Other End of Winter Activities

Here are a few other things that happened for us over the past couple of months.


Agnes had her final dance recital. Here she is with a couple of friends.




It was so crowded, so we just went up to the balcony to watch.




That same night, Julia and Ethan had choir concerts.




Ethan just got his braces on. Here are before and after pictures. So far they are only on the top. I think he was supposed to have his appointment to get the bottom ones on already, but things have been postponed a bit.






Just in time, Julia got her braces off. She has been enjoying all of the no braces freedom now. Lots of pop, caramel, and apples!




And here are Asher and Agnes hanging out on one of their last days home alone before school was cancelled for all of their siblings. We recently heard that school has been switched to home school for the rest of the year.

Elliott, Asher, and Christian's Birthdays

Elliott, Asher, and Christian all had birthdays since the last time that a posted. Elliott turned 8 on January 8th. This year he chose for the whole family to go roller skating instead of having a friend party. It was also a big year with his baptism. We were so proud of him. At his baptism I got to sit in the front row with him as they had a couple speakers and some musical numbers. He became teary-eyed in it and shared that it was feeling really special to him. I was glad I got to be a part of that.


Elliott with all of the cousins that came to visit. We had several family members come to celebrate with him, which was really nice.











Asher's birthday was next on February 20th. He turned 3 this year. He was so happy knowing that this was a special day just for him. He has been really into dinosaurs lately. Coincidentally, he received two dinosaur shirts as presents. Lately he has been asking which is stronger, dinosaurs and monsters. And then giving an explanation for why one would win in a fight over another.






Christian's birthday was on March 4th. He turned 10 this year. I forgot to take pictures at his party. But he had a fun time. At his friend party we did an adventure story that was kind of like a choose your own adventure. It meant that 90% of the party they were just sitting on the couches listening and figuring out problems. We were a little worried with how it would turn out, but all the kids really liked it. Not sure if that is just because of Christian's personality and the type of kids that he invited, but it was fun to try something different. The party was the day before everything shut down around here for COVID-19, so we were glad that kids still came.

Here he is playing the piano at a school talent show the weekend before.

Christmas and New Years

Unfortunately, now that it is April, I don't remember a lot from our Christmas break. I remember that we did have a fun time and the kids were all really excited. Even though I don't have a lot to say about it, I wanted to still post some of our pictures.

Ready to open stockings

Star wars shirts

Trying to figure out the main present. It required them to do a scavenger hunt with several riddles and problems to solve. They were not too happy about the work at first, but were super excited when they found out about our trip to Europe. Hopefully, we will still be able to do it.

Nathanael and Mary-Anne came for New Years. We had a blast with them and even did a balloon drop. Here are all of the cousins together.

Wrestling Tournament

Back in December, Ethan had his final wrestling tournament. He was really excited for it, but also a little nervous. This was an all city tournament, so all four middle schools in the city. For the JV boys, they set it up so each boy had to wrestle each other boy in his weight class. And then the person with the most wins (or most points if there was an even number of wins) won the tournament. There were two other boys from Franklin with Ethan, and then I think two boys from other schools. Ethan ended up getting second place, losing only once to the boy who got first. He even beat both of the other boys from Franklin - one of whom had been wrestling for several years and beat him every other time during the school year. He did a great job and we are proud of him for his hard work and determination.

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.