We all had our first dentist visits here in Pocatello this past week. I had my last visit in May right before we left Anchorage, but for everyone else I think it had been about a year. We ended up deciding on going with a dentist who lives in our ward. I think it is kind of weird having a dentist or doctor who is also in your ward. Rebecca visit-teaches his wife who works at the front desk in his office and I talk to him sometimes at church more than just the "hi" in the hallway. Anyway, there were a few cavities that needed filled. Julia was the one who ended up needing the most work, which she was pretty upset about because she said that she is always the one who does the best job brushing. One of her fillings had fallen out and so her tooth had a hole in it that was about 1/3 of her tooth. The hole went down to the nerve so she ended up having to get a root canal (although the dentist didn't use that label).
I was sitting in the front waiting room when I first started hearing the screams. They said I could go back all I wanted so I went back to check on her and she had just gotten her numbing shot. The screams came and went after that, but there was non-stop crying through it all for about 30 minutes. I wasn't sure if I should stay back there with her because sometimes she cries more when Rebecca and I are around. After a few times of going back and forth, I did end up staying in the room and holding her hand until the end. It is not a very big dentist office and I wondered what the other patients must have been thinking to hear these death cries while they were getting their teeth cleaned.
Today in church our dentist came to check in with Julia and make sure she was okay. I think she thought it was cool to see him in the different context. Hopefully she wasn't too traumatized because she has to go back tomorrow to get another cavity filled on the other side.
The Swift Family Blog
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Castle
We have been having a lot of extra boxes with all of the furniture that we have been buying. The biggest of our boxes so far came from our two couches. We ended up buying two couches from Costco and they came in the giant boxes. I cut them up to lay them out on our garage floor for the cars (even though we are a one car family we have three cars in our garage right now) to drive on so all of the rocks and snow and everything will be easy to clean up once Spring rolls around. The pieces I cut are big enough to fit one car completely on them each. Even so, there were some pretty big pieces left over. Luckily we get free curbside recycling here in Pocatello (you had to pay for it in Alaska, so we ended up just stockpiling our recycling and making a big trip to the recycling center about once a month).
Anyway, the kids asked if they could borrow a piece to make a castle. They were down there for a couple hours or so working away and when I came down I was pretty impressed with what they had created. They had windows and a door and had colored it and everything. We have had some fun sword fighting games since then with me storming the castle and them trying to take it back.
By the way, I love Costco. I always feel good about the quality of the products that I can buy there, but if something does go wrong I am never worried about them not letting me take it back. I don't even have to keep the receipt because they just look it up on the credit card. Yesterday we were in there and I noticed that the couches were $200 less than what we paid for them. I told them that at the customer service desk and they just put $400 back on our credit card. I thought that was awesome.
Anyway, the kids asked if they could borrow a piece to make a castle. They were down there for a couple hours or so working away and when I came down I was pretty impressed with what they had created. They had windows and a door and had colored it and everything. We have had some fun sword fighting games since then with me storming the castle and them trying to take it back.
By the way, I love Costco. I always feel good about the quality of the products that I can buy there, but if something does go wrong I am never worried about them not letting me take it back. I don't even have to keep the receipt because they just look it up on the credit card. Yesterday we were in there and I noticed that the couches were $200 less than what we paid for them. I told them that at the customer service desk and they just put $400 back on our credit card. I thought that was awesome.
Spiderwick Chronicles
I am a few weeks late on this post, but we got the Spiderwick Chronicles books for Christmas. It was a few days before things settled down after Christmas before we started them, but once we did the children really got into them. Rebecca and I really liked them too. Each book is pretty short and only took us maybe 2-3 hours to read to the children. They each build off each other to make one giant story, but I think they could be read independently too. We ended up reading one or two a day and finished them in just under a week. Overall, I liked the books because they were short and kept the kids attention easily, they encouraged the children to imagine and make believe about cool little creatures and fairies that might be all around them, I could imagine how excited I would be if I was in the main character's situation and I discovered the things he discovered, and although the siblings in the book disagreed with each other and bothered each other some, they worked together throughout the books and it showed how much they really cared for each other.
When we were all done Caleb let us borrow the movie to watch. I like it when the kids can watch a movie after reading the books. It often gives them something to look forward to and get excited about while reading and it seems like they have fun comparing their imagination to what is in the movie. Also, it seems like it makes the movies a little less scary for them because they know what the end is going to be like. I thought the movie was pretty good. It covered all of the books in one, so they had to leave a lot out and change a few things, but it was still entertaining. It is funny because Rebecca and I watched the movie by ourselves maybe 8 or so years ago and neither one of us liked it. But now that we had read the books and we were thinking about how excited our kids were for it, I liked it a lot more.
