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.