Ditch

So here's some advice to people who might be planning a visit to the Kansas City Zoo in the future:
1) Turn off on the correct road.
2) If you happen pass the zoo and turn off on the next, narrow road so that you can go back to the zoo, please be aware of the narrowness of the road. There's a brief stretch of the road that has a sharp enough drop-off that a minivan will get very stuck if the back wheels drop into it.
3) If the back of your minivan happens to drop into this ditch, you don't actually have to call a tow truck to get you out. They'll come, believe you me, but they don't HAVE to. You can jack up the back of the van, put some boards and bricks under the wheels, and just drive the van out of the ditch, provided your tailpipe didn't smash down into the far side of the ditch and get clogged with dirt.
4) If you happen to not notice that the tailpipe has been clogged with dirt, so you think that you've damaged the engine somehow because the car won't stay on (a sort of "banana in the tailpipe situation), and you call the tow truck anyway...kick the tow truck driver in the groin right away before he spends an hour talking with his boss about whether or not to actually pull your minivan out of the ditch.
5) If your minivan gets pulled out of the ditch by the tow truck, and then you gun the engine trying to get the minivan turned enough to go up on the bed of the towtruck, and the dirt clog shoots out of the tailpipe like a cannon, just keep driving away before your conscience forces you to give the tow truck driver 25 dollars for his trouble.
6) If you start this adventure in the early afternoon, keep in mind that the zoo closes at 4:00 PM.

















We went to the park next to the zoo to give the incredibly restless girls a chance to expend some of their energy. They decided they were going to hear some animals regardless.

The Not Great, but Getting Better Outdoors

We've been trying to improve our house. We've gotten some help on a couple minor carpentry projects from the fabulous Corporal Cromar. He has tools and skills.
I, like my father before me, do not possess many tools or skills, so I, like my father before me, tend to gravitate toward outdoor projects that require less accuracy and more back-braking manual labor.
For instance:

Not all of our backyard receives copious amounts of sunlight. The grass does not grow well under the trees, so the area where we set up the swing-set would often become an unpleasant, muddy mess, much like the Bog of Despair. Becky felt like covering the ground with plastic and wood chips and lining the place with landscaping timbers. It only smelled like a gerbil cage for a couple days.

The next muddy pit was the one that we created by pulling our car off to the side of our driveway so that the other car could pass. I swear I could hear Artax whinnying one night. I took the bricks that had been in a pile behind the shed for the last 3 years and arranged them in a semi-pleasing pattern thus.


We've been counseled by our church leaders to grow food. We don't feel like we have the time or patience to start a whole big garden, so the flower bed out front got couple tomato intruders.


Next on the docket:
Remember those bricks behind the shed? There's a also a biome and a war-torn eastern European country to remove.


This is a flower bed that doesn't grow flowers due to the aforementioned tree cover. Becky wants it gone. Like my vas deferens she wants it gone.
Here are our girls.

Here is the boy that lives two doors down who has become a regular playmate for Samantha. At first, he objected to dressing in drag. Now he requests it. Maybe Sam has a future shopping friend.

Because Jon would never tell you how practically perfect he is, his daughter can hint at it with this comment:

"Mommy, if boys can't put gas in a girl's car for her...

do they just have to do it theirselves?"

And to up the number of times our blog is listed when someone googles the word goat:

Dancers

I think both Sam and Lucy have futures in the entertainment industry. I think Lucy is more likely to be seen by the general public, but I think we'll be more willing to tell our friends about what Sam is doing.

"There is no Arizona"

This is how Lucy reacted when we told her mommy was going out of town for the weekend and that she and Sam had Daddy all to themselves.

The Campbell's have aided and abetted a German. They call him Max. I don't think that's his real name.
These are my two favorite Prescottonian ladies. They stole Nora for a good portion of the day Sunday. She came back wanting to watch Steel Magnolias and singing show tunes. I don't know what they did.

Our last year at the Villa our Bishop had us draw a picture of what we hoped our lives would be like in 10 years. This is what my picture looked like. Dreams really do come true.


We recently adopted two latino children. They are gorgeous and cute and smart and practically perfect in every way. For some reason Laura wants to keep them at her house. Whatever.



You never know when Charlie is going to call. Unfortunately this time he called right in the middle of the Halterman-Campbell get-together. The woes of having an on-call job.
This is a green, green room. The man who owns it makes a lot of money and has four cars for himself. He also cooks really yummy smelling food on fast Sunday. All-in-all, he's a jerk.
A friend of ours told us that getting the three of us together in one room is worse than having all 5 of his brothers together. As you can see by Josias' face, that is absolutely not true.
Yes, Laura got eye implants.

If you move your eyes really fast you can see that Jon is the most studly husband in the whole wide world. You can also see he doesn't need that pesky hair stuff to be the most handsome.

This is just for Grandma Deanna. We're sorry we were lame and didn't think about how we'd mail it for Mother's Day, but we promise to get it to you ASAP. We know you're life isn't complete without it. We love you!

Cell Phone

The two "older" girls get some Dad time this weekend as Becky is out of town visiting friends and showing off Nora the infant. You'll note she took the camera with her, so we're making do with the cellphone.

I like how Lucy has grown enough hair to look like Gene Wilder.

I also like how Sam has gotten pretty enough to be smug about it.

Yaoundé is the capital of Cameroon

The increased physical activity made possible by the absence of the child incapable of self-locomotion has led to earlier evening fatigue. This picture was taken at 7:15, if you can believe that. It looks like we're headed for a similar course of events tonight.

Meanwhile, Becky seems to be having a swell time with Amber and Laura, who apparently live in the Celestial Kingdom.