When we were all done Caleb let us borrow the movie to watch. I like it when the kids can watch a movie after reading the books. It often gives them something to look forward to and get excited about while reading and it seems like they have fun comparing their imagination to what is in the movie. Also, it seems like it makes the movies a little less scary for them because they know what the end is going to be like. I thought the movie was pretty good. It covered all of the books in one, so they had to leave a lot out and change a few things, but it was still entertaining. It is funny because Rebecca and I watched the movie by ourselves maybe 8 or so years ago and neither one of us liked it. But now that we had read the books and we were thinking about how excited our kids were for it, I liked it a lot more.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Rexburg Idaho Trip
On Saturday we decided to make a family trip up to Rexburg so Rebecca and I could attend the temple in one trip rather than driving up two separate times. It is about 1 hour and 15 minutes away. Our usual temple would be Idaho Falls (45 minutes away), but it is closed for renovations until October of this year.
We got there a little before 10:30 hoping to make that session. However, they told us that the 10:30 session was all full, as well as the 11:15 and the 12:00 noon session. So I got I slip to be in line for the 12:45 session. We are not supposed to save spots, but I went and did sealings in the temple right then since there was only an hour wait for that. In the LDS church we believe that marriages that are performed in the temple through the authority of God can last after death in the next life. However, since most people do not have the opportunity to get married in the temple, we can represent them and do that work (sealings) for them in the temple after they have passed away. They still have the ability to choose if they want the temple work to count, but at least once it is done, they get to choose.
Rebecca took the kids for a walk around the temple and then to a few stores while I was there.
Right after I was done with sealings I ran down to meet Rebecca at the front and give her my ticket for the 12:45 session. It was probably 12:30 when I met her. When she went to get in they told her that all of the session were full for the day and so she wouldn't be able to do any work. That is the first time I have ever heard about that happening, but I guess it is a regular thing at this temple since the Idaho Falls one has been closed. Luckily she pulled out the card that I gave her. They were surprised she had it, but said she was good to go in then.
While Rebecca was in the temple the children and I hung out at BYU-Idaho. It seems like a pretty fun campus. We did a few games of bowling which were only $1.50 per game. Luckily we made it there before they opened because about 5 minutes after we got in all the lanes filled up. The teams were Wolfmen (Elliott and Ethan), Lightning Bolts (Julia and Christian), and Mom's Fans (me and Agnes). The Wolfmen got the top score with a 111. After bowling we walked around their student center, played a little ping pong, the kids asked all of the students in line at the testing center why they had to wait in line to take a test on a Saturday, and we had some races around campus. It was a fun Saturday outing for our family.
We got there a little before 10:30 hoping to make that session. However, they told us that the 10:30 session was all full, as well as the 11:15 and the 12:00 noon session. So I got I slip to be in line for the 12:45 session. We are not supposed to save spots, but I went and did sealings in the temple right then since there was only an hour wait for that. In the LDS church we believe that marriages that are performed in the temple through the authority of God can last after death in the next life. However, since most people do not have the opportunity to get married in the temple, we can represent them and do that work (sealings) for them in the temple after they have passed away. They still have the ability to choose if they want the temple work to count, but at least once it is done, they get to choose.
Rebecca took the kids for a walk around the temple and then to a few stores while I was there.
Right after I was done with sealings I ran down to meet Rebecca at the front and give her my ticket for the 12:45 session. It was probably 12:30 when I met her. When she went to get in they told her that all of the session were full for the day and so she wouldn't be able to do any work. That is the first time I have ever heard about that happening, but I guess it is a regular thing at this temple since the Idaho Falls one has been closed. Luckily she pulled out the card that I gave her. They were surprised she had it, but said she was good to go in then.
While Rebecca was in the temple the children and I hung out at BYU-Idaho. It seems like a pretty fun campus. We did a few games of bowling which were only $1.50 per game. Luckily we made it there before they opened because about 5 minutes after we got in all the lanes filled up. The teams were Wolfmen (Elliott and Ethan), Lightning Bolts (Julia and Christian), and Mom's Fans (me and Agnes). The Wolfmen got the top score with a 111. After bowling we walked around their student center, played a little ping pong, the kids asked all of the students in line at the testing center why they had to wait in line to take a test on a Saturday, and we had some races around campus. It was a fun Saturday outing for our family.
