Happy ___________ to you!

Today is a big day. It was supposed to be one of my best blog posts ever. For starters it is my 25th blog post! (Wow 25 already, that's almost as many as most people write in an entire week) It's also the birthsday of sister Weebs and niece Rachael (birthsday, I believe is the proper way to define a day on which multiple people were born, since more than one birth is being celebrated rather than more than one day). Also, Christmas is fast approaching and, since I average less than one post a month, it is more than likely that this post would have to serve as some sort of holiday greeting as well.

But it seems I'm having some technical difficulties and can't upload the pictures that I wanted to.

So...Happy 25th blog post to me, Happy Birthsday to Elise and Rachael, and here's a little video to get you in that festive mood.

Happy Halloween

So it's October 31st. If you're like me, you probably don't have a costume. Never fear. There's an old standby that you can dust off anytime and it's always a big hit.

First, you've got to get a disgusted look on your face. Second, bend one arm to a 72 degree angle and rest the bent elbow on your hip. Now, fully extend the fingers on that same arm but spread them out only slightly. Next, quickly thrust the same hand back and forth in 4/4 time with a range of motion of only three or four inches. Pull you chin into your upper neck. After you've got all these elements going simultaneously, say something like "Ugh! This is such an evil holiday." Then add something like "A lady in our old ward told me...", or "I was reading on the internet...", or "One time, when we lived in Alaska...". What you say after that doesn't really matter because you most likely will have been tuned out.

Can you guess what the costume is? That's right--a Witch! Ha ha ha ha!

I jest, I jest.

Anyway, I guess it was kind of ironic that my last post's purpose was to get Elise to blog again, and then I went on a blogging hiatus. But, you can't argue with results. Since I called her out less than two months ago, Elise has blogged 18 times.

DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH!

I guess she has more to write about than I do. I mean, right now I'm just typing words to take up space. This sentence is completely superfluous. As is this one. In fact, this whole paragraph is basically a waste, both in the time it took me to write it and in the time you took to read it. Yet I keep writing and you keep reading. Perhaps were both hoping it comes to some grand conclusion or helps to uncover some startling epiphany. At least then the invested effort would be justified. But nine sentences in and there is still nothing. Now ten sentences. Alright, I guess that last sentence was incomplete and shouldn't count but this sentence will make it ten and, if you count the incomplete sentence as a half, then the tally would be ten and a half, but this is turning into a run-on sentence and that should count extra which, when totaled with the incomplete sentence, makes it an even 11. Now any chance of salvaging anything useful from this paragraph is looking less and less likely. It's looking more and more like a lost cause. If some sort of meaningful substance isn't produced soon, not only will you regret reading this paragraph, but perhaps the entire blog post. Indeed, the negative aspects of this useless paragraph could offset any benefit from the rest of the post. The awesome Mom-jab at the beginning may not even be enough to redeem it now. And I really, really liked that Mom-jab. Now, my time has already been spent in writing, and if i delete this paragraph then all I've got is a really good Mom-jab. Sure, a good Mom-jab can stand on its own, but if I delete this huge paragraph then it will look like I went two months without posting anything except a Mom-jab (albeit a decidedly good one). Plus you've already read this far so you really probably don't have anything better to do. Here's what I'll do, I'll type a sentence in red before this paragraph telling you in no uncertain terms not to read it and then, if you do, you have no one else to blame but yourself.

Bentionary

Mom-jab [mom-jab] (noun) Any lighthearted observations about one's own mother's personality, habits, and/or mannerisms.

I was wondering

where Elise went.
She promised she would be more consistent in her blogging.
I'd like to blog for her,
but I don't have her password
(I tried to figure it out, but nothing worked).
So I'll use my blog and try to blog like her.
How hard could it be?

All you need is:

A partial sentence for a title (check)
The completion of that sentence in the main text (check)
One sentence per line maximum (check)
A list (check)
A picture of feet

Check.

Please blog again soon, Weebs. Your feet pictures are much more interesting than mine.

This is the title of my blog post

Hey, check it out. I got a new blog background. I know you were familiar with the old one and now it looks all different. Don't worry. You'll get use to it.

It's kind of like when you know someone for a long time and then they get a new hairstyle and it takes a while to get use to it, and then, after you do get use to it you see a picture of them before they changed their hairstyle and you're like "hey remember when you looked like that and we called you 'haystack'?" And they say something like "It's not my fault my hair looked like that for so long. You set my hair on fire when I was in first grade and it wouldn't grow anymore after that." And then you question the feasibility of their claims and the best response they can come up with is something like, "well, all I know is that my hair didn't grow at all for like 10 years...so, hmm."

