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.

Fishy story

Of all the days to forget the camera ...


Yesterday the whole family went out to Canyon Lake to go fishing with the Deacons and the Beehives. Mason, of course, is always excited to go fishing. Spencer was just excited to be able to "catch" his red fish, meaning that I would cast out the red fish tied to the end of his line and then he would reel it back in. On the first cast I took, the fish went sailing out into the lake, but the fishing line didn't follow. It seems that I had tied the fish to the swivel quite well, but the swivel hadn't been tied to the line quite so well.

At this point I figured my only recourse was to throw some bait on the end of the line. Worms aren't as exciting to reel in as red fish are, but it's better than nothing. So I put a worm on a hook for Spencer and tossed it into the water. Then I turned my back to bait my own line. Next thing I know, Spencer says something to me, and I turn around to see that he had reeled in the line and a fish is flopping around on the pier at his feet. How about that for beginner's luck.

Fortunately, Spencer wasn't the only one who caught his first fish last night. Mason managed to catch a fish as well. In fact, by the time we went home, Mason had caught three fish and Spencer had caught four. I even managed to catch one, which was amazing considering all the time I spent baiting other people's hooks.

Spencer went for a swim with Sister Schneider

After our campout in May, we had vowed never to camp in the heat in Texas again, but our sense of duty got the best of us. After all, Teressa is the second councilor in the Young Women's presidency, and it had been her idea to have a campout to help foster unity among the girls—she had just been hoping to hold it earlier in the year. This time we left Mason home with friends and brought just Spencer and Sam.

On this trip I discovered that camping with a group of girls is not exactly my idea of communing with nature. As we arrived we were greeted by the sound of girls singing popular music at the top of their lungs, and apparently their goal was volume rather than proper pitch. Eventually they were convinced that the other visitors to the campground had come to listen to the sounds of nature rather than an impromptu concert and they quieted down.

That night was windy. The good news was that the wind cooled things down. (Teressa didn't even have to break out her battery powered fan.) But the wind did make plenty of noise as the tents were billowing back and forth. I was tired enough that I could have slept through just about anything, and when Spence finally fell asleep, he was fine until morning. Teressa on the other hand, hardly slept at all, and she wasn't the only one. Lack of sleep was a common complaint among camp the next morning.

On Saturday most of us went out for a 4.5 mile hike. The terrain on the hike was rough for part of the trail, so Teressa stayed back with the boys. There is talk of making this a once a year tradition for the Young Women of the ward, but I suspect that Teressa will vote that I stay home with the boys. Then she can just relax and sing popular music at the top of her lungs.

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.