Happy Birthday Mr. Bowling

Joseph's obsession with bowling started at an early age. Just before his second birthday, he came across two tiny plastic bowling pins. He found out he could set them up and roll a tennis ball to knock them down. He entertained himself for hours with this sport and his love of bowling took off.

About six months later we got him six foam bowling pins with a big foam bowling ball. He played it constantly. He called them "color pins."

For christmas the next year he got his "big ginormus bowling pins."

Joseph turned five on April 8th. He had some friends over for a bowling party. He had a bowling cake.

They then went bowling.

Most of the kids were done by about the seventh frame. Joseph and Andrew (the one to the right of Joseph in the picture) stuck it out to the bitter end. Joseph ended up getting two spares and a strike during the game.

We were happy that Grandpa and Grandma Sorenson were here for his birthday as well.

Happy Birthday, Joseph. We love you.

Addendum:

Shannon reminded me that I forgot to mention that Joseph was a bowling ball for Halloween. I had meant to include that, but forgot. Here is a picture of Joseph as a bowling ball.

Glass Blowing

A few months ago we went to Thanksgiving Point (a place about 2 miles from our house that has a dinosaur museum, movie theater, petting zoo, out door amphitheater, gardens, shops, etc.) At one of the buildings, the Art Institute of Utah teaches art classes, does glass blowing and other things. We went to watch the glass blowing one day. We found out that you can pay $25 and create your own glass flower with help from the glass blowers at the art institute. Ryan watched for a minute and was obsessed. He wanted to create his own glass flower really bad. We told him that he needed to save up his own money to do it. As time went on and he had his money saved up, he would constantly badger us to take him glass blowing. Last Saturday was finally the day to take him. He was so excited.

The guy in the background of this picture is the glass blower who helped Ryan with his flower. He has just pulled the molten glass from the furnace and is starting to shape it into a cone that will become the flower.


Glass Blowing from Derek Lindsey on Vimeo.

This video shows Ryan actually pulling the glass into a flower shape.

He couldn't take his flower home that day because it had to cure. We picked it up on Monday. The following pictures show Ryan with the flower and just a picture of the flower.

The Tophams came for Spring Break and actually accompanied us to Thanksgiving Point. While they were here we went to the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU museum of art. For those who don't know who Carl Bloch is, look him up. He was pretty impressive.

While we were at BYU, we also stopped by The Brick Oven for pizza.

We had a great time with the Tophams while they were here. The kids played a lot of video games and watched some movies. The cousins had lots of fun playing together. We are glad the Tophams live close enough to see them occasionally.