Totally Not a Criminal

As you may or may not know, Robyn and I are trying to adopt.

We initially completed all the paperwork and completed the hoop jumping process in January a few years ago.  That means that every January we get to jump through hoops again to renew the certification so that we are still qualified to adopt if the opportunity presents itself.

One of the things we have to do is get a criminal background check.

The process isn't all that difficult, but they do their best to make sure you feel like a criminal in the process.

First, the building you go to is called the Bureau of Criminal Identification.  Do you know what I think of when I imagine criminal identification?  I think of those lineups where they pick the criminal out  of a line of random people.  I've always wondered who all the other people are in that lineup.  I'm pretty sure it's people who are trying to adopt who walked into the Bureau of Criminal Identification  and wandered into the wrong room.

Luckily, I didn't end up in a lineup.

We got there and they had us fill out a bunch of paperwork.  They took our fingerprints and then we ended up in prison.

Okay, not really.  But it was kind of like prison.  After they took our fingerprints they told us the computers were down and they had no idea when they would be back up.   They had a waiting area where they said we could wait if we desired.  We were trapped there for an undisclosed amount of time.  It was probably worse than prison.

I went and sat down and looked around the room.  There were only a couple other people there, but I was thinking to myself, "I wonder what they're in for."  In my mind, they're either trying to adopt or they are violent criminals.  (Don't even try to convince me there are other reasons for being there.)

In the end, my prison sentence was only about 15 minutes.  They called our names and told us the computers were back up.  I'm pretty sure the computer was never down, they just wanted to make it seem like we'd be there forever to make it feel more like prison.  So it was still prison-like, but it was more like a minimum security prison.  (The DMV is like a maximum security prison.)

And the best news?  I'm not even a criminal!

Aren't you so proud?

Ringing in the New Year

As I've already mentioned, the biggest event that happened for our New Year's celebration was that we got a new nephew.  But, I thought I'd mention the other festivities that we participated in as well.

Robyn's family has a tradition that she and I have incorporated into our family.  On New Year's Eve, we try new foods that we have never tried before.  It's a way to bring new experiences into the new year.  Sometimes we try things that sound delicious.  Sometimes we try things that sound strange.  Sometimes they are delicious, and sometimes they are gross, but the expectations don't always match the reality.

This year there was nothing super crazy.

There were however, some unexpected things.  I was excited for the Maple Bacon chips because BACON!  They didn't really taste like bacon but they were still good.

The grossest thing was the carrot chips.  They didn't taste like carrots, they juts tasted like the plastic container.  Fun fact:  plastic tastes gross.

The runaway hits were the butterscotch root beer and the lime and sea salt white chocolate.  They both made me a happier man.

After partaking of our new experiences we went to our friend Melissa's house to party it up all night long.  We had warned her that we are old, and may not stay all night due to sleepiness, but a great miracle happened.  We got into party mode and were totally still awake at midnight.  Who would've thought?

You get us going on karakoe and we can't be stopped.

The moral of the story is that we're totally young and hip, and can totally stay awake until midnight.

Also, for extra credit, the second moral is:  Happy New Year!

A New Nephew For the New Year

New Year's Eve was a big day for my family.  My mom finally became a Grandma.

I should note that she's been pressuring me to have children since the day I got home from my mission.  At the time I tried to explain to her that there were some behaviors involved with having children that I probably shouldn't do when I'm a single person fresh home from a mission, but my mom would have none of it.  She wanted grandchildren and that was the end of the discussion.  (In her defense, she hasn't nagged us about having grandchildren since we announced we were trying to adopt.)

Despite not nagging Robyn and I for grandchildren, Mom's desire to have them hasn't been any less.  So I was very happy when I got up on the morning of New Year's Eve to see that my sister-in-law had given birth and Ethan had entered the world around 3 AM.   My Mom finally got to be a cute little granny and hold her new grandson.

Isn't she the cutest Grandma?

