Our Christmas Card

Every year about this time I try to remember what we did all year and share it with you. So, I go back and read our website updates...because I can't remember on my own. Well, it can be said that it has been a good year of family and fun. We started off the year slowly with selling Girl Scout Cookies in January. We had never done that before, but the girls ended up enjoying themselves and learning a bit about hard work and counting money. The girls are in Girls Scouts for a second year now. In February I started looking for a tent trailer for our family. I eventually found a used one in great condition online on Craigslist. I drove down through Seattle two hours to get it without Michael and towed it home on the freeway when I had never towed anything before in my life! It was a crazy adventure, but I’m so happy we have it. We went camping eight different times this summer! We even went to Oregon with it for a wedding. The tent trailer is just enough comfort to make camping easy and fun for everyone…especially for me. And…it is small enough to be towed behind our minivan. I was able to visit my family in Arizona by myself in March. It was a “gift” to my mom…but it was really a gift for me. Then my sister and her family got to come up and visit us too! We enjoyed having them and wish they could come more often. This year we took up another fun, family hobby called geocaching. Mike bought a handheld GPS and we use it to track down “treasures”. Not really; they are just caches hidden by other people with the coordinates posted online. We found many caches during our camping trips which added to our adventure. Many of the caches have small trinkets in them and the geocaching rule is “take something, leave something”, so the girls enjoyed the trading and finding of treasures. It can be a little dangerous though. Mike once went after a harder cache that required climbing up a rocky mountain. He stumbled upon a rattlesnake on his way and nearly slipped to his death on wet rocks! After a great and busy summer, we entered the next school year in the fall. Kelby is now nine years old and is in fourth grade. She likes her teacher this year. Even though she is pretty strict, she is also loving and kind…just what Kelby needs! She has a hard time remembering to turn in work and stay focused, but she’s a very good girl and tries hard. She’s enjoying reading much more now. Kelby loves drawing and horses, and drawing horses! The only medical treatment that she needed this year was some orthodontia! In August she had “surgery” to remove two fused molars and had a spacer put in. Crazy thing is that this surgery was the most painful out of all of them for her! The mouth is a pretty sensitive place. Tegan is in 2nd grade, but she’s in a 2nd/3rd grade split class. She fits in well there because she reads way above her grade level and picks up on things pretty quick. It’s almost like she’s skipped to 3rd grade. She’s now seven years old. Tegan always wants to have friends over and has several friends her age right in the neighborhood. I don’t mind too much and tend to let the kids come over often. Anika is almost five. Her birthday is three days after Christmas. This year she got into the preschool at our local high school. It is very inexpensive and well run. She loves it and enjoys going for three hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. I enjoy the hours I get too. I use one day to run errands and the other day I spend volunteering in Kelby and Tegan’s class. It is nice that Anika doesn’t have to be dragged along for that anymore. She’s been volunteering at the school with me since she was strapped to me as an infant! Mike continues to run and compete in local races. He is still working at Janicki Industries with computers. The company is going through a lot of changes right now and with the economy as it is, we are hoping they can keep up. They are a great company and we have a lot of faith in their management. Mike also continues to enjoying the hunt for great pictures. I’m grateful for the product of that hobby as seen on our blog…so many beautiful pictures of my family! I have continued to volunteer at my church as a women’s ministries administrator. Things are going very well with that and have been very fruitful for the women of our church. It is a challenging, but rewarding thing to do. I’ve been working with some great ladies that have become dear friends. We are currently enjoying the accumulated foot or so of snow in the yard! This has started out as a crazy winter for us. We never have snow longer than a day, but it started to fall almost a week and a half ago and is still here and not yet melting. We might have a white Christmas! The girls’ school was cancelled three days before break because of the hazardous roads. We’ve been staying home, walking, or sledding at the small hill nearby. Pure WHITE joy! If you want to keep up with us in the future, I just changed our family website into a blog, so please stop by and visit us to see what we are up to at www.perpetuallywright.blogspot.com. I’m hoping that making it a “blog” will make it easier to keep up-to-date. I have been crafting like crazy this last month and am contemplating selling some of those crafts online in the near future. We’ll see what happens. There are so many things I’d LIKE to do, but not enough time to do them all! We pray that though the nation is going through some tough times right now, it allows you to focus again on what is most important in life. We are trying to do that ourselves and appreciate EVERYTHING that we do have, knowing there’s no guarantee we’ll keep our “stuff”, but we’ll always have each other and the peace that the Lord gives those that trust Him. May God bless you all this holiday season and bring you REAL joy! Much love, Shawna, Michael, Kelby, Tegan and Anika Wright PS. Sorry that this comes not by snail mail as a card. I’m running behind in a time and money! If you’d like a hard copy of the picture, please let me know and I’ll send one to you!