Birthdays on a Boat

Lake Powell

     Lake Powell is one of my family's favorite vacation sites. I have been going there at least twice a year since I was born, meaning that I have been there over 30 times. There is always something new and exciting to do; it’s impossible to go there too much. My family owns a share of a houseboat and only gets a few weeks every year to spend on the boat. We had already been twice this year and were fortunate enough to go a third time over UEA weekend.

    Time spent in Lake Powell is always enjoyable because there is so much to do including: swimming, hiking, tubing, other water sports, and spend time with friends. However, the highlight of this trip was the birthdays. The birthdays of all the kids in my family are in the same week. First is my twin brother and me on the eighteenth. Followed by Jessie, my now seventeen-year-old sister, on the nineteenth. Later on in the week, Artimesia, my sister that has a family of her own, was born on the twenty-fifth. Three of the four birthdays just happened to be over break, increasing the things we could do on the houseboat since the water was so cold.

     Thursday night was cake night. Since having three separate cakes would be difficult, my family often just has one big cake for all the birthdays. As always, singing happy birthday was really funny because no one seems to know the right tune or pitch of the song. All the laughter made up for the fact that the cake was store-bought and kind of gross.
     Being in Lake Powell over your birthday changes some things, but the thing that really makes a birthday worthwhile is still there. We didn’t get to open any presents on our birthdays or do our usual birthday traditions, but we still had a blast. This just goes to show that gifts and parties aren’t what make birthdays fun, it’s the people you spend them with.

Birthday Cake

Lighting the Candles

Singing "Happy Birthday" (Birthday kids from left to right: Me, Jessie, and Will)

"School, Soccer, and Everything In-Between"

     Starting a blog seemed like a nightmare. I had no clue what I would want to write about every week for the rest of the school year. What if my interests change, I get bored of writing about the same thing, or there seems to be nothing else I could possibly write about the topic I choose? I decided that the best way to avoid this would be to choose a topic that has many different things I could focus a blog post on. However, this only solves one of my three problems. In regard to the other two, the solution I came up with is to name my blog something that incorporates multiple things I enjoy. This would give me room to write about whatever I want, but it would still relate to the overall theme of my blog. "School, Soccer, and Everything In-Between" is what I decided on.
     I thought that doing a blog about cooking would be fun, but that I wouldn't have a new recipe to post very often so I decided that cooking could be one of the things that is "in-between" school and soccer. As I was looking for ideas, I came across a blog called For the Love of Cooking. I liked this blog mainly because it had a lot of pictures of each recipe that was posted. The author is very straight forward with what they say. The blog says exactly what needs to be done for each recipe while also telling the author's personal experience with it or how they came across it. This blog will inspire me to post pictures on my blog so it will catch the reader's attention.
     Another topic I am interested in writing about is photography. The reason I decided not to have my entire blog on photography is that I really like it but I don't take pictures very often. A blog I found that is about photography is called Cool Photoblogs. I really liked it because it had beautiful pictures that were taken all around the world. This blog will inspire me to include the pictures that I take in my blog and tell about the experience that goes with the picture.
     The third thing I'm interesting is, of course, soccer! Finding a blog to get ideas from was much harder because I want to write about club soccer and most soccer blogs are about major league soccer. The blog I found that was closest to what I want to write about is called BYU Soccer Blog. This blog is written by someone on the BYU men's soccer team. He writes about experiences he has at soccer practices and other activities the team does. I'm going to use the way he organizes the blog for the posts that I do about soccer.