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.