and me out on a date. I was so touched by their sweetness and generosity, and I wanted to give them their money back, but I also want to acknowledge and accept their sacrifice for what it is. I realized that Daniel doesn’t hug me several times a day like he used to; he still likes me and is still sweet to me, but I guess he just doesn’t feel the need to hug me as much. That makes me sad because it reminds me that my kids won’t always want to be close to me and that they won’t always be here to hug! The beginning of a new school year is always such a hard time for me because I enjoy these guys, and it reminds me of how quickly the time goes, how fleeting each stage of life is.
We celebrated Julia’s 10th birthday (July 16th) with one school friend and her three Wright cousins decorating cupcakes, going on a treasure hunt, and playing night games. We bought her the two things she really wanted - rollerblades and a Supersoaker watergun – and thanks in part to the birthday money she received from relatives, she just broke the $100 mark for her “microscope fund.” She has been saving for over a year now and some of her siblings have contributed to help her get to this point, so I really need to research it a bit and see if we can get at least a halfway decent microscope for $100. Throughout the summer, Julia has gone to several concerts on Temple Square in Salt Lake City with Hugh (including the big Pioneer Day celebration with the Osmonds) and a couple of plays at a great little theater in Orem. When I realized I hadn’t taken some of my older kids to the doctor for regular checkups in over five years, I decided I should do that before school starts. The kids are glad to have their Aunt Kristen do the majority of the check-up. I feel like I have spent many hours at the doctor’s office the last couple of weeks, and will need to schedule appointments with the ophthalmologist for Daniel and Julia, who may need glasses. I am sorry for any bad genes I have passed on to my children!
Michael suffered his first major sunburn at the Dosdall Reunion at Bear Lake, and I am sorry and hoping it served as a learning experience for us both! We were so excited to find out that Michael will be in the same school class this year as his cousin, Guts. They are both smart, athletic, cute boys and get along so well; I think Guts will help Michael greatly to break out of his shell this year. Michael is at a stage in which he is motivated only by very concrete rewards. It’s almost comical how getting a treat at the end of Scouts or a piano lesson or a doctor’s appointment changes his attitude about the whole experience. Michael will be playing flag football this fall instead of soccer, and he will be starting practices soon. Just thinking about the craziness that is imminent – school, preschool, homework, football, soccer, piano lessons, music lessons, Scouts, Young Men, my fundraising responsibilities at the school, my church responsibilities, etc... it just makes me tense and stressed to think about it. Wasn’t I just saying something about how fleeting this time is? I guess the key to happiness is to stop waiting to arrive at some future point when you can start enjoying life – so I’d better figure out how to enjoy that craziness to some degree.
Alyssa and Julia have both become quite proficient at fixing hair in the last couple of months. Alyssa has a much easier time talking Julia into putting curlers in her hair than me, and Julia does at least as good a job as I do. Alyssa can part and braid her own hair well enough that I will let her wear it that way even when we leave the house. She has done some more humorous things with Natalie’s hair, like when she put a dozen or so Medusa-like braids coming out all over her head. The three girls like to play what they call “The Airplane Game” in which they seatbelt themselves into an airplane and fly to different places and have adventures all over the world. I found Alyssa dressed in a Snow White dress being Natalie’s teacher – I’m not sure where the costume fit in, but it was cute. Since Alyssa is so shy, she is nervous for school and her new music class to start in the next couple weeks. Hopefully it will reassure her to have her siblings at the same school with her.
Natalie will be starting preschool in a couple of weeks, and since she has done better the last month or so with going to her Primary class, I have hopes that she will be just fine going to preschool three afternoons a week. Natalie is very sweet and forgiving of Emily. She often reassures me, “I’m okay with her scratching (hitting, sneezing on, kapowing, whatever) me.” She says the funniest things sometimes, like when she came over to me with a pained look on her face and explained, “I just hurt my tongue because I accidentally bit it with my vampire teeth!” (Meaning, her incisors...) She can also be so defiant, sassy, and mean. I have resorted to giving her a little taste of bar soap when she says mean or sassy things, reminding her that if she chooses to say mean or bad words, the soap will help her to clean the bad language out of her mouth so she will choose not to use those words next time. I am surprised to hear the mean sounds that can come out of such a cute little person! She recently mastered whistling and snapping with her fingers, so Hugh sometimes calls her “Snappy”. She loves to go swimming, and Hugh is such a good sport about it, he has taken some of the kids to the indoor/outdoor Lehi pool three of the last four Saturdays.
We love Matthew, but he is not the easiest kid! He does a lot of screaming and throwing fits because he often can’t have what he wants when he wants it. He bullies poor little Emily, but I think he likes her. Often the first thing he does in the morning is go straight to her room and watch her sleeping in her crib. Sometimes he will just sit next to her crib and look at books while she sleeps, but most of the time, he wakes her up by yelling excitedly, “Happy Emily! Happy Emily! Look, Happy Emily is awake!” (Surprise, surprise!) He likes to go to the library to look for more books about cars, trucks, and trains, and carries his books around the house and looks at them often. He has survived the summer wearing long-sleeved shirts the majority of the time, not because he doesn’t have other clothes, just because he refuses to wear them.
Emily is officially no longer a baby, but now a toddler. She turned one on July 26th, and has been walking quite well for several weeks. I miss the little cuddly baby she used to be, but it is fun to see her personality coming out more as she gets older. She is more mobile, more communicative, and more prone to throw fits. She doesn’t talk much, just the occasional “Mom”, “Dad”, or “uh-oh” but she does shake or nod her head, wave, and seems to understand more of what we say. She is adored by her siblings and cousins, and usually enjoys the attention. She has such a cute six-toothed grin, and delights us with her bouncy “dancing.” It shouldn’t surprise me, but like all her siblings, she loves her daddy and greets him warmly even though she sees him for only a few hours every evening when he comes home from work. I guess that says something about what kind of dad he is when he is home!
I have been urging Hugh to look into working from home sometimes so that he can sleep in at least a couple days a week. We recently signed up for high-speed internet and shuffled bedrooms around so that Hugh will have an office upstairs where he can work once the kids start back to school. We will need to get a lock for that door, and it will take some time to teach the kids that when Dad is working at home, it will be just as if he were working in Salt Lake City We both always feel like there is simply not enough time to do all the things we would like to and should be doing even though we feel like we have cut out all the unnecessary stuff, so hopefully this will help a little.
We are planning our first trip to Disneyland in September, and we are all excited, especially since we were able to plan it to overlap with the Wrights’ vacation so cousins can be there together. I have put it off for years because it is going to cost a lot of money, and I wanted to make sure the kids are old enough to enjoy and remember it, so hopefully this is the right time and it will be worth the investment. Other than school starting in less than a week and a half, everything is good. We are well and happy and grateful to Heavenly Father for our family, our friends, our health, our home, and most of all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.