Or, to use an example that is applicable to me, it's like when I grew a beard and everyone said how different I looked and it turned out to be the talk of the family for a long time. The pandemonium really was quite surprising. I was getting all sorts of requests for before and after photos from people who had heard rumors about it. Unfortunately I couldn't post those photos...until now.

Here is the "before" photo that was taken with haysta...I mean, Elise:

And here is the "after" photo:

As you can see, there's not much difference between the before and after, but you should have seen the "during".

You can tell by the picture of Elise and I that we get along pretty good these days. That's one good thing that came about from Mom relentlessly trying to set Elise up. You see, it use to be that Elise filled a special place in Mom's heart. So much so that Mom declared that, given the opportunity, she would swap me for another Elise. This prompted me to photoshop a picture of myself morphing into Elise with the caption "Mom's wish come true" written across the top. However, since Elise spurned Mom's dream son-in-law (he's a rancher...he's a cowboy) she has dropped a few degrees on the valuemometer, not quite to my level but a step in the same direction.

With Elise in her new position, there is only one thing left in the top spot--the guest park. In a recent blog post, she spoke of the latest in a string of potential properties with a fondness and zeal not often exhibited. For some reason, she made some obscure reference to her dream property being comparable to Dad wearing pink tights and a headband. I'm not sure what she meant, but I thought it would make a fun representation of Mom's new wish come true.

If you question her sanity, look no further than this comment she left on my blog on January 10th of this year:

My secret dream is to have the whole family move to Eastern California
(beautiful Plumas County) or Western Nevada and have our own home school. At least California allows $2000 for each student for supplies, lessons, computer,
books, etc. Everyone could have a part in teaching, babysitting, chauffeuring or
contributing to the success of the education in their own way.

I guess it's this kind of thing that made it impossible to resist taking a picture of her in the cooler in David's house that resembles a cell in an insane asylum.

Or maybe I'm just mean. That is, after all, why I took and posted this picture:

We did have a good time with all the relatives that came up during phone book delivery. These two buds were romping around the place practicing their marksmanship and just having a lot of cousin fun.

There was a whole bunch of 'cousin fun' while the Barbens were up here, including the time they went all "little bunny foo foo" and killed more than sixty field mice that David had scared up while mowing the pasture.

Well, that pretty much brings you up to date on everything in my life aside from what I'm doing, so...Goodnight.

Bentionary

val-ue-mom-e-ter [val-yoo-mom-i-ter] (noun) A standard Mom uses to determine relative worth, merit, or importance.

Déjà vu?

So Eliza had her 5th birthday a couple days ago and I thought to myself, "something is familiar about all this."

I then thought back to two years ago--when I first came up to work for David on his phonebookin' crew. Eliza was then celebrating her 3rd birthday.

I knew I had taken some pictures on that day as well, so I went through some of my old photo files and found this little gem that I snapped just before Eliza had her Dora the Explorer cake.
Upon comparison of the two photographs, I noticed that Eliza was wearing the same shirt on both occasions.

What are the odds? Same girl, same day, same shirt--two years apart.

Then I got to thinking that a lot of things are the same as they were two years ago. And as I thought about the past two years, the word nostalgic came into my mind. Then, I suppose because it is an odd sounding word, I kept repeating it over and over in my head--and within a few moments, as it always does, the word morphed into nuh-stal-jeek.

As I sat there with that oboesque pronunciation echoing through my brain (nuh-stal-jeek, nuh-stal-jeek, nuh-stal-jeek...), I remembered it is about time for my annual belated mothers' day well wishes. Indeed, this time of year almost makes me remorseful for all the instances I jokingly told people that I never knew my Mother because she had died three months before I was born.

In hopes of making amends, I have decided to give her the thing she wants most from me. The thing that will bring her the most happiness. And the thing that gives meaning to her life in her old age. Pictures of horses.

So there you are Madre. Hopefully these pictures are enough to slake your equiniferous appetite.

Below is my Bentionary. It's got definitions for words I make up in my blog post (the underlined words).

Bentionary

o-bo-esque [oh-boh-esk] (adj.) Having the characteristics of an oboe esp. in tone.

e-quin-if-er-ous [ee-kwhayn-if-er-uhs, ek-whyan-if-er-uhs] (adj.) Having, producing, or relating to horses.

