Invasion of the Girly Girls

You would think we would have less wrestling and more tea parties when entertaining a bunch of girls, but not so.

This week we had the opportunity to watch four little girls (the Barton girls and Ashlyn Lara). It was a chance to experience what life might have been like if we had little girls instead of little boys. One one hand, there seemed to be just as much wrestling and roughhousing, but the addition of the kissing games was somewhat disconcerting. On the other hand, Ashlyn seemed to be in culture shock when we put on an episode of Avatar to calm the kids down. "Do you have Little Mermaid?" she asked. Nope. "How about Pocahontas?" Um, no. We've pretty much shied away from that genre of Disney cartoon, considering the demographics of our home.

One of the most interesting parts of the day, though, was hearing the pontifications of Brinkley Barton. For those of you who don't know Brinkley, let me just say that she has a tendency to, shall we say, embellish her stories and life history to make them much more interesting than they would normally be. So in honor of Brinkley, we are including the following stories as told by Brinkley herself.

Unbeknownst to her parents, Brinkley has been sneaking out at night to do plumbing jobs. It has always been her dream to grow up to be a plumber. In fact, while Brinkley was visiting us, she even did her best to dress like a plumber. (We have photos to prove the event, but because this is a family website and Flying Furball does not condone the plumber lifestyle, we will not be publishing those photos here.) Come on, Brinkley. Even Whitney Houston knows that crack is whack.

Another interesting tidbit that Brinkley told us was that she has been betrothed to her boyfriend, Eddie Vedder (names have been changed to protect the innocent), a professional skateboarder from Colorado. She said her parents had arranged the marriage so they could use her dowery to pay for a skiing trip.

Please note that Flying Furball has reserved the right to edit and change Brinkley's stories for the sake of reader interest. Brinkley's fiance is really a scrawny 9-year-old nose picker named Petey Morganstein. He once saw a skateboard on TV. The dowery money was actually used to buy pizza. The contents of the plumbing story are entirely true and have not been adulterated in any way.

Back at BYU

The boys prepared for the big visit by dressing in their BYU jerseys.

While on our trip home from out West, we decided to stop at BYU so the boys could get some exposure to the school. We started out at the natural history museum, a place that I loved to visit when I was a kid and my father was getting his master's degree at BYU. We continued on to eat lunch in the Wilkinson Center, just like the old days. Then we spent some time in the bookstore shopping for BYU paraphernalia. At this point we met up with Aunt Kenzie and cousins Kylie, Megan and Will and went to the BYU creamery for some ice cream. (Just a word of advice: The double scoop waffle cone is plenty big enough for two people, but that didn't stop me from eating it anyway. Best ice cream ever.) Then we checked out the new visitor and alumni building. Teressa is already using her influence to try to convince the boys they want to go to college at BYU, and a campus visit seems like a good way to start.


Samuel was having so much fun visiting BYU ...


... that he finally couldn't take it any longer and collapsed from exhaustion.

Summer soccer fun

This photo really sums up Spencer's first organized soccer game.

Last year when Teressa and the kids went to visit her family in Washington state, Aunt Opal signed Mason up to play soccer with his cousins Drew and Cody. This year she decided to continue the tradition, but on a grander scale. This year Spencer was signed up to play on a team with cousin Baylee in addition to Mason playing on a team with the older cousins. I only caught one game before I had to fly back to Texas for work, but it was an interesting experience. Mason was a bit timid at times, but it was obvious that he had played before and knew the flow of the game. Spencer on the other hand, was the youngest player on his team. (In fact, he was so young that he was under the age limit for the league.) It showed. At times, Spence ran to the ball and tried to kick it, and at other times he stood around in the middle of the field as if he didn't have a care in the world. It looks like we have a long way to go to realized that college athletic scholarship.

According to Teressa, as the season progressed, Mason became a bit more assertive, but Spencer was still off in his own world. In the middle of a game, he would stop tracking the ball and start doing karate moves. I suppose in Spencer's mind that if soccer equals kicking and karate equals kicking, you put the two together and you get some really wicked soccer moves.

For more photos of the initial soccer game, click on the link below.

2008 soccer photos

Back, and better than ever

Our summer's vacation is over and we're finally back at home. Of course, we weren't all on vacation that whole time. Some of us had to work. Teressa had to deal with pleasing family members, a baby who wouldn't sleep and the occasional fist fight. I just had to go to Dallas for four weeks to do neuroanesthesia. Needless to say, Teressa is happy to be back in her home house, where she can dish out "Texas tough love." In other words, the baby is allowed to fuss when he wakes up at night until he can put himself back to sleep, rather than getting him immediately for fear that he will wake up Grandma, or the people in the hotel room next door. More posts with trip details will follow, and in spite of the face Mason is making in this photo, even he had a good time.