Still not the world's forum for great thought
We celebrated Afton’s second birthday yesterday, so it is time to release the sequel to Afton’s First Year: The Movie. Here is the highlight reel, or Afton’s Second Year: The Sequel.
Watch the MovieP.S. Ethan wanted credit for doing the movie’s title screen.
Our gerbils died and for a few days Ethan and Gerrit were sad. We buried them at the base of our recently planted apple trees.
Continue reading “The Gerbils Are On the Roof And We Can’t Get Them Down”
“We’re going to die! We’re going to die!” The fatalistic exclamation could hardly compete with all of the alarms and alerts wailing on the bridge. Adding to the chaos was a flickering lighting system and orders being shouted without regard for the established chain of command. Even though two of the officers were my sons, I smiled a little as I watched over the remote video feed. Maybe death would be educational.
When my siblings and I were young, I remember going to the Oregon coast occasionally. As I recall, Alan would make little double-pontooned cars dubbed “skeeters”, and we would dash through the shallow water with them towed by a string while they skimmed over sand and surf. There weren’t any skeeters this time, but last weekend we brothers had a chance to go back to the coast for a brief getaway.
A few weeks ago, a sister in our ward told me that Lehi city’s production of The Sound of Music was in desperate need of men — especially men with ballroom dance experience. She, Gina, was acting as choreographer, and explained that the women in the show were unhappy with the prospect of dancing the Ländler without partners. Also, some Nazis would enhance the show a bit. Having recently played a dancing Nazi in a roadshow parody of The Sound of Music, I thought it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to play a dancer and a Nazi in the real thing.
Continue reading “The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Rehearsal Tracks”
Who was the first territorial governor of Utah? What cities did the pony express run between? Who was the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty? What year was the Statue of Liberty given to the United States? Where is said Statue located?
If you can answer these questions without the aid of an internet search engine you might belong on one of Eaglecrest’s Knowledge bowl teams. If you answered the above questions without breathing—in or out, blinking, or swallowing then you probably belong on the Bonneville team.
If you take a moment to look at Sparks from the Smithy, you may notice that things look a little bit different than they have previously. This is because I’ve started using WordPress to run the site instead of my hand-made system.
Gerrit was baptized and confirmed on Saturday, June 30, 2007. Before the ordinances, Gerrit said he was excited because his sins would be washed away, and because Ethan said it was fun.
Something a little unexpected happened before Gerrit’s basketball season this year. Normally, the coach calls to introduce himself and say when the first game will be. Instead, we got a call from the rec department saying, “We don’t have a coach for your son’s team. Do you want to do it?” Continue reading “Coach Dad”
The boys had earned a reward and I agreed to take them to a store so they could pick a candy bar. There is little in the world more exciting to Gerrit than going to the store with money for candy. Ethan also likes candy but what really makes Ethan happy is to play video games. By the time we left the house Ethan had convinced his little brother to pool their reward money and rent a video game instead of buying candy. Continue reading “Shoe Stuffing Elves”