Greetings fellow Boneheads!
A wonderfully warm and woefully waffle-less welcome to you all. The weather has been weird for a while, we've had wind whipping things up for weeks and weeks. Okay okay enough with the "W" thing, I was just curious to see if I could make something sensible. Almost worked. Way cool.
The topic today is Missionary Olympics. Now, anyone who knows us knows that we have 4 boys and having 4 Latter-Day Saint boys means that in the not-so-distant future there will be 4 Elder Johnson's running around the globe over the span of 8 years. For any of you who aren't familiar with what it takes to be a missionary, it's incredibly challenging. We pay our own way to serve somewhere not of our choosing for two years. We don't hold a job, date, go to school or anything else during that time. We write home every week and talk to our folks on Christmas and Mother's Day. Father's Day gets the boot for some reason. We have to cook for ourselves, do our own laundry, keep schedules, be able to ride a bike through the rain in a suit and everything else. We want our boys to be prepared...
Scene shift: Family night. We told the boys that we were going to have missionary olympics and came up with 12 different events to compete in. The boys split up into companionships and rolled a set of dice to determine what events they would have to compete in. Hilarity ensued. The first event was the "Eat Something New and Say 'Thank You'" event. The something new? Cottage Cheese. Now all the boys had to do was eat a very small bowl of the stuff. The timer kept track of how long it took them too finish and say "thank you". Here's how it went:
Josh and Parker were the competing missionaries. They both sat down and I shouted, "GO!" Each boy shoved a spoonful of Cottage Cheese in his mouth and as though they had practiced for months, each boy spit their something new all over the table, cursing, gagging, spitting, and fighting for the first chance at the sink for a glass of water. Results? Absolute and complete failure. How on earth is anyone supposed to feed them when they reenact the longest death scene in movie history every time they don't like something?
Another event dealt with precision bike riding through 10 cones that were set up in the road. The boys had to ride through them, ring the end cone and come back. Well, everything was set up and Parker was about to test his mettle when from down the street came the UPS man. (insert dramatic musical tags here). All the boys cleared the road but the driver, seeing orange cones in the road must have felt that he was being tested and commenced trying to navigate the cones, pumping his fist in the air as he rambled by. I'm sure a bunch of people wondered why their stuff was all broken the next day. :)The boys ended up doing great riding their bikes while Marcus rode his official missionary wiggle racer.
Other events included writing a letter and mailing it, writing out a check, putting on a suit the fastest, packing a suitcase, and making up a one minute church talk based on an object they pulled out of a hat. They had a great time and Neish and I will pray that they never have to eat Cottage Cheese.
Well that's the news that's fit to print so until next time, wear a winning smile. It makes people wonder what you're thinking.
Love, the Johnsons
