Madhouse 2011

Well, it finally happened again.  Almost as frequently as Orrin Hatch turns conservative, all nine of my siblings and I get together and terrorize some poor unsuspecting locale.  We originally plotted to invade Anchorage, but due to many unfortunate circumstances, it wasn't possible.  Instead, we picked a small town in southwest Wyoming, where my sister and her husband have procured several acres for their kids and horses to roam.

On our way up on Monday, July 18th, we took the scenic route through Provo Canyon and across the Mirror Lake Highway to Evanston.  I have no pictures because you have to buy a recreation pass to even park on the side of the road on the Mirror Lake Highway.  When did that happen?  I haven't been through there in a very long time, so that surprised me.  I was also surprised at the amount of snow that was still on the ground.  We jumped out of the car at the state line and got pictures of everyone below the welcome sign, then continued to our destination and pitched our tents.  The weather was generally nice, but we did get rained on at times for the first three days.

On  Tuesday, we hit the old Mormon Trail for a short handcart pull. 

The property owner of the Piedmont ghost town also took us on a tour of the charcoal kilns and some of the old buildings and told some stories about the town and some of her ancestors.

On Wednesday, after a scrumptious breakfast cooked on camp stoves, we headed for Flaming Gorge to raft the Green River.  We commandeered seven 8-man rafts for our group.

Finlay showing us how tough he is.  Unfortunately for him (and Sam), it clouded up and rained for the first half of the float and he about got hypothermia.

Camary, Angie and Xander - ready to hit the water.  I don't have any pictures from the actual float because I didn't want to risk my camera.  Which means I should have stayed close to my brother who has a water-proof camera.  Oh well.

On Thursday, we were supposed to visit some museums and possibly a water park, but no one really wanted to pack up the kids and drive somewhere.  So we basically just hung out at my sister's house and did various things.  We took our shotguns and rifles up and several of my brothers brought handguns, so we did some shooting.  The younger kids spent a lot of time on the trampoline.  Especially Xander.  I think he got in at least eight hours of jumping.

The kids also got to ride on a horse for the first time.  Camary was ecstatic.  We were planning on sticking around until Friday morning, but the old bodies decided it was time to sleep in a bed again.  So we came home Thursday night.

And that's enough for now.  I have a ton of pictures, but this will have to do.

Coming Out of the (Water) Closet

In the debate of nature vs. nurture, there are myriad stereotypes bandied about by both sides. Frankly, I find some of these to be very offensive and I, for one, stand firmly on the side of nurture. See, in my house the only time the lid is left up is when the in-laws come to visit. It doesn't matter who it is - my mother-in-law, my father-in-law or my sister-in-law - the lid is always up after they've visited the bathroom. I have raised four boys who, without fail, put the seat down after doing their business (as an aside, the fifth boy is still very much interested in the lid being up; but seeing as how he's only three years old, I figure there's still an opportunity for improvement). The funny thing about all this is that my wife - who, interestingly enough, actually lived with my in-laws for 18 years - also puts the lid down. Perhaps, being the oldest, she got out of the house before the bad behavior had taken root. But rather than conjecturing on something I don't completely understand, let me tell my side of this bucking-of-the-stereotype.

My grandma crochets these cool little yarn balls stuffed with quilt batting. They're usually about the size of a softball and are fantastic for pelting siblings (although there were plenty of occasions where something harder was desired). One of our favorite uses for these balls was a game we called "Deer." One person was designated the hunter and was armed with the "bullets," and the rest were the deer. We had a fantastically big house with a staircase at each end that lent itself well to all-out running, and provided a way to effectively avoid the hunter. This resulted in numerous injuries from tripping over things in the dark or running into walls or furniture - or each other - and endless arguments about whether the bullet had actually hit its mark. But probably the most memorable moments came when a deer was hiding in a bathroom and the yarn ball ended up taking a swim in the toilet because someone had left the lid up. This became known in my mind as a "Tidy Ball." It would probably be more accurately spelled "Ty-D-Ball" in honor of the "Ty-D-Bol" toilet cleaner which was apparently pretty popular in the 1970's. I attribute the name to my older brother Eric.

He had a clever way of seeing a name on a bag or a box, a TV ad or a newspaper and turning it into an epithet. For example, there was a bag in the laundry room that had a label on it that said "Barbizon Flannel." Eric unleashed this in a name-calling attack on one of my younger brothers. It was eventually shortened to simply "Barber," and that nickname stuck with him for some time. Of course, we had our own names for Eric, but they were rarely spoken to his face. Otherwise, we might have been called something much more egregious, such as "Gubernatorial Candidate." In any case, you can imagine the terror that rippled through the deer population when word came that the hunter had a "Tidy Ball." I mean, who wants to get hit by something so unspeakably disgusting? Even if you didn't take a direct hit, there was collateral damage as the ball spun by, spraying its deadly payload on anything within a few feet. I never gave much thought to the discomfort of the hunter carrying one of those things around. Unless I was the hunter. Then I really wanted to nail someone with it and hear the satisfying squelch as the "Tidy Ball" left a big wet mark in the center of someone's back. It soon became a habit to go through the house and make sure every toilet lid was down before we started playing a game of "Deer." Eventually it became something that I just did each time I used the bathroom. So while using the term "nurture" to describe how this came about might not be completely accurate because my parents had nothing to do with it and I would be hard-pressed to call my brothers nurturing, it was certainly not something that I was born with.

That's it then. The truth is out. I'm a man. And I put the lid down after I use the toilet.