The Brocation

My BFF Jared W happens to have access to a house at Bear Lake, owned by his parents.  We've been trying to do a trip up there with some friends for a while.  He arranged to do it this past weekend.  He wanted to get started Thursday night, but Robyn had to do back to school night with her second grade class.

So Jared and I decided to head up there on Thursday night, just the two of us.  Sometimes the guys just need to hang out.  Sometimes we think we're clever when we call it a brocation.  (I would have also accepted mancation, guycation, or vacation that males go on together.)

It was very therapeutic.  We drove up Thursday night and had all day Friday to just hang out.  Here are some of the important highlights.

First and foremost, we did a lot of chilling on tubes in the middle of the lake.  This is very important.  It's like normal hanging out, only instead of sitting on a couch, you're sitting on a tube.  And instead of the couch being in a house, the tube is in a lake.

After we hung out for a while we decided that the only thing cooler than hanging out in the middle of a lake was reading in the middle of a lake. (Naturally)  Of course we had brought our books out with us for just such an occasion.

Of course, the whole thing was made possible by our good friend, the buoy.  The wind kept trying to take us back to shore so we tied our tubes to the buoy.  That allowed us to relax far from land for as long as we wanted.  Naturally, it was important to show the buoy how much we appreciated it.

I know it looks like I have a weird eye patch, but it's just some water on the camera lense.

Later, we were closer to the shore and found a really strange fish that seemed to be going in circles as it tried to feed off the lake bottom.  I wondered if it was dumb enough to be caught with bare hands.

This is how I fish

It totally was dumb enough!  Here is some video with my new fish friend.

The brocation was amazing.  But a vacation wouldn't be complete without the womenfolk.  Friday night we were joined by our significant others.  (And a few other friends as well)

Reunited and it feels so good.

Jared and Audrey are precious even when they look like disembodied heads.

Of course we didn't have any boats or anything, but I still took my wife tubing, as seen below in this video.  I would have gone faster but we were in a no wake zone.

 

All in all, it was a fabulous little trip.  I think the brocation might just have to become an annual tradition.

Where is His Face?

I have to share a story that has an overabundance of cuteness.  I don't know if I'll be able to portray the cuteness properly.  Hopefully it's not one of those, "you had to be there" scenarios.

As I've mentioned before, we work with the Sunbeam class at our church.  That is the 3 and 4 year olds.  We always meet first in "sharing time" with the whole primary, before we break off into our individual classes.  We have 4 little boys in our class, and several of them try to be the first ones to get to sharing time, so that they can get the very coveted seat next to me.  (The girls all want to sit next to Robyn, although one of the girls always needs to hold my hand when we walk to class.)

There is one particular boy who cries when his mom drops him off, but he is appeased as long as he gets to sit next to me.  He is the cutest little kid, and we have one particular conversation that we have repeated a number of times.

Before I explain the repeated conversation, I have to show you my favorite tie.

My favorite tie depicts Captain Moroni holding the Title of Liberty.

I wear this tie fairly often, and this little boy always asks me about it.  He always takes my tie in his hand, and examines it very closely.  He always looks extremely concerned, and after a few minutes of thought, he asks, "Where is his face?"  

I always try to explain that the picture is too small to see a face.  He usually follows up with, "I can't see his eyes."  I usually try to say something about how his eyes are even smaller than his face.  He usually accepts this after a few minutes.

Perhaps next time I'll bring this in.