Dance and Wrestling

Agnes had her dance pictures this week. They got to dress up in their recital outfits and Agnes was so cute.











Ethan also had his final wrestling meet. It was an all city tournament and so Ethan had four different kids that he had to wrestle against. He pinned his first opponent from a different school. Then he had to wrestle one of his friends from his school. He had wrestled him a couple of times in the past and he had won one and his friend had won one. The match was close, but Ethan ended up winning by two points. Ethan got his points in the first round when he took him down a couple of times. For the next two rounds Ethan started on bottom. For both rounds Ethan was not able to get out from being on bottom, but because he started there, the other kid didn't get any points from it. The third match was against another kid from a different school. This kid was really good and Ethan didn't get any points on him, but he also didn't get pinned (the kid pinned all of the other opponents). His final opponent was another friend from his school. This was the top JV kid for his weight class at his school. Ethan had only wrestled him in practices and said he was really good. It was another close match though. The other kid got a couple of points early one, but then at the end of the first round Ethan almost pinned him and was able to take the lead by one. For the next two rounds the other kid picked up a few points here and there until he was ahead by three or so points. But then, in the final 15 seconds Ethan almost pinned him again and ended up winning. So that meant that Ethan got 2nd place for the JV boys in his weight group for the city. He was really excited about that. I think he is definitely planning on doing wrestling again next year. And it really grew on Rebecca and I too. At first we were very skeptical, but we were impressed by how hard he worked and how he learned to manage his frustrations and never give up, even when things were very physically challenging.

Visiting with Family

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Rebecca's parents and Tyler and HyeWon's family came to celebrate with us. It was fun spending time with them, catching up, and playing some games. The children especially loved playing a lot of ping-pong and learning how to play Carrom. And we had a lot of delicious food of course. I completely forgot to get pictures though.

The day after Thanksgiving we did some shopping and our children all bought things that we had been thinking about getting them for Christmas. So we have been trying to come up with some more ideas now. We also started on our Christmas decorations.






Then last weekend we got to head down to Utah to attend Jacob's baptism. We made it down late Friday evening. The baptism service was really nice and Jacob set a great example for Elliott who will get baptized in just a couple more months.

We enjoyed visiting with Nathanael and Mary-Anne, Tianna and Jim, and my parents. And the children all enjoyed playing with cousins. Here are some pictures from that visit.

Happy Halloween and Other Updates

Halloween was cold this year! Probably the coldest since we moved to Pocatello. We still had a fun time though.

We followed our tradition of eating mummy dogs for dinner. Rebecca also made some of her delicious pumpkin soup. Then at 5:30 we headed out for trick-or-treating. We just do the few streets in our neighborhood, but I bet is about 50 houses. This is typically the right amount for our children and by the end of it they are excited to get back home and eat their candy. It is fun to take them around to the houses of everyone that they know and it is also fun to see the costumes of all of the other neighborhood kids that are out and about.

This year Julia just did the first 1/4 with us and then she hung out with a friend once we got to her house. Ethan was late because he often doesn't get home from wrestling until about 6pm. We had the carpool driver just drop him off in the area that we were trick-or-treating and then Rebecca drove him to a different neighborhood to find his friends. He said that he had a fun time with them, but he felt like he got much less candy in that area.

This year Julia was Hermione, Ethan was a chic magnet (he got the idea from a friend who was doing the same costume), Christian was Harry Potter, Elliott was some type of police man superhero, Agnes was Snow White, and Asher was a Knight. It was so cold that they all had several layers under the costumes and some even had coats on top.

At a ward party the week before Rebecca and I tried to be Green with Envy (I wore a green shirt and she wore a sign that said envy on it), but no one got it, so we just went as ourselves for Halloween night.

At the end of trick-or-treating we let them eat as much as they could while watching the Charlie Brown Halloween show. This year no one got sick - which I think was a first.

A couple other updates...

Rebecca was one of the first three people to submit a correct answer for the library scavenger hunt that I mentioned in a previous post. She got a $10 gift card for that.

