Another Halloween has come and gone. This year we had a vampire, Anakin Skywalker, a ghost, a ballerina and a very small skeleton visit our house. We had a good time and we still have too much candy left in our house.
Nice Hair! That was actually my wig from Halloween. We’re trying to find pictures of Dayna and I in our costumes.
We arrived back at home after our annual summer pilgrimage to the North. This vacation was a little more jam-packed than usual since we went to two family reunions. We drove to Joe and Chantelle’s house the first day and had a great time swimming with them and staying at their place. The Parkin residence was the next stop. We always love to see their family. Finally, we arrived in Blackfoot at the Watt Farm. After a quick one-day visit there, it was off to Driggs for a day. Then we headed to Montana for the Watt Family Reunion. It was at Shaun and Mary’s house. It is beautiful country there. We hiked to a beautiful waterfall with many of the kids. We went on a boat ride on Flathead Lake and even got in a little golf. It was lots of fun. The kids loved to spend time with their cousins, including riding the wagon down the hill.
After Church (or at least part of it) we headed back for Idaho. Montana was sure a beautiful place. We stayed one other night at the Watts with the Petermans and then we left for Utah the next day.
The Woolley reunion started with a trip to the Joseph Smith movie at Temple Square and then a quick tour of the conference center, including the rooftop gardens (very cool). We went to dinner at the Red Iguana (as seen on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives). We spent the next couple of days around Matt and Marci’s place in Lehi and the surrounding areas. We did some swimming at the local rec center, which was very fun!
We played a little golf, visited the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point and even got up to the BYU campus for some BYU Creamery Ice Cream. We had a lot of fun. Then we loaded up all the cars and traveled to Capitol Reef National Park down in Southern Utah. No one but Matt had ever been there and it was quite a treat. Beautiful red-rock sandstone cliffs and narrow canyons. We did a couple of hikes and enjoyed the camping.
From Capitol Reef we traveled to St. George, where Isaac decided he wanted to help pay for dinner with the dollar he got from Uncle Quinn. We stayed at a hotel and then we headed home the next day. It was a long drive back to San Diego, but we made it.
Overall, we had a ton of fun visiting with family and friends. Thanks to everyone who is always willing to open their homes to our family of seven now.
School started on Wednesday the 17th for the kids. Isaac started kindergarten and he is enjoying it. Hyrum is in third grade and Emma is in fifth grade, her last year in elementary school. Hard to believe how fast time moves by.
It’s been a little while, but news this big calls for a blog post! On Sunday Morning, May 29 Dayna went into labor and we headed to the hospital in Encinitas. We arrived at about 6:30 and by 10:05 am, we had a new little boy in our family. Because Dayna had a previous C-section, the delivery was considered “high-risk” and so there was some nervousness and some extra precautions taken by the doctors and nurses. But everything went well and so there we were holding this little boy.
Unlike our other four kids, we had the hardest time thinking of a name for this little guy and we didn’t even have much of a short list before he was born. I think we were hoping that he would be born and either the heavens would open and a heavenly messenger would come down and tell us the name or that he would be able to speak for the first half hour and be able to tell us his own name. Unfortunately, neither occurred. So we talked it over and even had the nurse bring in a baby name book that we went through. Even in the end when we decided to go with Noah McKay Woolley, we didn’t have an overwhelming feeling that it was right, but we had no feeling that it was wrong either, so there it is.
After about a week of calling him Noah, Dayna started to reconsider and wondered if we should call him McKay. That was on the next Sunday morning. So we decided to try an experiment and call him McKay for the week. But at church, about 50 people told us how they loved the name Noah and how it fit him perfectly. (Yes, you read that right, Dayna and Noah both attend church the next Sunday… She’s a trooper). So we abandoned the name-change plan and we’ve decided to stick with Noah. It’s grown on me and I like it a lot now.
We’re going through the normal newborn stuff with laundry every day and lack of sleep, but we feel tremendously blessed to have a happy and healthy baby boy.
We’ve had a great few weeks here at the Woolleys. On May the Fourth, we celebrated Star Wars day with Star Wars Pancakes complete with an action figure centerpiece provided by Isaac.
We had a great Mother’s Day, especially since Dayna is only about two weeks from becoming a mother for the fifth time. Everything has gone well for this pregnancy and we’re excited to add another little boy to the family. We’re still working on names though.
The boys and I went on the ward Fathers' and Sons’ outing. We camped up on Palomar mountain, about an hour and a half away from here. We had a lot of fun. In the morning, it was beautiful because we were up above the cloud layer. So while we had a wonderful sunny morning, everyone down below was under the “May Gray”. After we had taken down the camp, we went to the large telescope they have on that mountain. It is run by Cal Tech and was really cool to see. I’ll try posting some video sometime later.