I was sleeping when Ethan entered the world, and after that I was working.  So I didn't get to see Ethan until the later afternoon, but I did get to come meet him and wish him a happy birthday.

Look at that preciousness.

The picture looks kind of like he's a redhead, but he's actually super bright blond.  He's a pretty well mannered baby.  He only cried when is parents did cruel things like move him or change his diaper.

Zack was a super cute little Daddy.  He was just enamored with Ethan and only ran in terror once when he had a poopy diaper.

And Robyn was a super cute little aunt.

We're excited to welcome the newest member of our extended family.  Ethan is probably the second cutest Stockett behind Robyn.

Christmas Festivities

We had a fabulous Christmas.  Lots of things happened in just a few short days, so I've put together a list of the highlights.  Sorry this post is ridiculously long.  If the longness offends you, you are free to close your browser and flee from your computer.

Stollen
Robyn made Stollen this week.  Stollen is a traditional German bread that is filled with deliciousness.  Robyn's grandmother is from Germany, and when we were visiting her last Christmas, Robyn made sure to get Stollen lessons so that she could learn the art.  She did it this year without any assistance, and I was very impressed due to the deliciousness of the final product.

Looking cute while she works.

Forming the dough.

Selfie with the final product.

Breakfast with Megan and Graham and Grahams
On Christmas Eve we went over to Megan and Graham's (Robyn's sister and her husband) place to have breakfast.  We did the traditional (for the Wrights) crepe breakfast and it was really good.  Robyn's other sister was there with her 1 year old twins.  Here are a few pictures from that morning.

Will was getting sick, so Megan let him entertain himself with the ipad.  He kept sneezing on it.  It was simultaneously adorable and disgusting.

Robyn likes babies.

He kept trying to crawl over the box.  Around it would have been way easier.

Doing a little dance number.

Snapchat
If you're a faithful follower of my blog (and why wouldn't you be?) then you remember last year when we discovered that Snapchat is the best way to bond with family during Christmas.  You'll also remember that one of our favorite things to snapchat was pictures of Graham.  I promised my niece we would continue the tradition, even though she was in California and we were not.

The first snapchat is away!

However, I quickly realized that Robyn's sister and her husband have the last name of Graham, so we could also snapchat pictures of them.

Teance didn't disappoint.  She may not have had any Grahams to snapchat, but she shared the love with plenty of selfies.

My brother Justin even got in on it.

Robyn made sure to send snapchats mocking me.

Christmas Morning
Christmas morning I woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep.  Normally, Robyn is an early riser on Christmas.  It's the one day of the year that she doesn't want to sleep in, but I had to wake her up.  We exchanged presents at our house and then went outside to shovel the white Christmas off of our driveway before heading to my parent's house to have even more Christmas there.

I put a tiara in Robyn's stocking.  I thought she'd think it was fun and cute.  She was so excited, and screamed, "I get to be a PRINCESS!"  I wasn't expecting that much excitement.

I was surprised to see how big Christmas was at my parent's house.

Zack got lots of ties. 

Justin really liked the beanie he got.  It was made even better by combining it with Robyn's tiara.

All the boys got dinosaur hats.  I think I need to work on my dinosaur impression.

Olive wanted to be a dinosaur as well.  

Near the end of the day, Robyn revealed her secret identity as Elsa.

It was a great Christmas!  I'm just sad it's over.  Maybe we should do it again this week.

So I Think I Can Understand Dance

I have a secret to tell you.  I don't understand dance.  I wasn't aware of this until a few years ago.  I figured I understood.  People move around.  They enjoy it.  It's their way of enjoying the music.  It's their way of getting exercise.  I get all of those things.

Apparently it's also some sort of a secret language.

My wife watches a show called So You Think You Can Dance.  I play on my computer while she watches, and I glance over at the TV every once in a while.  I can appreciate how fun it is to watch them do difficult maneuvers.  I also really enjoy the synchronized movement.

