Master Pu Meets the Boneheads

Happy New Years! I have officially begun my resolution, but due to their high potential for failure I'm not telling what they are. If, by the end of the year I keep them I will reveal all then. In the meantime, enjoy the blog.

New Year's Eve was a great party at our house--we had every kind of snack food imaginable, 4 children doped up on sugar until they were literally vibrating across the floor, Wii competitions, Dance-Dance competitions, movies, and two cats. At midnight we had to blow horns outside until we were sure the neighbors (3 blocks away) knew what time it was and then called it quits. Good times, good times. After two weeks of completely non-structured vacation, it was real interesting to watch the boys get ready for school :)

As for the title, it all started when I took a stupid quiz on facebook which allowed me to discover my Egyptian God name. Cautiously I typed in my name and birthdate, and, after answering that blisteringly long questionnaire I was rewarded with my true God name. It is way cool and historically accurate! I can't wait to tell the fam!

Scene shift, Dad and the family having dinner.
"Well family, I want to share something with you that I discovered today, something that I think you need to remember."
"Do we get candy?" asked Alex.
"No, you get to call me by my Egyptian God name..." I paused to give it effect. The boys and Neish stopped eating, waiting for me to reveal what was sure to be the shocker of the year. With my best Tony the Tiger voice I boomed, "Reshpu, God of War and Thunder!"

The reaction was immediate and completely wrong. Amidst the gales of laughter, my four year-old said, "Dad's name is Thunder Poo!" Oh no. Game over. The damage was done. You see, once the word "poo" is mentioned in a house of 4 boys even the most sacred discussions are over. Not wanting to be outdone by a bunch of boys, my sophisticated delightful wife said, "Hey boys I got one. He's got a Master's Degree and his name is poo. Let's call him Master Pu!" Thanks honey, that's tender. In one fell swoop, my God-status had been reduced to poop. 'Sigh'

Now I told you that story to tell you this. Tonight at family home evening I was going to give a lesson on gratitude, a precursor to asking our boys to write thank-you notes to everyone who gave them a Christmas present. Well, as I was trying to get their attention, Alex the comic says, "Everyone listen! My dum-dum wants to speak!" This is how the rest of that went:
Marcus: Dum-ditty-dum-ditty dum-dum-dum!
Alex: Speak mighty dum dum!
Marcus: Dum-ditty-dum-ditty dum-dum-dum!
Neisha: He's not dumb, he's Master Pu!
Marcus: Dum-ditty-dum-ditty dum-dum-poo! Ha!


That's all the news I can bear to write so until next time, stay away from Facebook! It's evil!

Travels with Llamas

You know, occasionally I get really stressed and have to remind myself that it's not the destination that matters but the journey. Journey's got me to thinking about our travels as a family. And traveling as a family brought back lots of memories. Memories of Advil, Alieve, Tylenol, Benedryl, etc.

Actually I got to looking in my files and found this great example. Enjoy.

A couple of summers ago we went on a hike with my brother and his family, which proved not only to be cursed, but quite funny– In a cursed sort of way. The idea was simple enough: Hike to a waterfall. Scott, my brother, had a GPS unit and everything. It was only a mile or so. What could possibly go wrong? We reached the beginning of the hike, consulted the GPS, and headed up the trail. And when I say “up,” I mean up. 4 sneezing adults, 8 children and various biting insects climbing a 60-degree slope. Are we having fun yet? We eventually reached a level plateau and sat down on the side of a wide dirt trail just in time to see an SUV full of people drive by leaving us in a cloud of dust. I looked at Scott. Scott looked at his GPS unit. The kids asked, “Why are those people driving up the mountain?” Cursed. Scott thought we must be over a little too far west. His idea was to cut across the mountainside and then “we’d be there in no time!” We did. (Insert various complaints and whining here). Finally, after several hundred more consultations with the mystic GPS ball, we found. . . another road. Except this one was paved and there were lots of nice houses. Then the pest control guy drove by and we asked him where the waterfall was. He laughed. This was not a good sign. He told us we needed to go back down to the bottom and try again, as we had missed the trail. Double cursed. Another mile back down. The kids took great pleasure in saluting all the people who drove by and forgot all about the evil GPS unit when they discovered a pack of Llamas standing near a parking lot. It was quite a spectacle to see 8 kids dancing around shouting “Llama Llama, we found a Llama!” To bring this story to a close, approximately 5 hours, 3.5 miles, 3 band-aids, 47 salutes, 37 GPS insults, and 6 slightly harassed Llamas later, we arrived at the place we began and discovered that we started our hike from the wrong parking lot.
Now before you all laugh and say, “that fool deserves to be cursed” thus dooming 4 more generations of my family to weirdness, let me share some “cursed family outing” survival tips:

• When roaming in the heat, take some hard candy. It helps keep you from needing a drink all the time, and it helps your children forget that they think you’re an idiot for making them come.
• ANYTIME you say to yourself “Gee, what could possibly go wrong?” pull this story out and read it. Then take some Duct tape with you. I don’t know why, but they say it fixes everything.
• If your spouse thinks you dragged them out into the middle of nowhere on another hair-brained attempt at family togetherness, tell them they’re absolutely right. (This is for shock value) Then before they have a chance to lecture you about how you can’t follow a map to the floor and how you almost have the brains God gave dirt, hand them a $50 and say “go tell someone at Dillard’s.” This will keep them quiet. Then tell them that you’ll give them another $50 if they keep the kids happy.
• Take a lot of Band-aids. They don’t work worth beans, but the kids don’t know that. And if Band-aids don’t work, tell them that suffering builds character.
• Most of all, remember to enjoy the journey. The destination is important, but how you get there makes all the difference. Life is like that you know. It seems like it’s all uphill and just when you think your making progress someone else zooms by, leaving you in the dust. You get tired, scratched up, lost, your kids whine, and sometimes there’s even a Llama or two. But as a very wise person once said, “You never know when your making a memory” so have a little more fun with life. You’ll be happier in the end.