Monday, January 18, 2016
One more Christmas Picture
I found this Christmas picture that I forgot to post earlier. Maybe we will have to use it for our Christmas card picture next year. P.S. if you didn't get a Christmas card from us this year, sorry! We weren't able to send them out to anyone this year.
Parent-teacher Conferences and Student of the Week
The kids had parent-teacher conferences this last week. They all did great! Their teachers said they are doing a good job adjusting and making friends, they are participating well in class, they are following class rules, and they are in almost all cases exceeding the education expectations (In 3 weeks of school Christian has already passed off all Kindergarten requirements, Ethan is particularly advanced in reading, and Julia is excelling in pretty much every area).
Julia did get nominated by her classmates to be the class president (I guess they rotate about every month). However, she declined. She told Rebecca that if they nominated her again she would feel confident enough to do it next time.
Ethan also got nominated by his class to be the "Student of the Week." He was pretty happy about that.
Julia did get nominated by her classmates to be the class president (I guess they rotate about every month). However, she declined. She told Rebecca that if they nominated her again she would feel confident enough to do it next time.
Ethan also got nominated by his class to be the "Student of the Week." He was pretty happy about that.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Builders Christian and Julia
I mentioned in a previous post that we bought two dressers from IKEA. We ended up deciding to put the tall one in Julia's room and the wide one in Christian's room (we got our dresser from another store in the same trip and Ethan's should arrive this Thursday, so that just leaves a dresser for Agnes and Elliott).
We put Julia's dresser together first. It was fun to work with her on it, but she ended up getting bored with it after a little bit. I think it ended up taking about 3-4 hours to finish it completely. A few days later we were able to put Christian's together. He was super excited about it from start to finish. He knew exactly how to read the instructions and how to follow them. When we did something wrong, he would look back at the pictures and figure out how to correct it. He kept saying it was just like legos and that he was having so much fun. I let him take the lead on the whole thing and I mainly just tightened the screws and made sure things were hammered in tightly. It was a lot of fun for me to do it with him and it made me wish we had a few more to put together like that.
We put Julia's dresser together first. It was fun to work with her on it, but she ended up getting bored with it after a little bit. I think it ended up taking about 3-4 hours to finish it completely. A few days later we were able to put Christian's together. He was super excited about it from start to finish. He knew exactly how to read the instructions and how to follow them. When we did something wrong, he would look back at the pictures and figure out how to correct it. He kept saying it was just like legos and that he was having so much fun. I let him take the lead on the whole thing and I mainly just tightened the screws and made sure things were hammered in tightly. It was a lot of fun for me to do it with him and it made me wish we had a few more to put together like that.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Talks in Church Again
When I got back in to my office on Tuesday there was a message on my phone from the 2nd counselor in our ward asking us to speak on Sunday. Rebecca and I had just given talks in her parents ward, but we figured that we would probably be asked to speak in this ward pretty soon. We were so happy when we found out what the topics were. They were almost exactly the same as the ones we had just given - mine was Being Sensitive to Promptings from the Spirit and my last one was Receiving Personal Revelation; Rebecca's was President Eyring's talk from General Conference on the Holy Ghost and in her last talk she had used that one for the bulk of her material. We did some tweaking and fine tuning over the week, but it was nice to have the base of the talks already prepared.
Our new ward has been great and we have been settling in pretty quickly. It seems like everyone it it has very strong testimonies and they all know so much about the gospel. And it has been really nice to live so close to everyone in it - One of the individuals I home teach is my next door neighbor!
Our kids love to draw during church. We are fine with that as long as they are quiet and try to listen while they are doing it. Here are some of their recent drawings.
Agnes' drawing. She will often draw a little scribble and then point to it and say something that I can't make out. But then today (a different picture from the one above) she would do a really big couple of circles and point to it and say apple. Then she would do a little circle inside an oval shape one and say eye.
Julia's pictures - she usually does them a little more detailed, but we limit them to just one pencil or pen when we are in church.
Elliott's drawing. He has really been advancing a lot over the past little bit. He is now drawing faces with a lot more detail and he is writing his name.
Our new ward has been great and we have been settling in pretty quickly. It seems like everyone it it has very strong testimonies and they all know so much about the gospel. And it has been really nice to live so close to everyone in it - One of the individuals I home teach is my next door neighbor!