And Ethan had another wrestling match. He did even better this time. He mentioned he was going to try to be on the offense more this time, and we could tell a big difference. He had way more points than his opponent and ended up pinning him in the second round. He was super excited. I forgot to get pictures though.

Wrestling and Murder Mystery

Ethan had his first wrestling match last Wednesday. It was kind of hard to watch. Just seeing the kids be so aggressive with each other, I kind of wanted to get out there and break it up. But we are glad that Ethan is enjoying it and it seems to push him in different ways than cross country did.

Ethan's first match had to be against a varsity kid. The other team didn't have enough guys, so some of their guys wrestled both varsity and junior varsity. The person Ethan wrestled against was pretty brutal. He liked to push Ethan's head against the mat and was choking him for a bit. Ethan said he was locking his arms too, which is illegal, but the referee didn't call any of it. Anyway, the other kid technically was more skilled than Ethan and Ethan was spending almost all of his time on defense. But Ethan did not let the other kid pin him - which says a lot since the other kid did pin the varsity opponent from Ethan's school. Afterward, a grandma from one of the other kids on Ethan's team came over too us and told us how impressed she was with Ethan and how he never gave up. She said she comes from a wrestling family and she thinks Ethan could go really far in wrestling because of that. He just needs to learn some more of the technical aspects.

I am not sure though. I am really proud of him for trying so hard, but I think it is a sport that I will just have to get used to.

Here are some pictures of his match. He looks so small, but also grown-up in his singlet!











Rebecca, Ethan, Christian and I spent some time doing a scavenger hunt at the ISU library this weekend. It followed a Clue format where we had to find cards scattered through the library to figure out the person, place, and weapon of the murder. It was a lot of fun. It was tricky and we had to think a lot, but I think that is what made it so much fun. I think we spent 6 hours on it over the weekend, but I do think we finally solved it. And we may have even been the first ones to do that. The deadline is October 31st, at which point we will find out how we did.

Here are the rules and some example clues for it.

Fall Activities

We have had a few warmer days here and there, but for the most part it has definitely been fall weather. With the fall weather we have been doing more fall activities. 

Julia - since cross country is over, Julia has had more time at home. She has largely filled that time with playing with her siblings. But she has also been baking some more. Below is a pumpkin cheesecake she was particularly proud of. She also organized a book club with her friends. Their first meeting was yesterday. And on Friday she had her first paid babysitting job. She enjoyed that a lot. 

Ethan - Ethan started wrestling as soon as cross country finished up. He said it is hard, but he likes it a lot. Wrestling practices go all the way until 5:30 and he comes home exhausted. So besides dinner , jobs, and family scripture study, there is not much else he gets to do on the weekday evenings.

Christian - Christian has been loving his GATE program at school. It is held on Fridays at a completely different school. This year they have all new GATE specific teachers and a new curriculum focused on science and technology. Christian has also been doing amazing on the piano. Besides Rebecca, he is the only one in our house who has been playing.

Elliott - Elliott has been loving school. He has a male teacher and he has been liking that a lot. At home he has been a big help around the house and does a great job in leading Asher in adventurous play.

Here is a picture of Elliott and Christian helping out with a big yard work project yesterday. They were in charge of leaves and Ethan was in the back mowing.

Agnes - Agnes has been loving kindergarten. She acts so grown up now that she is a big girl in school. She is always excited to come home and show us her school work or what little toy she earned from the prize box. Her swimming lessons have been going great. She can swim about 1/3 of the pool on her own. She can also jump in at the deep end on her own, turn around, and swim back to the edge.

Asher - Asher has been getting some extra mom time now that everyone else is at school. I think he has grown a little more possessive of her because of it. He still loves playing with balls and being tough. He likes to be part of the conversation and tries to repeat whatever he just heard his siblings say. This past week he decided he didn’t want to wear his diapers anymore. So Rebecca started potty training with him. But his interest in that comes and goes.

