I had Friday off of work, so Liz and I decided to take the kids over to Petroglyph National Monument to show them the ancient graffiti all over the volcanic rocks on the west side of the Rio Grand in Albuquerque. The kids had a blast playing mountain goat on the large rocks.
I also got talked into going with the scouts on an overnight backpacking trip as Isaac’s hiking buddy this weekend. The plan was to hike in two miles, eat and sleep, them hike to the top of the canyon … Read the rest
Or ward organized a camp out this last weekend. I’m not really in a state of mind where hanging out with a million noisy kids and a bunch of adults I don’t really know sounds like fun, but we had agreed to go and keep another family company, so after work Friday we packed up a bunch of crap and drove the 20 minutes to the camp ground. Luckily for me, the family we were to spend the weekend with had similar ideas to mine, and had selected a site well off the beaten path and away from the main … Read the rest
Liz and I recently observed our 19th anniversary. It’s hard to believe she’s put up with me that long, but she continues happy in her delusions. Why should I undeceive her? What a wonderful woman! I’m more in love with her now than I was back then, and I would never have believed you if you told me then it was possible.
We eat a lot of bacon. About the only foodstuff that has more general ability for making food taste better is butter (the real stuff… there hasn’t been a stick of margarine in our house in years), and we eat a lot of that too. Bacon makes eggs infinitely more appealing when you’ve already eaten half a dozen in the last day or two. Bacon added to paté makes liver almost tasty. Popcorn popped in bacon grease with a little sea salt is amazing. Wrap a date in bacon and bake it, and you have an amazing appetizer. Then there’s … Read the rest
What do you get when a formally trained engineer/scientist and a classically trained pianist/liberal arts genius work together? Sounds like a lead up to some kind of joke, right? Or maybe you’re thinking this is some reference to my kids. Neither are right. While my kids would be a logical and technically correct answer, that isn’t the one I’m looking for. When it comes down to it, this reference is about a project in the early stages of development. You see, Liz and I are about to embark on a project that, if successful, will answer this question in the … Read the rest
By this point in my role as a parent, I thought I’d told all the tellable stories to my kids. In fact, they know them so well that they tend to try to tell them for me when we meet someone new. However, I was surprised yesterday to discover one that Sydney, at least, hadn’t heard. We were talking with some family friends and the subject of Sydney locking her keys in the car when she went to fill up the tank came up. Naturally, that spurred a memory and a resulting story that I assumed my family had already … Read the rest
It’s no secret that I’ve struggled greatly for most of the last year and a half. Depression has gotten the better of me for a lot of that time and pains, difficulties, setbacks, and heartache that would have only been a mild irritant under normal circumstances have stacked up and thrown me well off balance — leaving me unstable.
Last Sunday, I was sitting in fast and testimony meeting listening to the traditional flow of shared testimony and experience with no intention of taking part in more than a strictly passive sense. Sundays, in particular, have been very hard for … Read the rest
The Lord has a sick sense of humor… I have a long established dislike of scouting (that’s probably too mild of a word, but I’m trying to be positive), and have recently been caught expressing my feeling that the only calling in the ward I would like less than being Bishop would be as the Scout Master. About six months ago, while I was passing through Amarillo on my way back to DC after an unplanned and very short return to New Mexico, I got a call from the stake Executive Secretary asking if there was any way I could … Read the rest
One of the things the family did to keep themselves sane while I was on my extended “vacation” to DC was enroll at “Ninja Park,” an obstacle fitness gym. Isaac was the driving force behind the decision, but the way things work around here, they either all do it, or they just don’t. We’ve never been willing to spend the time and resources to send each kid to their own special thing three times a week. If one of ’em does Tae Kwan Do for fitness, they all do it. What that meant for Sydney was wrapping her mind around … Read the rest
About 12 years ago, Kara (one of our friends) had just had a second child and was struggling with the adjustments required to bring a new kid into their home. Their oldest son was a handful to say the least. He was more than normally bright, and exceptionally energetic… a combination that often leads to trouble, and this kid was trouble in so many ways. Kara had been having a hard enough time dealing with this fireball of destructive curiosity and energy, and adding another baby with the additional burdens of postpartum depression and general life difficulties only complicated matters.… Read the rest
