All Mark all the time

this is Mark 5 years ago when I still made him practice the piano and when we lived in a place where the sun shone so seldom that it burned his little eyes--at least he thought so

The other day Mark told me that he wanted to have an anonymous online presence.  He said, "I want to live off the grid."

Where does he even get that stuff?

Then he went on to say, "It's kind of hard to do, since your blog is entirely about me."

To which I can only say, "I've got to write about someone."

He is such a Mark.  There's no other word for it.  I don't know where I got these kids with their full sized personalities.  I guess heaven was fresh out of the shy, quiet, compliant types.

Sunday afternoon we took a walk along the Provo River which is my favorite walk--as long as we walk west of Geneva Road rather than east.  With Braeden the conversation naturally evolves to history (he's confessed that in the absence of his history books he has read the chronology of events way too many times in the Bible dictionary since he's been on his mission).  With Mark, the conversation somehow turns to money.  For some reason when we drove home, we started talking about the stock market.  Awhile ago, Adam gave each kid 10,000 pretend dollars and they pretended to invest in different stocks.  When we returned home, Adam checked in to see how their investments were doing.  Mark had earned $10,000 pretend dollars and Braeden had lost $1,000.

Until I made him stop talking (I do that sometimes), Mark talked animatedly and loudly about stocks.  He loves the stock market.  It makes no kind of sense where we got that kid from but he's a keeper and if you want to invest in the stock market, you may want to ask his opinion.

Finally, the last Mark anecdote (for now...if my blog is indeed entirely about him, I am sure there will be more in the future), Mark went trick or treating which is against my arbitrary family rule of once you are twelve you can no longer trick or treat.

(I've sort of given up.  On most things.)

Among his spoils, he got a lighter.

Seriously.  In Pleasant Grove, UT.  What?

Adam took this picture:

I told them both it was not funny but then I'm posting the picture here so that's sort of a mixed message.