Ethan's Glasses

Ethan got glasses. In fifth grade he failed an eye screening test at school and they recommended that he get his eyes checked out by a professional. He was telling us that he could see okay though, so we put it off until just a few weeks ago when he failed a second screening test. He was also saying that the board was sometimes hard to see in some of his middle school classes. So we took him in and sure enough, one of his eyes is worse than the other. I think he has 20/40 vision or something like that. The eye doctor believed that if he did glasses now and wore an eye patch at home for a few years, then perhaps when he reached his older teenage years, he would no longer need glasses.


Here he is with his new glasses on.




Last week he also got to go out to eat with Rebecca for successfully completing the cross country season. He chose Texas Roadhouse. He got ribs and two sides of loaded (cheese and bacon) fries.




Ethan is a great kid and has been enjoying middle school. He has started wrestling and he says that is really hard too, but lots of fun. It sounds like he got placed in the lowest weight group.

At school he has had some incidents with his locker mate. It is someone from our church who has a hard time controlling his emotions. Ethan paired up with him though to be nice, but the kid has yelled at Ethan in classes and accused him of stealing his binder, sometimes swears around Ethan, damaged his things in the locker, and just the other day punched Ethan because he was frustrated with not getting the combination right on the locker. Ethan had just been waiting patiently behind him, but because he was close by, the kid was able to take his frustrations out on Ethan. When I heard that story I told Ethan that I was going to call the school to get him switched to a new locker. I told him that the switch might give the kid a little more space, and Ethan could focus on just being his friend without these conflicts coming up. Ethan became tearful though and asked not to switched. He said that the kid's parents are getting a divorce and he wants to be there for him. I was impressed by Ethan's kindness.

Field Trip with Christian

This past week Christian had a field trip to Swore Farms. This farm is about 10 miles outside of Pocatello and is one of the standard fall field trips for the fourth graders at the children's school. Rebecca went with Julia and Ethan in the past, so I got to go with Christian this time. Unfortunately, we had some very cold weather come in for the day of the field trip. I think it was only 15 degrees when the field trip started.

They started off by getting to check out the equipment for planting and digging up potatoes. Usually they save a section of potato plants and dig them up while the students are there. The students then get to run around and pick up any remaining potatoes on the ground. However, because it was so cold this year, they had dug out all of the potatoes earlier and were keeping them stored in a warmer location.




Then they took them on a tour of their greenhouses. They told how they grow dill among the tomatoes and also try to grow other things (carrots, cucumbers, etc.) in the spare spaces along the walls of the greenhouse. They said that each greenhouse is made up of 2 giant plastic sheets and each one costs $1000. I was trying to do the math in my head for how many tomatoes could possibly grow in one and how much tomatoes can sell for, and it didn't seem to add up to enough. They must be able to reuse the sheets year after year. It did get me thinking about the cost of farming more. Here in Pocatello we have been able to buy a ten pound bag of potatoes for 88 cents. I know the equipment for the potatoes is very expensive. Then add in the water, and any fertilizer or pesticides or anything like that, and the labor, and it just doesn't seem like it can be profitable.




After the greenhouse, they got to go through a corn maze. It was actually really difficult. We got twisted up a few times, but my group finally made it out.




And here they are playing while waiting for everyone to finish up the corn maze. Even though it looks sunny, you can see they are all bundled up trying to keep warm.





Yesterday we went to the ISU homecoming parade. I think this was the longest parade that we have gone to in Pocatello. We have gone to it every year that we have been here, but this year it seemed twice as long as years in the past. The children came home with a huge bag of candy - just in time for Halloween!

Fall Hike

Due to parent-teacher conferences, our children had a four day weekend. We decided to take advantage of the break by doing a hike on Friday morning. We had originally planned on camping out in a yurt just outside of Pocatello, but we found out that the yurt wouldn't be set up until November 1st. So we decided to just hike out to it and see if we could find it instead. The hike is located back in the mountains where there are a lot of trees with pretty fall colors.

