Autumnish

 Three pictures:

Nora, swirling through a vortex of joy on a fiberglass pony.

 Lucy, chowin' down in the clink.

Samantha, making breakfast.

Linkin'

 So, I realize that it's been a while since we blogged. We missed Becky's birthday, the girls' first days of Kindergarten, 2nd grade and preschool, Becky's pacemaker implantation, and Jon's little run-in with the Russian mafia, but in our defense, revealing the whereabouts of a murdered hooker can take up a surprising amount of your free time.

We went to see the Terrys on saturday. Ben just took a new position at the University up in Lincoln and they bought a beautiful labrynthine house. Lucy did not mind the frigid festivities in their backyard.

Sam and Eva were elegant and/or swarthy.

 Spencer played basketball in a recycling bin because that's what 12-year-olds do these days.

Becky and Peanut became one with the pool chairs. 

  Ben provided nourishment by heating the flesh of animals.

 

And this is how we felt when we left.

 

 Jon, Rachel, and Becca avoided the camera.

The End.

UP

Our oldest daughter turned 7 years old a couple weeks ago. She decided to have an "UP" party.

The idea of an "UP" party is that you put a whole bunch of balloons on your house like in the movie "UP" and then you and a bunch of friends watch the movie "UP."
It turns out that there were a lot more balloons in the movie "UP" than any one person could possibly afford to buy. Actually, the balloons in the movie were digitally created in a computer. Our one little helium balloon kit looked rather silly.

Becky, in her brilliance, came up with magical craft ideas to do in addition to the movie.

Becky is better than ice cream cake.

This is a picture of 6 kids on a couch.

We borrowed Mike's projector and the big slanty wall upstairs worked pretty darn good. I'm glad we didn't build that room with a door because it would make a pretty sweet make-out locale.

That night, Sam wanted to paint toenails. It was her seventh birthday.





Girlies

So, beat that.

The girls got haircuts from their dad. Yes, I'm a nurse and an adequate hairdresser, but that doesn't mean I'm not a functional example of my gender.

I realized that these ponies make 3 dollars for each 3 minute ride in a figure eight. That's 60 bucks/hour. I wanna be a pony. A pretty pony with braids in my beautiful mane, galloping through the meadow with a pack of tampons attached to my saddle.

Does anyone want to go paint-balling or play video games or chop some wood? Maybe fart?

Weeky Video

Overheard conversation:

FIVE????

Lucy turned 5.  Becky made this.  It took her 4 years.  I didn't think it would hold together.  I'm an idiot.  Ten tiny children hit it before it burst apart in a very satisfying manner.

 

This is the lovely lady who is going to get tubes in her ears and go to kindergarten soon.  It'll be interesting to see if she still ignores us as much after her outer ears are fixed.

This one is also maturing.

Trinidad, and the Big Mississippi

I remember something a fellow young man told me about 20 years ago.  We were in a tent with a couple other young men on a scouting campout.  My father was one of the leaders at the time.  He was fun and dorky. He would participate during games of capture the flag, and he would teach weird geography songs to those who were willing to learn them.  I don't remember the whole of the conversation that led up to this comment. I think it was something along the lines of one boy saying, "You're dad's goofy."

I, thinking to deflect some ridicule, said something like, "I know. He can be pretty dorky sometimes."

Then the other boy said, "I wish he was my dad."

I had never seen either of these other boys' fathers at any campout or any other scouting event.  Their fathers never played basketball, they didn't sit by their sons at church, and they certainly didn't sing goofy geography songs around the campfire.

Thank you for being a dad, Dad.

Dogs 2

So here's the whole dog story:

A couple weeks ago, a friend of ours, who is going through a very nasty divorce, asked us if we wouldn't mind watching her three little Maltese dogs for a while until all the divorce stuff was finalized. The place she's staying doesn't allow pets. So we took them in. We suddenly had responsibilty for three very cute, but fairly smelly, fairly impossible-to-keep-clean, long-haired, yippy, annoying, dogs. It did provide some motivation to complete the privacy fence. That took 2 days. 

Well, as it turned out, the privacy fence was not quite as secure as we thought. The mighty leader of this trio, named Marshmellow, dug under the gate while we were out for an afternoon, and they disappeared.

I was not sad, but I was a little disturbed that these ridiculously expensive pure-bred dogs had decided to independently wander the streets of Independence, sniffing meth and what-not. I drove around the neighborhood for a bit, looking for fluffy white and red splotches in the street. They were not located.

We ashamedly contacted the owner, and to our surprise, she responded by saying something like, "Well, someone probably picked them up and is taking good care of them. It's fine."

And joy abounded. We were free of the poopy little gremlins and we could go back to our non-dog lives.

But Becky saw how Samantha had embraced Marshmellow, so they went out and got the substantially less cute and slightly less stinky Peanut Butter...

But, that's not the end of the story, folks. After Peanut had been in our home for all of two days, the three fluffy demons from hell came YIPPING BACK TO OUR HOUSE, covered in dirt and occasionally vomiting some kind of sticky white substance which looks like a combination of hair, possum flesh, and tartar sauce.  

So now we have FOUR DOGS.

Who wants to come over for a roast? 

Dogs

Here are the top ten reasons to NOT own a dog:

1. They smell. They smell like dog.

2. They shed. Their hair gets all over everything and it smells as much as they do.

3. They bark. They bark all day at everything that isn't food.

4. They eat food.

5. And then they poop. In your yard. Where your feet go.

6. They jump on your furniture with their little claws.

7. They bite. If they don't like something, they don't file a complaint, they just bite that thing.

8. They have other nasty things living on them, like ticks and fleas and moray eels.

9. When you go on vacation, you can't just turn the AC off and leave your house. You have to find someone to watch your dog, otherwise you'll come home to a dead dog, which smells even worse than a live dog.

10. Speaking of which, they sometimes get sick, and then you have to pay a guy who acts like a doctor to prescribe medicine or perform hip surgery or hit it with a shovel.

So that being said, meet Peanut Butter. Or Peanut. Or Pee Pee.

She's a Pug mixed with some other kind of thing that's not a pug. Probably a Chihuahua. So she essentially looks like a perpetually pissed-off Chihuahua. She's fat and lazy and she eats table scraps and doesn't bark and Becky just bought her. Like a pair of shoes.

So now we have a dog. A damn dog.

Kinda cute though.

And Phyllis Begat Wendell

So they got matching dresses. And tattoos.

And they stood around in our backyard looking pretty while they contemplated the cosmos.

 This one broke the cuteness barrier with her pigtails, though we had to reinstate her prom privileges to get to keep them in.

Then we drove to Colorado and back to visit with Super Grandma. Grandpa Wendell's mom had never met Nora. Now she can live peacefully, knowing that her progeny will soon destroy all of humanity.