Ethan's 8th Birthday

Ethan turned 8 on Saturday! He had really been looking forward to this one. He was excited for his baptism of course, which is coming up in July, but sometime years ago when he had asked for a pocketknife, we had said something like maybe when you turn 8. So he was certain he was going to get one for this birthday.

We started the celebrations off on Thursday night with a trip to Texas Roadhouse. It was really to celebrate Christian's surgery, my being done with work for the school year, and his birthday. He had a free kids meal birthday coupon, and Rebecca had a free appetizer coupon, so we only ended up ordering a full rack of ribs, and a hamburger, besides those two things and split it among all 7 of us. I usually fill up on rolls (I had 10 this time), so we still went home with lots of leftovers. And the best part of it all was it was free because we still had money on a gift card that my brother gave us.


On the saddle at Texas Roadhouse with his ice-cream while the workers sang to him.


On Friday we had a friend birthday party. Besides our kids, there were 11 of his friends that showed up. He really wanted to do a zombie theme for his party. So we set it up like there was a zombie outbreak and the kids had to find supplies to weather it through the storm. They paired up and each got a list that included water, granola bar, rope, a bag, and a ball. There were lots of these items hidden all over and some were marked as contaminated and others were clean - they could only grab the clean versions. We had planned to have them search through the ravine for these materials, but it was rainy so we had to do it all inside. Some of the kids got a little scared and tears were even shed out of fear, so I had to reassure them that there were no real zombies. Anyway, once they got all of their supplies, we played games that corresponded to each item. With the water we had a race to see which pair could finish off their water bottle the fastest. One of the girls kept on saying she was going to throw up. (I am sure Ethan is now going to have the reputation at school of having the dad you makes kids cry and throw up at birthday parties). Then, we the granola bars I had them race to see who could eat them the fastest without hands. For the balls, I pretended I was a zombie and they got to throw their balls at me. I think that was their favorite one. This particular game might have been better suited for a group of 5 year olds, because some of them could throw pretty hard and there were a few that were specifically aiming at my head. Last was a three legged race with the rope. I tied each game into a skill that they might need in a real zombie attack and overall I think it went well. Rebecca then fed them some cupcakes, they opened presents, and then just went crazy for 30 minutes or so until their parents arrived.





On Saturday we celebrated Ethan's birthday as a family. Unfortunately I had graduation ceremonies that day, so I was gone from 9:30 to 1:00. For breakfast Ethan ordered bacon, coco puffs, fried eggs, hashbrowns, and apple juice. For lunch he had nutella sandwiches, and for dinner he had grilled cheese sandwiches and a fruit and veggie platter. For his cake he asked for one called oreo freak out - which was a mint ice-cream cake with crushed oreos sprinkled all around it. Other than that we just played games as a family and watched a movie in the evening.





Ethan said he had a great time throughout the day. He is an awesome kid and we are really lucky to get to be his parents.

Christian's Surgery

Christian has had a really hard time hearing for about the past three months. We were thinking that maybe he had allergies and the congestion just kept his ears pretty plugged up. So, we all just tried to talk really laud and tried to be patient with his continuous "whats". I know we shouldn't have waited so long, but we finally decided to take him in for a doctor's appointment. The doctor checked out his ear and did find that it was blocked up with something. He tried to get it out then, but wasn't able to at all, so he referred us to an audiologist. Rebecca took him in for that appointment the next day and they said it was a rock. They tried to get it out too, but didn't have any luck. So they scheduled him for surgery a couple days later. The surgery went great. They went ahead and put tubes in his ears since they were doing the surgery anyway. Christian had a really quick recovery and now has a small rock (about half the size of a dime) as a souvenir. Rebecca and I feel really bad as parents for making him live for 3 months with a rock in his ear (sounds like some sort of medieval torture technique). We couldn't believe though how laid back and accepting Christian was of it all. He said "what" a lot, but he never complained about any pain in his ear over those three months and never said anything about it being hard to hear people. And post surgery he threw up once, but just kept saying that he felt great. He got some new pajamas, a donut, and movie time out of it all, and now his hearing is great!

Utah/California Trip

Last weekend I had a conference in Long Beach, CA to attend. I needed to fly out of Salt Lake City so Rebecca and I decided to make a whole family trip out of it. We picked the kids up right after school on Thursday and started our drive down. We wanted to make it down as quickly as possible so we could stop by a few stores in the Salt Lake area before they closed. After doing some shopping, we drove to Rebecca's brother's house for the night. We got there just in time for me and Rebecca to attend the temple (they only live about 5 minutes) away. It has been so long since we have been to the temple together (we usually have to do shifts), so that was really nice. Then, Rebecca and I woke up at 4 am and she took me to the airport for a 6 am flight.

