Boys and frogs

In wetter times, frogs like this are plentiful in our yard.


We found this frog under the the base of the basketball hoop.

As mentioned in a previous post, during wet years we have an abundance of amphibians. This year is dryer, so we are seeing more lizards around the house. But that doesn't mean the frogs are all gone. When the weather gets wet, the frogs come out. There are also a few places in the yard where we have found where the frogs like to hide. One day while I was moving some things around, I discovered four of the frogs hiding under the base of our portable basketball hoop. Mason begged to go back a few days later, and that is when we discovered this frog. It seems that we had scared off his other friends the last time we had been in to look.

Great wall of Scotland

Here I am cutting the last brick down to size.


The last brick was placed on Memorial Day.


Here we are with the finished brick wall.

The brick wall in our front yard has been a long-term project, as well as becoming an ongoing joke. Teressa has had a running commentary with her friends about how long this project is taking. (Answer: about six months.) I started pulling out the sod last fall. Then I laid the footing over New Year's. Then the project sat as a hole in the ground up until April.

Once April rolled around, I finally had some extra time to work on the project. I was invigorated and vowed to finish the project as quickly as possible. Well, that and Teressa bribed me with the opportunity to get a new iPod once the project was finished. Now the bricks are finally done. All we need to do now is to plant our shrubs. Take that, doubters and naysayers. Don't you wish you had a brick wall in front of your house?

Got milk?

This gallon of milk was 10 days past its prime.

After returning from our trip to Corpus Christi, we had the opportunity to sit down for family dinner on Sunday. We decided to have some milk to go with our meal. When I went to the fridge, I was surprised to find that our gallon of milk was 10 days past the expiration date. I'm not sure how this could have happened because we never let a gallon of milk last 10 days in our house. I can only assume that either the store had let its milk sit around a bit too long or perhaps the milk had been pasteurized or irradiated or otherwise preserved so well that the date should really read "05/15/2009." As Teressa and I were discussing the situation, Mason astutely realized the potential consequences of the situation and blurted out, "That milk could be bad. Let's have Dad taste it first." Nice to see that I'm the most expendable member of the family.

As it turned out, I did drink the milk first. The milk was still OK and we had drank it for Sunday dinner.

Beach trip

Mason was the first one in the water

For Memorial Day weekend, we decided to head to Corpus Christi to visit the beach. It wasn't a hard decision. I have been working at the children's hospital for the month, and my hotel room was already paid for, so all we had to shell out for was for gas and meals. I was post-call on Thursday, so I drove back to San Antonio, picked up the family and away we went. I had to work Friday, but I still got out early enough that we were able to head to the beach.


Sam looks serious, but he had a good time

The next day we went to the beach again, this time to meet friends who drove down that day from San Antonio. The kids had a great time playing in the sand and the surf again, and nobody got sunburned too badly (except for Teressa who missed some spots with the sunscreen).


Spencer wasn't sure about the water at first.

We returned to San Antonio where we finished our Memorial Day weekend with a decidedly lest festive (although wildly productive) note. But that will be covered in another post.

Saving the earth

For our Memorial Day weekend trip to Corpus Christi, we decided to save a little gas money by piling the boys in the back of the Sentra rather than taking the minivan. Near the beginning of the trip, Teressa expressed some trepidation about how the boys would do in the car. But since we had been driving the for a whole 20 minutes in peace, I think I said something like, "See, the boys are doing fine back there." Well, it didn't take long before relations deteriorated and Mason and Spencer were going at it in the back seat with Samuel stuck in between them. The rest of the drive down there continued pretty much the same way, and the drive back looked like the same song, second verse—until I came up with an idea.


All three boys in the back seat seemed like a good idea at the time.

My original brainstorm was to have the kids tell us stories. If they were busy telling stories, they couldn't argue. Spencer started off by telling a cute story called "The Five Buffalo," but we soon found that the stories were short and soon the boys were arguing about who's turn was next. That's when I took matters into my own hands. It was my turn to tell stories. My stories filled up the next hour of the trip, and all were as long as I could possibly make them because the kids were listening, and they were being quiet. And the silence was like sweet music to my ears. All of my stories had similar themes. They went something like this.

Two boys were taking a walk through the forest. Their names were Mason and Spencer. As they were walking they came across a large dark shape sitting in the trail ahead of them. "That's a grizzly bear," Mason said. "I can tell by the teeth." "No, that's a Kodiak bear," Spencer said. "I can tell by the claws." (Any guesses where I got the inspiration for my stories?) "Grizzly bear!" "Kodiak bear!" This argument went on for some time until the bear could take no more. He stepped from the shadows, stood up and said, "I'm neither a grizzly bear nor a Kodiak bear. I'm a polar bear." "You can't be a polar bear," Mason said. "The polar bear's natural habitat doesn't extend this far south." The two boys continued to bicker until the bear couldn't take the noise anymore and swallowed them whole, just to make them stop.

There were several other stories that were told along similar lines and were somewhat more detailed. I was just trying to eat up as much time as possible so the boys would stay quiet. Overall, I would say that my strategy was successful, but the next time we take a trip, I'm pretty sure we'll take the van.

Aftermath of a campout

This weekend we decided to head out of town for a campout. Unfortunately we picked the weekend when the weather got hot. We also made the mistake of picking the campground with plenty of ants. The boys slept in their underwear. Spencer managed to get bitten by ants and his left ankle swelled so badly that he refused to walk on that foot for the next several days. Samuel was about as perfect as he could be (although as he was cooing and blowing raspberries at 10 pm, we did start wondering if he was planning on going to sleep or whether he would just party all night long). He paid for it in the morning, though, as you can see from the picture above.

Blind man feeds baby

Uncle Andy is visiting us for the weekend. When he comes, he enjoys doing the simple things in life—riding bicycles, bowling and helping to take care of the kids. I came home from work yesterday, I noticed that Sam had been stripped down to nothing but his diaper. I didn't realized the significance of that finding until I was looking through the photos on the camera and noticed the one above that Teressa had shot while I was gone.

Return of the Lizard

In our next episode, Princess Alisha is found sunbathing high on the basketball standard, far from the eyes of prying cameras. But what she doesn't know is that our intrepid nature photographer has a much bigger lens with which to take her picture.


When Princess Alisha realizes that her sunbathing has been caught on camera and is likely to be spread across the tabloids, she reacts violently and tries to intimidate the photographer into dropping his camera and running.