Our kids love to draw during church. We are fine with that as long as they are quiet and try to listen while they are doing it. Here are some of their recent drawings.
Agnes' drawing. She will often draw a little scribble and then point to it and say something that I can't make out. But then today (a different picture from the one above) she would do a really big couple of circles and point to it and say apple. Then she would do a little circle inside an oval shape one and say eye.
Julia's pictures - she usually does them a little more detailed, but we limit them to just one pencil or pen when we are in church.
Ethan's pictures - notice the Star Wars theme.
Christian's pictures - also some star wars and some castle ones. He is always super creative with his pictures.
Elliott's drawing. He has really been advancing a lot over the past little bit. He is now drawing faces with a lot more detail and he is writing his name.
Elliott's Birthday
Elliott turned four on Friday. He was pretty excited about it. Leading up to it he was telling everyone that they could pretty much say he was a four year old because his birthday was coming up.
On the day of his birthday he picked German pancakes for breakfast, he got to go out to McDonald's with Rebecca and Christian for lunch, and then Macaroni and Cheese for lunch.
He spent most of the day just playing with Christian and Agnes while Julia and Ethan were in school. Then, right when Julia and Ethan got home he wanted to open up his presents. He went shopping with Rebecca the day before so he already knew what most of his gifts were, but he was still really excited for them. Then that night he got to pick out a movie - he picked The Grinch (the old version) and a Kermit the Frog movie.
Elliott is a very smart, good, and affectionate boy. He does cause mischief with Agnes sometimes, but he is always quick to say sorry when we call him out on it. He has been progressing quickly with his drawing, writing, numbers, and alphabet. And he is glad that he finally gets to be in Sunbeams (definitely the oldest one in his class). He is a joy to have in our family.
On the day of his birthday he picked German pancakes for breakfast, he got to go out to McDonald's with Rebecca and Christian for lunch, and then Macaroni and Cheese for lunch.
He spent most of the day just playing with Christian and Agnes while Julia and Ethan were in school. Then, right when Julia and Ethan got home he wanted to open up his presents. He went shopping with Rebecca the day before so he already knew what most of his gifts were, but he was still really excited for them. Then that night he got to pick out a movie - he picked The Grinch (the old version) and a Kermit the Frog movie.
Elliott is a very smart, good, and affectionate boy. He does cause mischief with Agnes sometimes, but he is always quick to say sorry when we call him out on it. He has been progressing quickly with his drawing, writing, numbers, and alphabet. And he is glad that he finally gets to be in Sunbeams (definitely the oldest one in his class). He is a joy to have in our family.
Another cute picture I thought I would throw in here. I came home from work and discovered that Agnes had wanted to be both a dragon and a princess - I was calling her Dragonella. She has really hit her terrible twos this past week. She just screams and screams now whenever she doesn't get what she wants. Rebecca and I are pretty good about not giving in so hopefully this won't last too long.
Ringing in the New Year
Rebecca's parents and her brother's family came to our house to celebrate the new year with us. They arrived on Thursday night and then we had all of Friday to celebrate. Rebecca and I did sneak off to do some furniture shopping, but mainly we all played games, ate snacks, and had a good time.
One of our children's new favorite games is spot it. It is a game with a bunch of cards that have 7 or so pictures on each card. No two cards are alike, but any two cards have one and only one matching picture on them. There are lots of different games that you can play with them, but what we do is split up into two teams and then just flip over two cards at a time and the first team that spots the matching picture wins those cards. We go through the whole deck and the team with the most cards wins. I think our children like it so much because it is a game where age doesn't really matter - Elliott gets just about as many cards as Julia and Ethan, and the kids get just as many as Rebecca or I do.
Some of the snacks that we had were Grandma Swift's popcorn cake (a tradition we do on New Year's Eve every year), a homemade chocolate cheesecake (another tradition), pizza, stuffed mushrooms, bacon wrapped jalapenos, chips, a salad, and pop. Right at midnight we toasted in the new year with some sparkling cider and then watched some of the fireworks out our back windows - we are loving our view! All of the children stayed up until midnight except for Agnes.
