5 Brothers Blog

Xander's Viola Grades

2011-02-09T19:07:00.000-08:00

1 = did you even look at your instrument?
2 = barely there
3 = fair
4 = decent work
5 = excellent

9 February 2011 1-2

Halloween

2008-10-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

How scary I love Halloween but I have one questions about it.Who decided it should be a national holiday, does each president get to pick their favorite holidays every year or do they have like a whole committee for it? Halloween is very fun and I hope you all enjoy It. By the way does anyone out there have any suggestions on what I should be?

BOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Told ya Gabe was running for president!

2008-07-22T20:00:00.001-07:00

Our Favorite Books by Hans and Xander

2008-07-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

are using the old computer and the shift key is not working so it will all be in lowercases
harry potter and the deathly hallows by jk rowling
eragon by christopher paolini
the lion the witch and the wardrobe by cs lewis
the merchant of death by dj machale it is a new book and its really good
leven thumps and the gateway to foo by obert skye
uglies by scott westerfield
fablehaven by brandon mull
faerie wars by herbie brennan
the lightning thief by rick riordan
the kingdom keepers
bonus book! the candy shop wars by brandon mull

these are not in order from best to worst they are all great but me hans"s favorite book is the lightning thief by rick riordan and xander likes the candy shop wars the best

Weird Things

2008-04-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

My mom has pressured me for a long time to write about one weird thing I do so right now I'm going to get it over with in one swell foop.

That's one thing. My dad has been saying all these things backwards that my brothers and I now have to think for a while before we know what's real and what's not. For example, we do things in the time of nick, we pretend we have lysdexia, and we accomplish things in one swell foop. We frequently say the wrong things not because we forget they're wrong but because we remember all too well. We know that we'll probably say the wrong thing so we switch it around in our heads but we get it wrong. We'll think, it's in one fell swoop but that's wrong so I'll say in one swell foop. It's very confusing.

Another thing my dad and I do is that every week for my violin lesson which is at 6:30, we always forget until late Sunday evening my mom reminds us and we go in the morning. Sometimes, my mom forgets to remind us and my poor violin teacher has to sit around wondering where I am while I go through my normal weekday routine. This has been happening for 2 years but I'm sure in 2012 we'll get it right.

Thankfully, my mom usually remembers so I don't miss many lessons. It seems that the only times we remember my lesson are when I don't have one because my teacher is on vacation or just taking a break. About three times I've been dropped off and there's been no one there so I sit around until my mom picks me up. Once, my teacher had given me the week off but she was still there so I rang the doorbell and she answered in her bathrobe wondering what this crazy kid was doing ringing the doorbell at 6:30 a.m. It's a good thing I have such a nice violin teacher because otherwise I'd be in big trouble.

Another weird thing, hmmm. I used to do the thing Hans did with the weird walking but I did it with seven. I've been working on it and I only do it when I'm going down the stairs. So now Hans can know that there is hope for him. I guess that we are more alike than we thought. We both like to choose one song and listen to it a billion times as Ben says until we have it memorized and then a million times more. Hans though is more ambitious or more crazy than me because I choose easy songs like Yellow Submarine or Sunshine but Hans has been listening to American Pie constantly and has most of the words memorized but he keeps having trouble with the tune but I still think it's amazing to memorize a song that's nearly ten minutes long like that.

A funny thing is how Ben and I are always sort of competing. He's always trying to be taller and stronger than me but he only has about an inch on me. I think it's mostly on account of me that Ben is so strong because I used to always be able to beat him in an arm wrestle but then he started working out so he could beat me. He finally succeeded about a year ago and he's been doing the Tarzan yell ever since.

One weird thing that I don't think is very strange is the books I read. I really prefer the action fantasy ones like Harry Potter but I sort of got through those so I turned to the books my mom likes such as C.S. Lewis and Dickens and the books my dad likes such as books on psychology and economics. My favorite from each is the Screwtape Letters and The Color Code.

Another thing about me and my brothers that's different is that we just like one girl for a long time. It seems that some people change who they like every month but not us. I guess we just decided it was just too much trouble. Well the thing about me and my brothers is that this is how we are and you can either like who we are or not because we aren't changing in fact I don't know if we could or if we wanted to.