We got to the start and it was kind of cold with a little overcast. The hike started out on a dirt road for about a mile. Then it switched to a trail for another mile and a half. When we got to the trail part it started to snow. The children loved catching it in their mouths. The snow was coming down in huge clumps, but not sticking on the ground at that point in the hike.

The final little bit is just back in the woods trying to find the yurt. It is not visible from the trail and there is not a really clear path to it. By this time the snow was sticking and so Rebecca and the children hid out under a tree while I sent searching for it. I did find it, but it was all packed up still. Going back in the snow was hard work. It was snowing hard for a while and we all got soaked. But we made it. And it was a pretty fun fall adventure.

Cross Country 2019

On Wednesday we had the last cross country race for the season. It is an all city race with the 4 Pocatello middle schools all participating. Julia and Ethan really worked hard this year. There were ups and downs with their enthusiasm, but they pushed through and finished the year really strong.

They had the final race at their school. It has the longest course and several hills. With the final race, the run boys and girls in all the grades separately, starting with the oldest. So Julia's race started at about 5:00 and Ethan's race at about 6:30.

This is Julia with one of her good friends. Her big goal this year was to beat her friend in a race, and in this final one she did it. She stayed right with her the whole time and then really pushed it at the end to barely finish before her.




Ethan and Julia with their trophies. I actually found these at a thrift store just a week before and I thought it would be so great to give them to them right as they finished their races. Ethan thought is was cool, but Julia was so embarrassed. I knew she would be and that was half the reason why I wanted to give it to her then. They received a ton of attention from all of the other kids and parents as they walked around with their huge trophies.




Julia placed 13th of all of the 7th grade girls. Here time was 17:29, which was over 2 minutes faster than her first race on this course this year (about 10 minutes faster than her first race on it last year).



Ethan got 17th place for the 6th grade boys. This was probably the most competitive group - his time would have got him a better place in the 7th grade boys even and about the same place among the 8th grade boys.  He got a 15:17, which is about a minute and a half faster than his first race on this course.


Both the 7th grade girls and the 6th grade boys from their school got first in the all city race.

In the car on the way home I asked them if it was all worth it and they both said yes. I am sure Ethan will want to do it again next year, but I am not sure on Julia. I hope she will - I think it helps her grow a lot.

First Snow

Sorry, no pictures, but we got our first snow last night and this morning. Nothing stuck, but it came down pretty hard for a few hours. The children were all pretty excited. Heated blankets and warm clothes and coats were all pulled out. It is fun to transition into winter, but I am hoping we will have a few more days of Fall still. Looks like it is going to be below freezing every night this week and only reach the 40s and 50s as the highs.

Start of the School Year

We are now well into the school year. It has been going great. The children are all doing well in their classes. This is Agnes' first year and she loves it. Ethan also seems to really like middle school. Here are some of our back-to-school pictures.


Here are the elementary school children with their teachers.

Christian with Mrs. Price - she is amazing! So far, we have always got her for fourth grade.


Elliott with Mr. Crawford. This is our first time having him.


Agnes with Mrs. Dobson. She is the only kindergarten teacher at the school. Kindergarten is half day now, so we are getting used to picking Agnes up at 11 from the bus stop.










Asher wanted to make sure he got his picture in.




Ethan and Julia are doing cross country. They are both so amazing. They both have their days when they do not want to do it, but they are good sports and both improving a lot. In the first race, Julia got 16:09. Her fastest time for last year was 16:30 in her final race. In the second race, which is longer and has a lot of hills she got 19:45. That is still three full minutes faster than her best time on that course last year. Ethan got 14:30 on his first race and 16:20 on the second one. I have been running a lot with him. Just last Thursday though I did a 4 mile run with Ethan and it seemed like he might be as fast as me. I think I could still beat him if it was an actual race, but my pushing it running speed was the same as his. I am going to have to really work hard to try to keep ahead of him for another year or so. Although I am really proud of both of them for how well they are doing, I did think I would get in another decade or so before they would actually be faster than me.














And Agnes started a dance class. It is just a group of her friends (3 other girls) who enrolled and they have been having a fun time.