Everything went smoothly with the flights. In fact, since I have MVP status with Alaska Airlines they upgraded me to first class there and back. When I got to LAX, I caught the metro straight down to Long Beach. There is a lot of poverty there and seeing it all really reminded me how blessed we are and the difficulties that some people have to face every day of their life. I had just booked the cheapest hotel I could find and so it was in a pretty sketchy part of Long Beach. The hotel itself was fine and it had free wifi so that was good, but it was a little scary walking the 2 miles to and from the conference hotel every day. The conference was fine, but not one I usually attend so I didn't end up going to much of it or networking with other people. I did get to go touch the ocean on one of the days, so that was pretty exciting.

The most exciting part of my trip though was on the last day when I tried to go to church before heading to the airport. I planned on taking the metro into Los Angeles in the morning, walking along the Hollywood walk of fame and then making my way to a chapel that was just a few blocks away from that. Unfortunately, they had part of the metro that was closed for repairs and so I had to hope on the bus for a couple stops. They had it all planned out so the bus took us to the station where we could get on the metro again, but it had to do a lot of stops along the way. With those stops and the traffic, what should have only taken 5 minutes on the metro ended up taking an hour. The bus was packed and I had to stand for the whole thing. It was an interesting ride though. It was right through the Compton area of LA, so kind of a scary area. There was one part where the bus had to stop for a guy who was crossing the street. When he made it to the other side, he just dropped his pants there and started peeing right in the open, exposing himself to everyone on the bus. By the time we got to the metro station I realized there was no way I would be able to make it to church, so instead, I just got on the first bus going back to the metro station that I just came from. Luckily I was one of the first ones on so I got a seat this time. However, as the bus become more crowded there was an older lady standing, so I got up and climbed into the isle to give her my seat. When I did that I guess my backpack bumped into a guy and that set him off. So I had to go an hour bus ride with this guy yelling and swearing at me, telling me how he was going to punch me in the face, and telling me how stupid White people are. Luckily, by the end of the bus ride his anger turned toward the bus driver (the bus driver and I were the only White guys on the bus), so I was able to make it off without incident. I really enjoyed my first class flight home after the uncomfortable and frightening trip to the airport. I arrived in Salt Lake and 9 pm, Rebecca and the kids met me at the airport, and we drove back to Pocatello that night.

Based on Rebecca's report, it sounds like they had a much funner (and safer) time in Salt Lake. They got to spend some time with her brother of course, but they also got to visit her grandparents, her aunts and uncles and cousins, and my brother's family. Rebecca said that the kids loved playing with their cousins and she had a great time catching up with everyone.

Unfortunately we were having battery problems so the only picture we got from that trip was one my brother took of Agnes on his new motorcycle. Looks pretty fun. Maybe I will have to try to talk him into letting me take it out - the last and only time I rode a motorcycle was about 12 years ago when I crashed his first bike into our neighbor's house.

Spring Carnival

ISU had their Spring Carnival on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. They were charging $10 per family or a canned food item per person. Originally it was planned for outside, but because of some rain earlier in the day, they held it in the student union. There were two main rooms. In the first room they had the inflatables. The kids got to do a giant obstacle course/slide several times. I took Agnes through it once, but she didn't enjoy it all that much. After that was a bounce house. Agnes really liked that one and kept going back to it as her siblings did other things. There was also a potato sack race. The kids were all pretty good at it because they have shorter strides. Instead of having to hope, for the most part they could just run while holding the bag up. Then Julia and Ethan tried to do Sumo wrestling, but the costumes were a little large and heavy for them and they had a hard time standing up. Rebecca and I did it instead and it didn't take her long before she pinned me. They also had jousting and all of the kids gave that a try. The jousting poles were a little heavy for them, so they kind of just swung them around until someone lost their balance and fell off the pedestal. Rebecca and I gave that a try as well. The battery was drained on our camera at that point, so we didn't get pictures of the rest.





















The last thing that they had in that room was a kiddie pool with sand and arrow heads that the kids got to look for. They loved that they got to bring them home. They made necklaces out of them and have been wearing them all day. There was also this stick and arrow throwing thing that Rebecca picked up much quicker than I did. She even killed a mastodon for us.