Tonight I was reminded one of the reasons it is fun to have family home evening with young kids. We let each one of our kids have a job for FHE, like conducting, prayers, songs, etc.. like many families. Well tonight, our song-chooser selected Away in a Manger and Stars Were Gleaming. Christmas songs in May. Awesome…
We had a pretty good Easter today. Unfortunately, it was cold and overcast and a little bit sprinkly today here in Southern California. We had enough of a break that we decided to go take some pictures of the family with the kids in their nice new Easter clothes. We went to a local park. The pictures turned out pretty good (Amelia is a pretty good winker apparently). We hope that Easter was good for all of you as well.
We’ve had a great month at the Woolley home. On Saturday, March 12, Hyrum was baptized. It was a wonderful blessing as Grandma Gayle and Grandpa Gordon as well as Grandma and Grandpa Watt were able to attend. Plus Uncle Dave and Aunt Rachel and Mason, and also Uncle Joe and Aunt Chantelle all were able to come. We had a wonderful visit. The highlight of the weekend was the baptism. We are so proud of Hyrum for his choice and we are grateful to be his parents.
Just a couple of weeks later, we were able to have Uncle Chris and Aunt Christie with their four kids come join us for a couple of days. They were down on a bit of a spring break vacation and took some time to come hang out here. We all had a lot of fun and the kids loved seeing some of their cousins. Kimball’s origami skills inspired our children to really give it a try for a couple of days. That is, until we couldn’t figure out how to make the flapping bird work.
Then last weekend was a wonderful General Conference. It is so great to live in a time when we can watch conference live our computer. Technology is certainly being used to forward the work of the Lord.
Till next time…
We celebrated Hyrum’s eighth birthday yesterday. It was a busy week with something scheduled for every night of the week. But it was fun to have a celebration yesterday. He had a few friends over and they had some good fun. I’ve posted some pictures below:
(*Isaac did not have too much to drink in the picture above.)
I must also mention that the BYU cougars came down here to San Diego and left victorious. It must have been disappointing for SDSU fans after an entire week of buildup for the game. Go Cougars!
We finally picked up the replacement for the Stratus last Wednesday night. It is a 2002 Toyota Camry with 102000 miles on it. It drives nice, but it has just a few quirks that take a little while to get used to.
I’ve decided that relationships with cars of this age and mileage are kind of like dating someone new back in college when you’re not a very confident person and you’re dating someone out of your league. In a situation like that you find yourself being extra sensitive to every little word and expression that the other person makes, just waiting for them to dash your hopes and dreams. It’s kind of like that with the car. I find myself wondering about every little noise and rattle. “Oh great, here it comes, the car is going to fall apart or catch on fire or something”. I just don’t trust the car yet. It will come in time, but let’s just say that right now our relationship is tenuous and guarded.
We also went to the Mormon Battalion commemoration event on Saturday. It was a lot of fun with booths featuring fun activities for the kids like panning for gold, rope making, doll making, biscuit on a stick and others. The commemoration is fun, but I recommend making a visit to the Mormon Battalion Visitor’s Center even if it is not the one day a year where there is the event. They’ve recently remodeled it and it is a really great experience. It’s down in Old Town San Diego. We took a few pictures.
I’ll start with the bad news. Our family has had to bid farewell to the Stratus. That’s right, it didn’t survive the surgery at the auto body shop. It was told that the cost of the repairs exceeded the value of the car. So we’ve got a good little settlement from the other driver’s insurance company, but we’d like to replace the car without getting another payment and without digging too much into savings. It’s tough to find another car at the price we want, but we’re working through it. In the meantime, I made some minor repairs to my bike on Saturday so it may be my primary means of transportation to work for the next little while.
Now on to the good news. Dayna went in for her half-way ultrasound today and after they did all the technical measurements, they invited me in too. The ultrasound tech told me on the way into the room that she already knew what it was. I figured out from the way that she sounded so confident that she had seen some boy parts. And sure enough, we’re having a boy! The wonderful thing about this is that it would have been good news if it were a girl too! The tech couldn’t comment good or bad about the results, but to my untrained eye, things looked pretty good. The heart had all four chambers. I’m proud to say that after four previous experiences, I could kind of actually make out what we were looking at on the screen, unlike with the first one when you just actually wonder what you’re looking at (is that an alien? Are those parts connected to the other parts?). I had said it was a boy and Dayna thought it was a girl. We had a little wager and now she gets to take me to Phil’s BBQ.
We made it back from our trip to Idaho for Christmas and we survived the cold and snow and the long car ride as well. There are lots of fun ways to pass ten hours in the van like spelling your last name with pretzels (credit goes to Dayna).
We only had two throw-up instances (neither one was in the car, thank goodness) on the way home. We stayed in Beaver, UT on New Year’s Eve where it was –10 F when we arrived. It was 11:40 pm, so keeping the kids up until midnight was pretty easy. Getting them to go to sleep after that was not as easy, but we eventually got to sleep. We got to visit with Joe and Chantelle on the way home and arrived to find everything well at home.
It was back to work and school on Monday morning. We had some rain that morning and so the roads were wet. I was stopped at a light and a truck hauling a heavy trailer slid into me and damaged the Dodge Stratus! Many tears were shed. We’re working on getting it fixed. Other than that, the transition to being back home has been pretty smooth. The weather has been nice. Till next time.
