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.

Dreaming of Otis

Some of my favorite moments in life are when my wife says funny things while she is sleeping. It only happens once every couple months, so it's always a special treat.

 The other night, I was laying in bed and I heard Robyn mumbling something about a baby. I couldn't quite understand what she was saying. I asked her what she said, and she responded, "I was talking about Otis, our son."

 I thought this was hilarious. "She thinks we have a son." I giggled to myself, "she thinks we would name him Otis."

This was the picture I had in my head, of what she must be dreaming about.

I remember thinking, "This is gonna be awesome to write about on my blog."

And then I woke up.  That's right.  The whole thing never happened.  It was a dream.

This is a more accurate picture of the truth

I had to hang my head in sadness.  It was my brain that invented Otis.  But at least I was still able to share Otis with all of you.

P.S. If there ever was a dream that needed analyzing, this is it.  So do share your theories.

More people of Google

It's always fun to see what Google searches bring people to my blog.  Sometimes I wonder if they find what they're looking for.  I've done it before.  But I like to respond to some of the google searches.

So, without further ado, the google searches are in bold.  My responses are everything else.

fat guy in white pants
I assume you were brought here by this story, in which my mission companion had to push in my gut while I tried to zip up the white pants in the Bismarck temple.  Worry not.  I'm still fat, but I have my own white pants that fit me just fine.

"road to hana" flowchart
I had to google this to try and guess what you might have been looking for.  As far as I can tell, there are no flowcharts about the road to Hana on the internet.  The good news is, because I love you, dear reader, I have made a flowchart to help you solve your problem of not being in Hana.

coworker took my wifes clothes
I can't say I've ever had that problem.  Although my wife's clothes did blow off once.  Perhaps you should ask your coworker if they would return your wife's clothes.  I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding.

caught in my wife's clothes
I can't say I've ever had that problem, either.  Although we have switched faces, so being caught in my wife's body might be worse.

What a terrible atrocity

man getting eaten by a pig
What's wrong with you?

odoyle42.blogspot.com
If you know the url to my blog, you don't have to google it, you can just type it in the address bar.

question mark on woman
Again, due to the exceptional service you've all gotten used to, I have created this image for you.  My wife has been question marked as well as the woman in the background.  In addition, the man in the background has been exclamation pointed.  That is service.

thoughts on striped shirts
I have nothing against them, but I usually wear shirts with one color, or with an amusing graphic.  The amusing graphic is usually related to something geeky, or to bacon.

trash cans disappearing tucson
The conspiracy is more widespread than I thought.  Perhaps the people in tucson have some answers for why my trash can is disappearing.

zen bamboo
You need to hike the Pipiwai trail on Maui.  You go through the bamboo forest, and it is amazing.  The trail is just past Hana.  Refer to the flowchart above to get to Hana.

Thanks for googling.  Keep searching for me and I'll keep responding

The Arm Folding Evangelist

As I've said before, Robyn and I work with the 3 and 4 years olds at our church.  There is one particular girl who is super cute and super imaginative.  It is particularly difficult to help this girl stay quiet.  She is never defiant, she just imagines she is some place more awesome than sitting in her chair in Primary.

For example, one moment we are all sitting there quietly and then she suddenly remembers that she is a ballerina.

This is what she thinks she looks like

This is the reality.  

You'll notice the reality looks pretty similar to the fantasy, she's spinning.  She has a dress.  It's all basically the same, except that it has me chasing after her trying to stop the performance.  At one point I picked her up to place her back on her chair.  She pointed her feet and arched her back.  I'm pretty sure I just became her dancing partner and we were doing some sort of fancy lift.

So, after a few fancy lifts, I decided I should negotiate.  I explained to her that once we get to class (at this point we were in sharing time, with all of the other Primary classes) we have blocks available to play.  But only kids who are reverent get to play with the blocks.

Instantly, the ballerina was no more.  She sat down on her chair, folded her arms and gave me the "I'm so innocent" smile.  I gave her a thumbs up and she beamed with pride.  

Then she looked at the boy sitting next to her.  He was sitting quietly, but his arms weren't folded.  She had to put a stop to this great tragedy.  She quickly got out of her chair and joined him on his chair.  He looked at her with great dismay.  But she began evangelizing him.  She exhorted him to fold his arms so he could receive the promised reward of blocks in the next class.

How do you help the evangelist understand that the boy who always sits quietly is doing just fine?  We did another fancy lift and got her back to her chair.  She was relatively quiet the rest of the time.  

She received the great reward of blocks in class, and even got to play with a puppet.  She lived happily ever after, at least until her dad came to pick her up.  The idea that she had to go home brought tears to her eyes.  That's how fun Primary is.

The Spiderman Conundrum

It would seem my life is filled with mystery.  I still haven't figured out who loves my garbage.  And, while that mystery kind of creeps me out, this one has its own element of creepiness.

So here's the story.  I mow my line every Saturday.  I'm addicted to the ooohs and aaaahs my wife gives me when she sees the freshly cut grass.  (I've never done any sort of drugs, so I have to seek highs in other ways).

Every week before I mow the lawn I do a quick walk through and pick up any random garbage that has blown into the yard, or any items we may have left on the grass.  This week I found a particularly unique item.  See below:

I should note that while the above picture features Spider man on my kitchen table, he was not actually found on my kitchen table.  But that would greatly increase the creepiness.

So you're thinking to yourself, "What's so creepy about Spiderman?  Is it his radioactive blood?  Is it that he catches thieves just like flies?"

Those are excellent guesses, and if you were in my primary class at church I would totally find a way to spin it so that your guesses could be correct.  However, this isn't primary and you're not 3 years old.  So I'll just tell you straight, your guesses are wrong.

Think about how Spiderman arrived in the yard.  I can't think of an explanation for his arrival that isn't creepy.  Here's the scenario I've come up with.

Scene 1:  Two children are playing with their toys.
Child 1:  Look at my cool Spiderman toy, he's got radioactive blood.
Child 2:  That is really cool!  Especially since you're only 4 and you said "radioactive".
Child 1:   I know, right?
Child 2:  You know what we should do?  We should play with your Spiderman toy in the Stockett's backyard.
Child 1:  Why?
Child 2:  Because mysteriously lurking on other people's property is fun.  Plus they only have a fence on 2 sides of their yard so it should be easy to sneek around back.
Child 1:  That sounds like an incredible plan.

Scene 2: In my backyard
Child 1:  Look at my toy now.  He does whatever a spider can.
Child 2:  Quite phenomenal if I do say so myself.
Child 1:  Oh no!  The Stocketts are coming home.  Let's get out of here.
Child 2:  What about Spiderman?  Aren't you bringing him?
Child 1:  There's no time.  He'll have to save himself.

So, that's pretty much the only possible explanation for the appearance of Spiderman.  If your children are creepily playing with action figures in my backyard, tell them I appreciate the donation.  It's much better than stealing my garbage.