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.