Ethan is 18!!!!

Happy Birthday to Ethan!! Here's our happy birthday boy with eighteen candles on his brownie!

So funny thing was that after we took that picture, there was a knock at the door. I went and got it and it was someone for Ethan, so his candles sat there burning for like 2 minutes. It was a neighbor who was checking if Ethan wanted to go do ministering visits with him, and then he apologized profusely for not knowing it was Ethan's birthday. And then he came back later with a plate of cookies and a hundred bucks as a gift! You're a lucky kid, Eth! That was more than we spent on your gifts (we got him a variety box of potato chips and two gift cards (Wendy's and Domino's). This morning started with us letting Ethan do what he loves most: sleep. Then at 11 we went up to sing happy birthday and bringing him some breakfast in bed (cinnamon rolls).

No movement from the man of honor...

We started to sing a second verse... then a little stirring...

We see his face! He's got a smile!

Yay, he's happy we woke him up! Or he's happy we remembered! 

We watched "Out of Liberty" as promised. Hyrum was on the couch with the little brother's being nice and snuggled up to him, but then they ditched him as soon as Wesley sat down, Wes thought that was funny.

The movie was ok. Pretty good acting, generally it was a good set and portrayal of the story. But we could not get over the actor playing Joseph Smith, he did not look like Joseph Smith AT ALL. 

We thought he looks pretty chubby for being poorly fed in a dungeon for months. Ethan
was like "Why did he purposely gain weight and dye his hair dark to play this part?!?" He was also too short compared to Hyrum. One more, we like Corbin Allred, but he was NOT the right actor to play Porter Rockwell!!! So it is our opinion that whoever did the casting on that show needs more practice. It was fine, but the actors kept distracting us from the story. We'd like to see a T.C. Christensen version of the Liberty Jail story. Then we had cake for lunch. Then there was the knock at the door. And we watched his candles burn.

The kids didn't wait to sing to Ethan, so sad. They helped themselves to their dished out brownie and ice cream. We haven't had birthday ice cream for months! Ethan came back and hurried and blew out the flame on his dessert. There was too much wax on his brownie now.

Daniel offered to take it. 

Happy Birthday Ethan. 

Time for a family devotional over zoom with Corey's family.

Then we got ready to have the sacrament.

We miss seeing our friends and neighbors at church. For me, I felt like that was the one time each week that I had a chance to socialize. Which is why I was also sad to have it go from 3 hours to 2 hours, but it's good. And this is good here at home with just us too.

We are lucky we have such a large group! We're probably one of the larger family home congregations out there. Another thing we did today was we told the kids to go make one of their family scripture scenes out of legos. Here is Wesley's angel that called Alma the Younger to repentance.

And Lily wins the prize for her lego portrayal of the First Vision - Jesus is the dark hair, Heavenly Father is the blonde. Joseph Smith kneeling down (Ethan showed Lily to just turn his legs backwards to make him kneel).

I also liked how they were both standing on clear bricks, to show that they were standing in the air.

Good job Lil! We shared those with Corey's family during the devotional zoom call. Abi has been working for a few days on a hotel and she hurried and changed it to be an apartment building, and put a lego missionary inside - said he is under quarantine for the coronavirus, ha. Also, we shared this very cute video of missionaries quarantined, singing to "Do you want to build a snowman" to "Do you want to go teach someone. Very creative and so funny, it made me laugh a lot! I shared that on my facebook page saying "I know this is how Elder Wride is feeling!" We got word today that he will be coming home. All missionaries will go back to their home countries. If they are 21 months they will be released, less that than will be reassigned. Joseph is 21 months this week. So I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing him soon, they don't know if it will be a few weeks or months. First priority is missionaries with any health concerns, second is senior couples, then the rest of the missionaries so Joseph will be in that last category. They will send them all at once is possible. So we'll see how it goes. Sundays at home are good. The kids are a little bored, but they're doing good and adjusting. I am loving this slowed down family time together!