Hangin' out with the Lindseys

While we were up in Washington, Elise and I stayed with David and Jeanne's family. I got a chance to take a bunch of pictures and here are some of them. They're not really in any logical order because blogger is weird like that.

The Fam.
Tommy learning to crawl.

Sisters!

Eliza is happy to have her picture taken...

...sometimes.

Soph. Soph. Soph. Soph. Soph. Soph.

Playing Cyclo Maniacs on the laptop.

Cooper the businessman selling rocks from an ironing board. Prices range from $.25 to $1000. Be advised, he does not accept checks.

Brothers!

Cooper studying his countries and capitals.

Alice

Cooper at baseball practice.

Sophia showing off her missing tooth.

Alice eating ice cream.

Hangin' out with the Barben's

After the Favero's house, Elise and I were up in Washington. We visited the Barbens a few times. Elise had my camera a lot of the time and took several pictures of the kids so watch her blog for those. Here are a few I took after playing some baseball with the boys.

Bronson getting ready to launch a home run.
It looks like Bret Jr. knocked another one out of the park.

Jake makes a diving save.

And Bronson robs an anonymous slugger of another one.

Hangin' out with the Faveros

Again, it's been a while since I've blogged. Since y'all heard from me last I have been all over the place. Elise and I came out to Nevada after the Jensens were kind enough to let me stay at their place in Utah for quite a few weeks. We had a lot of fun and I was able to document it in pictures. Here are but a few of them:

Juliet is always smiling--even while warming the bench.
We went Geocaching with the older kids. They all love each other.

The cache was set up in a few different legs. One of which leads us by a foul-smelling waste water reclamation plant.

See, there it is.

The kids on an old tree.

...Still smiling...

In the car.

Elise is with three nieces. (That rhymes) Victor led us right to the cache.

Elise is with three nieces and victor in this picture. (Two rhymes)

Still in the tree.

Jerimiah, Colin, and Keira weren't with us on the photo shoot, but I did snap this one of them on the swing.

Look who's here

I know everyone is anxious to see Liz and Ryan's new baby, Jacob. Here are a couple of photos I snapped shortly after they got home a few minutes ago.

It's me again

Sorry I have not blogged in a while. I was unable to post pictures or videos and have just fixed the problem.

A few weeks back, Marae wrote a blog about the most annoying song in the world and posted a 20+ minute example. It was pretty rough stuff but I wouldn't go as far as to say the most annoying song in the world. Allow me to submit the following songs as examples of what may be even more annoying.

This is one that mom plays when she wants me to wake up. She knows I will have to get up to shut it off. Try to listen to the whole thing (at least until he starts singing around 40 seconds).

And this is one that some of you may remember. It was sung at my farewell.

She threatened to sing this song at my farewell for months beforehand even though I pleaded with her not to. So when I got my new camera and realized she didn't like me to take pictures of her, there was only one thing to do.

I've got dozens more but they take too long to upload so Mom lucked out.

Finally Updated

I know, I know. It's been a long time since I've blogged. It's not that I didn't want to. I was all ready to post weeks ago. It seemed all the answers to the Winner of the Week challenge had been submitted. All were way off. In fact, only one person even guessed one of the quotations correctly. That person turned out to be Jon signed in as his wife. So I spent a few weeks making this banner:

Just as I went to post it, I noticed a new comment in my comment section. It was from Marae and she had guessed them all correctly. Yes, it's true; all of those quotes belong to Elise. The fourth one was on Marae's blog and the fifth one was on Elise's. I have spent the last few weeks creating a new poster for Marae--the true Winner of the Week!

Unfortunately, she hasn't posted an unobstructed picture of her face since she's been married, so I had to make do with what I had.

Strange, I know. But not as strange as the first time I heard some of the nieces and nephews singing "I saw Uncle Ben kissing Aunt Marae..." to the tune of I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus. I guess it's still taking a while to get used to having another Uncle Ben in the family.

Well, as you know, I've been up in Washington for a couple months. David's secret dream is to have the whole family move up here. It is a really nice place and full of natural beauty. Here's a picture of Deception Pass Bridge from Whidbey Island.

And here's a picture of Cooper and Sophia sledding after it snowed a few weeks ago.

Although they love playing together, they are overjoyed to have the Barben cousins so close. In fact, Cooper started a blog to chronicle his new adventures with them (however, the title of his blog sounds more like a reality TV show that pits two people from different walks of life against each other for the chance to win big money).

Speaking of games that pit people against one another for the chance to win big money, I have some bad news. The Winner of the Week challenge will be postponed until further notice.