You've Got to Be Kidding

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Basketball and Battle of the Books

This post is to illustrate the very different competitive interests of my two oldest children this past winter. Despite having the same two parents, none of my children look alike and their personalities and interests are quite different too.

First, here's Seth in his basketball glory. Well, since his team only won one or two games, maybe the word "glory" isn't the best choice . . .



Seth dribbling down the court.



Seth always "gave it his all" during games and here he is pooped after a game.



Here he is receiving his award from the coach, who called him the best defender and "by far the most aggressive player on the team." (Is that a good thing?)

Soccer season, here we come!


Eli got to participate in a district-wide competition known as Battle of the Books. The students were given a list of 10 books to read and then they took a test on the details of the books. The top 5 or 6 students in the fifth grade were chosen to represent his school at the district level. Eli, of course, with his love for reading and his mind for details, made the school team. There were 10 teams and each team battled the other nine teams.


The team was given a question, like "in which book did such and such happen?" and they had a few seconds to huddle together and confer with each other. Then the team captain gave the answer, including the title and author of the book. If they got it wrong, the other team had a chance to steal it.


Eli's team was the only boy team. Overall, the competition was very heavy on the girls.


I had no idea how fierce the competition would be. But Eli had a complete blast! It was fun to see how his team really depended on him. His team won an honorable mention (meaning their score was somewhere in the bottom half :) ).

And now moving on to the study of cryptozoology. Yes, I know what that means now, do you?

Happy New Year

Now that it's the new year, it's time to start scrapblogging. I thought I made up that word, but I just googled it and apparently it's already a term in use. My definition is slightly different, however, meaning keeping track of the family and things on this blog, not blogging about scrapbooking or using a blog to help you digitally scrapbook. The biggest news is that Seth got baptized! This occurred December 27, 2008. He decided to do this when we were visiting Utah for Christmas, so that all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins could come. We were so proud of him! What made the day extra special, was that his baby cousin Blythe got blessed then too. Seth really wanted to wear a black suit for the day. Doesn't he look handsome?

I'm a doctor, but I don't play one in real life.

I went to prison for the first time today. Okay, it was for a job interview. And I realized that being a prison doctor, wouldn't make me cool like the doctor on Prison Break, and the job wouldn't be quite as exciting as hers either. I got to walk through the "yard" with the inmates and wasn't at all concerned. I did have one guy point at me through a window and slash his finger across his throat. Whatever.

It's unfortunate that I can't keep my current job, in which I'm getting paid for doing next to nothing. Too bad those kinds of jobs don't sustain themselves for very long. It's time to find a real job and I'm having a hard time getting into it. (Don't tell my future patients or employer that.)

To Wii or Not to Wii, That is the Question

I've never had any desire to obtain video games in our home and the kids haven't really seemed too interested in them in the past, other than Grandma C's old Nintendo. However, several of the new neighbor friends have systems and the kids are now begging for a Wii. I don't know much about them, other than that we played Dance Dance Revolution at my brother and sister-in-law's house and it was fun. On the one hand, I don't want another thing for the kids to fight about or to have to set rules and time limits around. Also, one child has a bit of a weight problem already. On the other hand, I want our house to be fun so the gang will want to come here and I hear that there are a lot of active games you can play with these, so it's not just purely sitting around. One more thing; when I was assisting with laparoscopic surgeries and endoscopies during residency, I discovered that my lack of video game playing was a disadvantage and I was pretty bad. I think I've decided that if I can find one before Christmas, I will purchase it.

A glimpse into the future.

I'm calling this an insomnia entry. (Note the time--and I've been working on my blog list and eating toast and hot chocolate for the past hour and lying in bed awake listening to a fire alarm periodically beep due to low battery for an hour before that.) I felt like I had a little glimpse into the future while dreaming; (I was able to sleep earlier). I had a dream that the boys were doing most of their trick-or-treating online. People would drop little online treats into their "baskets"--things like small redeemable gift certificates. They still wore costumes and did a small bit of traditional trick-or-treating.

Lying in bed thinking about this dream made me remember bits of a conversation I had with my dad years ago when the internet was first starting to become mainstream. He said that there was some concern that the world wide web would fill up, or there wouldn't be room for anymore fibers in the web, and then it would basically explode.

First Entry

The nice thing about having a less common first name is that internet names, like email addresses and blog titles, are usually available. Thanks mom and dad.