Twins?

2008-04-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

Me and Hans have a really nice crossing guard and whenever we walk to school she says, "Hi twins!" She has been doing this for so long.

It all started on the first day of school when she met us she asked, "Are you two twins?" Hans always shakes his head ashamed of being so short.

I didn't know if this was some kind of joke so I said, "No we're two years apart."

And she said, "You don't have to lie."

Hans didn't like that very much AT ALL. He IS about a centimeter taller than me.

Six Steps

2008-04-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

This is Hans again and I have a very very strange thing that I do whenever I am walking. I take steps in sixes. For example, say I'm walking on tile and am about to walk onto wood I count my steps to six so if I'm on four I have to take two more steps on the tile before I step on the wood. I can't help it. It's driving me crazy! It's very hard to play basketball while doing this but like I said before I just can't help it. So if you ever see me walking strangely you'll know why.

Chew choo

2008-03-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hi this is Stefan writing now. I am going to write about how Hans had to get his most recent surgery. I came home from tennis on Tuesday and Hans was wandering around retching with his eyes bulging out of his head. I asked my mom what was wrong with him and she said they had been having chicken for dinner, and since we didn't have chicken very often and because Hans got a drumstick, that he got so excited he forgot to chew and he swallowed a chicken bone. A few months ago, I read in the newspaper about a bunch of dogs who died because they swallowed chicken bones, but no one, including me, thought that a person would do the same thing.

Actually, I guess we shouldn't have been too surprised because Hans had done this sort of thing before. Last time when he swallowed a chicken nugget whole, he went around for about an hour retching and then it finally came out. As you can tell, Hans really likes chicken. This time though, it didn't come out and he couldn't hold any water down and he had to go the hospital. He had to have a surgery where they stuck a tube down his throat and pulled it out. This is perfect timing because Hans recently recovered from his last throat surgery-- a tonsillectomy.

We brothers dubbed Hans our hospital boy because he has been to the hospital a grand total of two times, which may seem small but is two times more than any of us have gone in the last two months. Well, Hans is fine now and really cheerful, but my mom now reminds to be like a train. choo choo chew chew.

St. Patricks Day

2008-03-17T17:40:00.000-07:00

Today was St. Patrick's Day and we actually got Lucky Charms for breakfast! I had to go back upstairs and get dressed again because I didn't have any green clothes on(the only green I wore was green shorts). At school a kid named Brigham Jackson had a green cape. When we were playing basketball he would dribble under his cape and no one could get the ball from him. That was really cool but the real reason I told you that is so now you know why superheroes wear capes-- they like playing basketball.

On the way home from school the crossing guard asked if we were having corn beef and cabbage for dinner. I told her that I didn't know. When I got home I looked at the stove, there was a pot, and there was something white in it.I asked my mom what it was and you know what she said? Corn beef and cabbage. How does she know these things?

Dishes

2008-03-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

This week I was on dishes and of course it was Stefan's birthday and there were tons of dishes to wash. And of course there seemed to be tons of dishes smeared with birthday cake and frosting that would never come off.

My mom always tells me to stick to it until its done and never to whine about it. I think I am cursed to have dishes at the worst times like at Thanksgiving and every birthday. But luckily just to be nice if I ever have dishes on my birthday my dad does them for me.

At Thanksgiving we had to have it at our house so all our grandmas and grandpas came over to eat. The day before Thanksgiving one of our grandmas came and brought all of her fancy plates, bowls and silverware. When everyone was done eating my grandma came over to me and said "When you're washing these be very gentle with them."

And then I was thinking, "How can I gently scrub these when they're covered with food?" I thought this over. But then my mom and dad and Grandpa Ken helped with with that big mountain of dishes.

Another horrible story related to the dishes is on Gabriel's birthday. Here it was Gabe's birthday and he got a lot of cool stuff like mini bumper cars that everyone wanted to play with. When dinner was over everyone raced to try out the new bumper cars then dad told me I had to do the dishes. I moaned and groaned to no end, that night I had to do the dishes and watch my brothers play happily. Although the bumper cars only lasted about a week they were still fun.

I used to be famous in our family for being the slowest dishwasher and the slowest writer. But now I can stick to the dishes and get them done and look, I just stuck to this blog entry and got it done.