But, I realized that there was a whole new level that I was missing on one particular dance a few seasons ago that was supposedly about cancer.  After the dance, the judges were crying, Robyn was crying, and I was wondering what everyone was crying about.  I found myself wondering how a person would watch the dance and even guess that it was about cancer.

Fast forward a few years to this past Friday.  We got tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance concert in SLC.  The people who are on the show each season go on tour after the season is over, and they put on a show that has numbers from the show as well as numbers unique to the tour.

When I first got there and realized that 80% of the audience were female, and 60% of the females were teenagers, I was a little skeptical that a non-teenage male would enjoy it, but I figured if nothing else I could amuse myself by watching the teenagers around us taking hundreds of thousands of selfies as they waited for the show to start.

We went with Robyn's sister and her husband.  Robyn made sure to let me know that she needed to sit next to Megan so she could talk to somebody who gets it.

Luckily, Robyn has 2 sides, so I was permitted to sit on her other side.

I decided it would be important to do my best to sound like I get it.  Megan gave me an excellent suggestion.  Every dance is about life.  I totally said intelligent stuff like, "I really like how that piece represented life."  "Didn't you feel like that number reflected the trials we face in life?"  "That number really spoke to me.  It was so true to real life."

All of those brilliant things totally had Robyn fooled.  She totally thought I got it.

But, I have a secret.  I didn't get it.  At least until there was one number where all the dancers wore either black or white clothing and they had hats that looked like different chess pieces.  The black and white dancers were doing a dance battle of sorts.  I turned to Robyn, "I totally get this one!  It's chess!  Also, it represents life."  She was way impressed with that analysis.

In between some of the dances they had little vignettes that taught dance moves.  My favorite was when we learned how to do Bollywood.

Robyn is demonstrating the hand movement from our Bollywood lesson.  I am opening my mouth for an inexplicable reason.

Surprisingly enough, I really enjoyed it, despite note being a teenage girl and despite not understanding the secret language..  I may not have understood it quite to the level that I convinced everyone I did with my excellent acting, but it was an enjoyable evening, and I would go again.  It's like I'm sort sort of a dance connoisseur.

Muppets and Temple Square

This past weekend we had the opportunity to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert.  We try to attend every year, but we don't always pull it off.  There are so many people that want to attend that they do a random drawing type system, so some years we're able to get tickets and some years we aren't.  This year I really wanted to go because they had the Sesame Street Muppets as special guests.  How cool is that?

We decided to go up early and eat dinner at City Creek followed by walking around Temple Square to enjoy the Christmas lights.

Temple Square was beautiful as always.  We made sure to take some pictures.

Selfies are always important.

I'm pretty sure we take this exact same picture every year.

After Temple square we headed over to the Conference Center where we met Megan and Graham.  There were more selfies to be had while we waited for the show to start.

I'm pretty sure Graham looks exactly like a Muppet. I'm just a Muppet of a man.

Robyn and Megan wanted a discreet picture of the photobomber.

I really enjoyed the concert.  The Muppets were super fun.  But I have bad news.  The puppeteers came out with Muppets on their arms.  It turns out the Muppets are puppets.   I know, I'm as disappointed as you.  My entire childhood was a sham.  But the good news is that Big Bird is real.  He was walking around without any sort of hand inside him.  He's an actual bird.  So you can take solace in knowing that at least he is real.

Also, they had a sing-along with the audience.  I actually sang with the Muppets.  So you might say I'm kind of a big deal.

Afterward, naturally we took more selfies.

This is our selfie with the choir.  They're all walking away, because they hate to pose for pictures.

This was in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  Don't we just look festive?

We wandered around afterward in search of someplace that would give us hot chocolate.  The Nauvoo Cafe was open, but the lines were thousands of miles long.  We went to the food court at City Creek but everyone there hates money, so they were all closed.

Ultimately, we failed at obtaining hot chocolate, but we succeeded at singing with the Muppets so I would say the night was a success.