by Dave Ellis

As I mentioned in a recent article we are having baby number five, who now by the way, has a name: Bonnie Sweet Ellis. The first name was picked from a name list, the middle name is my wife’s maiden name. All of the girls (4!) in our family have the middle name ‘Sweet’ but not the boy. His middle name is Michael because I just couldn’t do that to him.

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by Dave Ellis

“What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it.” ~Thomas Carlyle

Yes, traditions are powerful; they remind us of our past, direct us towards our future and comfort us in the present. Before you recheck the name at the top of the article to make sure this is still Dave Ellis, I will say that I’m talking about the tradition of Ward Turkey Bowls.

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by Dave Ellis

My oldest daughter has recently taken up soccer, or football for you continental-types. We tried signing her up when she was five, but she didn’t like it when the other kids took the ball from her. She still wanted us to sign her up, but only because she wanted to keep the uniform.

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by Dave Ellis

This November we are having baby number five, which means we have a little over two months to come up with a better name than ‘baby number five.’ That child could never be president: who’d elect ‘Baby Number Five Ellis’ to office?

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by Dave Ellis

We have 2.5 bathrooms in our house. I love talking about rooms in decimal form. The problem with having that many bathrooms is that you have to clean that many bathrooms, or in my case feel guilty about not helping to clean the bathrooms, 2.5 times over. The other problem with having 2.5 bathrooms is that you have 3.0 toilets, which doesn’t make sense mathematically, but who’s to argue when you really have to go?

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by Dave Ellis

Where are many types of people in the world. Distinctions are set by class, money, education, sports affiliation etc. I would like to point out another class separation; I call it the have-boats and the have-not-boats. I belong to the latter, and this is my story. (beep! Next slide please)

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By Dave Ellis

This month my only sister, Ann, I believe, is turning thirty. Not so many years ago thirty sounded old. It still kind of does, only because I still act twelve and not in the good “He still has the spirit and awe of a child” way. More in the “He remembers comic book super hero powers better than family birthdays” way.

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by Dave Ellis

I don’t know how they did it. My parents made raising us kids looks so easy. I feel it was a bit deceptive. We kids, or us kids, whatever, would be playing out back and then my mom would call us in for dinner and POOF it was ready. We’d come home from school and POOF Christmas decorations were up. We’d ask our parents to make some POOF and POOF the POOF was there!

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by Dave Ellis

Last night I was reminiscing about all the times I’ve reminisced. By writing about it today I’m reminiscing about the reminiscing of the reminiscing. Freaky. The main memory I was coddling was the last family gathering. In my family we gather for a meal after major milestone of life, like my nephew Daniel going to the temple (called to Brazil!).

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