The Corn Story

2008-03-09T17:50:00.000-07:00

The summer of 1999 was hot. My Dad was also traveling more than he ever has so we really only saw him on the weekends for months. My mom was home with four little boys, the youngest was only six months old and cried constantly.

Corn was and always has been a staple during the summer at our house. We always stop at the corn stands and buy a few dozen ears of corn. The kids shuck the corn and pull all the little hairs off then my mom boils the corn. At dinner we roll the corn in butter and put a little salt on it and eat it right off the cob. We all love it and look forward to eating corn in the summer.

One Friday evening my brother and I were sitting on the back porch shucking the corn while my mom cleaned and got the water boiling. We came inside and gave her our armfuls of corn and went back outside to shuck the rest of the corn. My mischievous little brother came and locked us out. We started pounding on the glass door trying to get our moms attention so she would come let us in. She was carrying an armful of corn over to the boiling water so she couldn’t come right then. We pounded harder and harder, so hard my mom thought we were going to break the glass.

My mom had reached the end of her rope. She turned around and in her fury yelled “Just a minute!” while throwing the corn on the counter. The corn exploded. In a split second a half-dozen ears of corn had coated the walls ceiling and floor of our entire kitchen. She stood there shocked at the explosiveness of the corn. Who would have known that corn did that?

My mom came and let us in and we quietly apologized and went and grabbed some rags to start wiping every surface of the kitchen. I mopped the walls, my mom wiped the ceilings and my little brother made little piles of corn on the floor. After about an hour my brother and I snuck off to play in our room, but my mom stayed and spent the next five hours cleaning the kitchen.
We never got it all cleaned up. Years later every once in a while we would still find little pieces of dried corn in little, obscure cracks. We moved out a few years later and I’m sure we left behind a few dried kernels.

Until just a year or two ago we were banned from mentioning “the corn story” for my mom’s sake. The penalty for bringing it up was vacuuming. Even this threat couldn’t hold back a few brave kids from bringing it up every once in a while. We’ll never forget the day the corn exploded.

School

2008-03-06T19:21:00.000-08:00

I'm Hans and I went on a field trip today to Engineering Week at the University of Utah. It was really fun. First we made fish out of clay, there were two types of fish we could make. We could try to make the fastest fish or the slowest fish. My group decided to make a slow fish. Our fish was the 2nd slowest!

I just got back from my parent teacher conference they're good to go to but the real reason I go to them is because of the book fair. The library gets a ton of books and sells them. We always get a bunch of books. So that's the reason people go to parent teacher conferences.

I did get straight As and my teacher said she likes me so much she would like to hold me back a year so I could be in her class again. I like her too but NO THANKS!

Freedom at Last

2008-03-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

Just lately its been really snowy and we have not not been able to play outside but now we are free at last now we can play,basketball, roller blading, bouncing on the trampoline and playing tag. Ah freedom.

Our mom always tells us to wear a coat to school but we always take it off for recess. She thinks we're wimps. At recess I almost always play kick ball with a rubber ball I am always the only person who gets hit in the nose. Sometimes I play basketball with Sam and Porter or swing with my friend Dillon.

Welcome to our World

2008-03-06T16:37:00.001-08:00

The truth comes out. No more touching stories or pictures of cute skirts and dresses. This is the story of 5 brothers written by 5 brothers. Although the quality of writing may not equal our mom's blog we hope to be able to share new stories from a new perspective.
As Ben, the oldest brother I got the privilege of writing on the blog first.
Since the blog is public I am setting some rules so we don't get in any fights.

1. No writing on the blog while you are mad, this will only bring embarrassment later. We are brothers and we are stuck together forever.
2. No telling stories about other people without their permission. This way no one will hear about things like Mom wetting the bed all the time. Just kidding.
3. Only truth, the truth is often better than lies.
4. Each writer must clearly state their name, preferably at the beginning.
5. Do your best to write on the blog at least once a week.
6. No swearing, Stefan has quite a sailors mouth so he'll have to be careful. Just kidding, I don't think Stefan has ever sworn.
7. Use your best handwriting; penmanship counts.

That's all, we hope you enjoy our blog!