Hidily-ho blogareenos! It's me, Ben. Remember me? That guy who used to blog occasionally? Well, I'm back, reporting to you live from...get ready...the same house we've lived in for the past 5.5 years. Yeah, we never ended up moving, unless you count into Alyssa's parents' basement for three months to keep the house clean for prospective buyers. Alas, they never took the bait. Probably they discovered the rain gutter I shoved under the back porch after we couldn't get it reattached to the roof. Actually, the biggest turn-off for buyers was (seriously) the fact that the house had "too many stairs." Really. They could not tell this from the photos and the fact that the description of the house said "Tri-level." Sigh. If these are the kind of people running the world today, humanity is doomed.
Anyway, we might have tried longer to sell the house, but we ran into a small conflict. By which I mean, a 2-year-old conflict with excellent rhythm currently living in an orphanage in Shan Wei City, China. If you haven't picked up on what I'm referring to here, here is a photo that might shed some light on the subject:
Yeah, we're adopting again. I think the monkey pajamas pretty much seal the deal for us. Her Chinese name is "Shan Wei Xing," but we're planning to call her "Delaina Shanwei Green." She turned two on August 16th, so she's almost exactly two years younger than Ting-Ting. We're moving along in the adoption process but haven't done our home study yet, which is the whole reason we decided not to move (since you need to have a...whaddaya call those things...oh yeah, a home...in order to have a home study).
It being four months since my last post, plenty has happened in the meantime. Two family vacations, for starters, one to Yellowstone with Alyssa's family and one to Bear Lake with mine. The Yellowstone trip boasted such life-altering experiences as me destroying our camera by taking a swim in a river with it in my pocket, as well as almost dying in said river when we decided to float down a hundred-yard stretch of it without life jackets because some guys told us to. Seriously. We also saw about half a million bison, a bear, mountain sheep, and a freaking moose and its baby, which were just chilling on an island we passed as we were rafting; sadly, everyone on our trip with a (functional) camera was in the other raft, and by the time they reached the island, the moose were gone Johnson, as my dad would say because he's my dad. On top of all that, we saw and smelled enough geothermal wonders to give us all supervolcano nightmares for the rest of our days. Yay!
For the Bear Lake trip, we stayed in a solar-powered cottage belonging to a definite "live off the land"-type dude who raises goats, rabbits, and 150 chickens (you never really realize how bad chickens smell until you're staring down 150 of them and the wind picks up) and uses the Mittleider gardening method to produce goji berries, whatever those are. You know, the kind of guy who looks Mother Nature square in the eye and then gives her a wedgie. Unsurprisingly, this dude and my dad became best chums. As for our activities in Bear Lake, we spent a few days doing boat-type stuff like kayaking and, umm, boating. Alyssa tried water-skiing for the first time and got up on her sixth try and actually stayed up. Go Sweetcheeks go. I tried it again myself for the first time since The Incident 15 years ago (if you don't know about The Incident, don't worry about it), but the skis kept getting sucked right off my feet so I gave up after about three tries. Baby steps, Beeners, baby steps. As for Ting-Ting, she made her claim to fame by driving the boat. Okay, just steering, but it was honestly quite impressive. We also visited Minnetonka Cave, enjoyed lovely raspberry shakes, and played a game that was pretty much like Apples 2 Apples if it had been designed by Nazi perverts. But my mom played too so I don't feel too bad. That's the general rule for these kinds of things.
I am sure plenty of other happenings happened of late, but, at the moment, I don't care. So here's some pictures of Yellowstone, taken by the lovely Laura and Eric on account of the lovely Ben and Alyssa didn't have a (functional) camera for the majority of the trip. (Bear Lake pictures coming soon, I hope.)
By the way I just realized this is my 100th blog post. So Happy Blogday to all o' dang yall. May we all live to enjoy 100 more. (Which may not be until I'm in my sixties, considering how long it's been taking me to get around to writing these things.)
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