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Everett Turns 24!

Everett turned 24 this week! Here are some fun stories about Everett when he was a little boy. Despite being the middle child, we managed to write a lot about him, maybe because he was such a funny kid.

Everett enjoyed his pacifier but was constantly losing them so I had to keep buying them. Finally when he was two I decided not to buy any more and that was the end of them.

When he was 15 months, I wrote, "Everett is a challenge to his mother. He has a lot of curiosity to satisfy and he wants me to help him! He also is frequently hungry but with just 6 teeth, he can't eat much and he doesn't try very hard. He loves to be outside with the other kids, he loves walks, he loves his pacifier, and he loves his mother and father.

He loves reading books with Mom or Dad. He loves to go places but is not fond of his car seat. He is very wiggly in Sacrament Meeting and does a lot of screaming. He is very good at getting into trouble with his great dumping techniques. He is definitely a busy boy with a pretty cheerful disposition as long as he's not hungry and things are going his way (some things never change...). He loves animals. I gave him a crewcut at 13 months and it looks good."


With baby sister Susanna

At a Broadbent Family Reunion with cousins Anna and Lizzie

Shortly before Everett turned three, Scott wrote, "Everett is a big talker and has been for a long time. Lately, he has taken to telling jokes, "Knock knock," says Everett. "Who's there?"  "Salad" "Salad who?" "It's cold out here!" and he laughs. The joke works better if you say lettuce instead of salad but it's funny either way.

Another thing he liked to do was play the yes/no game. He'd say, "You say yes and I'll say no," followed by a long and loud string of Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes!

March 2001, with his brothers

"Everett LOVES to help in the kitchen. He likes to stir things and dump things. When I was cooking, he pulled up a stool, grabbed a spoon, and invited himself to stir. Once I left the kitchen for a minute and Everett pulled up a stool to put a lid on a pot of boiling water. He got the lid out of the cupboard, moved his stool over, climbed up and put it on. Unfortunately it was the wrong size and he burned his arm on the side of the pan when the lid fell in."  I think I started locking his chair to the side of the table around that time so those sorts of things didn't happen so frequently.

A few weeks after Everett's third birthday, he accidentally chomped on a rotten bird's egg that had been left out on the counter--it looked like a candy egg. He spit it out right away and came to me saying, "Yucky!" We were worried he would get sick but he didn't. 

About this time I wrote, "Everett says lots of funny things. He says "I willn't" for I won't and "I do-unt" for I don't. He doesn't really know his colors yet so he says ketchup for red and grass for green and water for blue and mustard for yellow. So his red socks are his ketchup socks, yellow socks are his mustard socks, etc. He has a problem with saying bathroom words outside the bathroom so he sometimes has to sit in the bathroom when he gets in trouble for making bathroom jokes outside of the bathroom.

When Everett makes a joke, instead of saying, "Get it?" he says, "Forget it?" It's a little confusing. Everett loves to say, "Dang!" loud and long when he has a disappointment which seems to happen quite a lot in his life.

When Everett was 4, for his Primary spotlight we wrote, "Everett loves to go swimming. He likes to play the card game "War" and play with legos. He loves his new baby brother (Talmage) and really enjoys holding him and taking care of him. He also likes to help in the kitchen and around the house. Everett is very enthusiastic about life. He is preparing to go to the temple by reading scriptures with his family."



When he was four, I wrote, "Everett got some legos for his birthday which he loves. Today he told us he was going to name his children after Lego Bohroks and Toas who have such names as Galli, Pohatu, etc. He has a talent for the dramatic saying such things as, "This is the worst day of my life!" when Scott drew a dinosaur for him that he didn't like. Everett enjoys swimming a lot and talks to every willing listener there in the baby pool.  Everett likes his new baby brother. When the baby cries, he says, "Don't cry, Talmage! Never cry!"


When Everett was 5, I wrote, "One thing we're trying to work on with Everett (somewhat unsuccessfully) is not complaining quite so much. He will sit down at the dinner table and start telling me all the things wrong with the meal. He'll complain at other times too but dinnertime is the worst." (Fortunately Everett has grown out of this and is usually quite complimentary of the food I serve now.)


I wrote, "Everett's kindergarten teacher reports that Everett is very competitive and does not take injustice or disappointment well. One day Everett was fooling around in line and took off the hood to a boy's coat. His teacher told him he would have to stay in class until everyone else had gone home. This was huge for Everett and when he finally came out, he was crying and didn't stop for 20 minutes. He claimed he was crying about something else but I wasn't buying it."

Happy Birthday, Everett!  We love you and are happy to have you in our family!


A drawing from Everett, age 4?

New Year's sparklers






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