In the second room we started off with the food. They had corndogs, hamburgers, french fries, pop, popcorn, cotton candy, and churros. The food was super good quality, but it was still fun. After eating, the second room had tons of games to play - things like the ring toss, softball tic-tac-toe, and floating rubber ducks. The kids all earned tickets from these games which they spent on stuffed snakes and bouncy balls. Then we got in line for face painting. We were probably just five or six people back, but it was one lady and she took her time for each person so we were in line for over an hour. That was okay, because the kids just kept playing the games while we waited. She was definitely worth the wait. It was bar far the best face painting that I have ever seen. It is too bad the kids had to wash it all off at the end of the night.





While we were waiting in line we also got to see a corndog eating contest. There were five contestants to begin with an the first to eat 15 corndogs got a small TV. Rebecca thought I should enter (not because she wanted the TV), but because she thought it would be entertaining to watch me do it. When they unveiled the plates with the corndogs on them, 15 seemed like a huge number. Three of the contestants dropped out somewhere between 5-8 in. There were two left and one of them was way ahead of the other. He just shoved them in quickly until he only had 2 left. The other guy still had like 6 to go. But then the guy with 2 left just stopped and stood up. He was pacing back and forth for about 15 minutes and the other guys was very slowly catching up. Finally, the guy who was in the lead threw it all up and so he was disqualified. It was pretty gross, but luckily I don't think anyone in our family was watching at that moment.

It ended with them giving away an x-box 360 with 6 games. There were about 70 people there, so with 7 in our family I thought we had a pretty good chance. Not that we would have wanted it - we would have just taken it back to the store - but drawings an raffles are always exciting. We didn't win it though. At the end of the carnival they just said that people could grab whatever they wanted off the prize table, so we got a bunch of party favors for Ethan's birthday party coming up and 50 or so poppers.

The kids had a great time. I am so glad that we live in a college town now where they have a lot of fun events like that for students, but also for people from the community.

William Swift

Ethan has his biggest assignment of the year due tomorrow. He had to pick and ancestor, do research on the individual, write-up a final report, make a doll of the individual, and then he will present it in class sometime this week. They were very specific in how he had to do each of the steps. He had to complete an outline, he had to use multiple sources for information (he used Grandpa Swift, familysearch.org, internet searches, and library books), he had to write at least one draft, and then his final report had be error free. They even specified that within a paragraph all of the sentences had to start differently and he could only include one sentence that had the word "and" in it. I was thinking that he might do a little complaining on some of the specifics, but he actually enjoyed it. He liked coming up with different ways to start the sentences and he wanted to try to be creative with his words. So here is his final product. It is about William Swift, who was our first Swift ancestor to come to America (he came when he was 10 so his whole family were actually the first ones).


In class they are going to take pictures and put their own head in for the face.

Fast Sunday Sacrament Drawings

Just wanted to share the kids' drawings from sacrament meeting again.

The boys have been on a zombie kick lately. Ethan is wanting to do a zombie theme for his birthday party so they have talking about different ideas for that a lot.

Elliott's

Christian's

Christian's

Ethan's

You can tell what Julia was thinking of this Fast Sunday. She does a good job with it, but it is still hard for her. We always have waffles for dinner for Fast Sunday.

April Fools' Day

Rebecca and I love April Fools' Day, but for some reason our kids don't like it as much. We usually like to play some type of joke on our children, and then lots of time some type of joke on our family members. I often try to get in a joke on Rebecca too, but that is often hard because after 10+ years together she has come to expect it.

This year we weren't all that creative. We tried to think of a few ideas, but nothing was really coming to us. On Fridays we do pancakes for breakfast and pizza for dinner in our home. So on April Fool's Day we tried to do pizza for breakfast. They were giant pancakes with raspberry jam for the pizza sauce, coconut and almond bark shavings for the cheese, and chocolate chips and marshmallows for the toppings. It didn't fool the kids at all, but they thought it was a good try. For Julia and Ethan's lunch (Christian doesn't have school on Fridays) I put some spaghetti noodles in with their sandwiches and cut their apples in the shape of eyeballs with a chocolate chip for the pupil. They did not like it at all. They said all the other kids at their tables were reading their notes and saying gross, that they were going to barf, and making weird faces. Right when they got home Rebecca had to listen to them complain about it for a few minutes, but by the time I got home they had softened up some. Little do they know that all their complaining only made me want to do something way worse for next year. I better start thinking of some ideas right now.