The next day we drove down to Utah and spent a few nights with Rebecca's brother's family (Tyler & HyeWon). That was a lot of fun. On Friday evening we met up with many of Rebecca's aunts, uncles, and cousins for her Grandparents to treat us all for dinner at the Provo University Mall food court. Then on Saturday Rebecca's dad and mom watch the children while Rebecca and I went out furniture shopping. We ended up picking out two beds and a dresser from RCWilley that they are shipping to us, two dressers from IKEA that I am still working on putting together, and a dresser from a small furniture store that we strapped on top of our van for the 3.5 hour drive back to Pocatello. That means we now have a table (we got that in Idaho Falls right before Rebecca's family arrived), bar stools (we got those of craigslist), couches for the living (just got them from Costco, and then those dressers and beds that I mentioned. Here are some pictures:
On Sunday we went to church in the morning, packed up, had dinner at Rebecca's grandparents house, and then made the drive home. We stopped by temple square for about 30 minutes to look at all the lights. I think we will want to make that a yearly tradition now that we live so close. Our children we eager to get back in the car because we had a book on tape going, but we still had a good time and they were impressed by how many lights some of the trees had. Just one block after we were in the car Christian said he needed to go to the bathroom, so we pulled over right in front of the conference center and I made all of the children run in so we wouldn't have any more unexpected stops. There were a few complaints, but they really liked getting to see the conference center after only seeing it on TV in the past. They have been asking if we might be able to go there to actually watch conference sometime.
It was a fun little mini-vacation before the kids had to start school again.
One of our children's new favorite games is spot it. It is a game with a bunch of cards that have 7 or so pictures on each card. No two cards are alike, but any two cards have one and only one matching picture on them. There are lots of different games that you can play with them, but what we do is split up into two teams and then just flip over two cards at a time and the first team that spots the matching picture wins those cards. We go through the whole deck and the team with the most cards wins. I think our children like it so much because it is a game where age doesn't really matter - Elliott gets just about as many cards as Julia and Ethan, and the kids get just as many as Rebecca or I do.
Some of the snacks that we had were Grandma Swift's popcorn cake (a tradition we do on New Year's Eve every year), a homemade chocolate cheesecake (another tradition), pizza, stuffed mushrooms, bacon wrapped jalapenos, chips, a salad, and pop. Right at midnight we toasted in the new year with some sparkling cider and then watched some of the fireworks out our back windows - we are loving our view! All of the children stayed up until midnight except for Agnes.
The next day we drove down to Utah and spent a few nights with Rebecca's brother's family (Tyler & HyeWon). That was a lot of fun. On Friday evening we met up with many of Rebecca's aunts, uncles, and cousins for her Grandparents to treat us all for dinner at the Provo University Mall food court. Then on Saturday Rebecca's dad and mom watch the children while Rebecca and I went out furniture shopping. We ended up picking out two beds and a dresser from RCWilley that they are shipping to us, two dressers from IKEA that I am still working on putting together, and a dresser from a small furniture store that we strapped on top of our van for the 3.5 hour drive back to Pocatello. That means we now have a table (we got that in Idaho Falls right before Rebecca's family arrived), bar stools (we got those of craigslist), couches for the living (just got them from Costco, and then those dressers and beds that I mentioned. Here are some pictures:
On Sunday we went to church in the morning, packed up, had dinner at Rebecca's grandparents house, and then made the drive home. We stopped by temple square for about 30 minutes to look at all the lights. I think we will want to make that a yearly tradition now that we live so close. Our children we eager to get back in the car because we had a book on tape going, but we still had a good time and they were impressed by how many lights some of the trees had. Just one block after we were in the car Christian said he needed to go to the bathroom, so we pulled over right in front of the conference center and I made all of the children run in so we wouldn't have any more unexpected stops. There were a few complaints, but they really liked getting to see the conference center after only seeing it on TV in the past. They have been asking if we might be able to go there to actually watch conference sometime.
It was a fun little mini-vacation before the kids had to start school again.
The Force Awakens
Our children love Star Wars! They have seen episodes IV, V, and VI several times and read several books about all of the movies. They also have a bunch of Star Wars legos that the frequently play with and they pretend all the time to be Luke and Darth Vader in epic light saber battles. Rebecca and I had been talking about eventually taking them to see the new movie once it came to the cheap theater. However, when Rebecca's parents got to Pocatello they surprised the kids with tickets for all of us to go see it. We all loved it. It had been a really long time since we have all been to the movies together as a family so that was a really neat experience in and of itself. But the fact that it was the new Star Wars put it over the top for the children. I think they have talked about it at least once a day since then. I was a little worried that it might be too much for Christian and Elliott, but I don't think it was too bad - probably at about the same level of the other three that they had already seen.
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