The Law

I have recently discovered a new Law. The impact this law has is enormous and should be considered in the same realm as the laws of physics and gravity. If you have children you will undoubtedly be effected by this law though you may not know that it has a name.

The law I'm referring to is the Law of Diminishing Utencils. In order to understand how this law works, let me explain first Johnson's First Law of Excessive Utencil Usage which states: A child will use utencils in direct porportion to the number of utencils owned multipled by 5. Allow me to explain...

You buy utencils enough to service 12 people. That's 12 spoons, 12 larger spoons, 12 forks, 12 larger forks, and 12 knives, plus 12 bowls, and 12 plates. That's 84 pieces of serving hardware. Right. Add to that enough cups to serve 23 people and you have 107 total pieces of serving hardware. Now, add to the equation 4 children. Given the current number of serving pieces, that's 29.75pieces of silverware/cups/plates etc. per child. A parent with children will tell you that 26.75 pieces of silverware/cups/plates per child is not enough. Why?

I once did an experiment at my house to determine the answer to that question. At 8am all the silverware was in the drawer and all the cups and bowls, etc. were in the cupboard. (this was when we had 83 pieces of silverware, more on that later). For Breakfast, the kids all ate cereal. Normally this would be 4 spoons, 4 bowls, 4 cups right? Wrong. Marcus used two spoons and the other kids didn't use their spoons at all but threw them in the sink anyway so technically that counted as being used. Then they all went for seconds, but realizing they had already put their bowls and spoons and cups in the sink got more. Add to that 1 more cup. 4 to be used for milk, and one more for Parker who doesn't like to mix milk and water. Breakfast total: 26.

Between 8 and 12, another 9 cups went in the sink because each child got two drinks and Parker had 3: 2 waters, one milk. Lunch time brought out 5 plates, 4 forks, and 4 cups. Marcus knocked his first plate on the ground. Snack/Lunch Total: 23

At some point between 12 and 5pm the last 5 cups got used along with 6 "other" cups. At our house, "other" could mean mugs, thermos's, bowls, funnels, jars, anything that can hold liquid. 8 more plates were used because they all ate chicken nuggets at snack time and chips, and then had more plates later when they wanted more nuggets. Can't use the old one cause it's dirty right?

And finally at dinner time at another 4 of everything. By this time the dishwasher was done so the boys happily used another 6 or 7 cups getting drinks of water (and milk) before bed. Evening Totals: 46

Grand Total: 95

"But wait!" you say. "95 is less than 107. That should be enough." Ah, but you forget my young padowan, the Law of Diminishing Utencils! This law states: The amount of utencils owned will decrease at an increased rate in correlation to the number of children living in the home. We have 4. That means that on any given day, we will lose 13 pieces utencils. For example, yesterday I loaded the dishwasher with nearly 20 forks. After they were clean, I put them back into the drawer. All 20 of them (remember that number). A few hours later I wanted a fork, opened the drawer and there were two forks. Just two. I looked in the sink. No forks. I looked in the dishwasher. No forks. I asked my 4 children, "Have you guys used any forks?" This is what they said:
Josh: "Parker used some."
Parker: "No I didn't! You did!"
Josh: "No I didn't Parker, you used one to stab ants."
Parker "That was Alex!"
Alex: "It was not, it was a beetle."
Josh: "Well Parker still used some"
Parker: "Yeah, to eat chicken nuggets"
Marcus: "I like forks! Can I have skittles?"

It kind of deteriorated form there so I left the room and continued my search. I did manage to find some here and there and by the end of the day we managed to scrape enough together to have dinner. So the morale of this story is to remember to support the Global Warming movement and buy lots of paper plates and plastic utencils.

Two Vacations and It's All in the Attitude

A very stiff and sore "hello" from Bonehead Land! Why am I stiff and sore? Because we've spent the last two days on Lake Powell with Scott "Sharky", his wunderclan, and his boat the Chum Bucket. We had a lot of fun. Hopefully pics will follow. Josh, Neisha, and I all learned how to wakeboard and Josh and I learned what a rug must feel like when you beat it with a stick. Allow me to Elucidate.

Scott bought a tube and told us "this boat really makes a great wake for tubing. I can even fill up some ballast tanks on board to make it bigger!" Well, who can ignore that kind of boyish glee? Not us for sure so out we went in turns, like little sheep fish to the slaughter. Scott starts going around in circles creating waves that would sink a battleship, and then, just when Josh or I was behind one of his Tscott Tsunami's he turned the boat straight and gunned it, effectively launching us straight up in the air. Here's the fun part: Gravity. As we came down we landed on another upwards traveling wave. Smack! Repeat ad nauseum. Literally. Kristen and Christopher also took a sound beating and Kristen took the height record, performing a twisted gainer with a face plant. Cliff Diving was great too, except for all the kids making fun of me for being scared of heights. Not cool.

Our other little vacation was to the Grand Canyon, big hole of the west. Mark and his clan came down and spent a couple of days here. The canyon was really beautiful except (Mark decided) it must have been half off for stinky people day. He was right! It was like being down wind of a turkey farm, a pig farm, a cow farm, and a used diaper heap all in one! Lot of French people there too...

Well anyway, we took a lot of pics and had a great time. On the way home we got stuck behind an accident which kept us stuck for two hours, but in true Johnson style we all got out and played catch. It was really great to see them.

In other news, Parker has once again shown us the power of a good attitude. Tonight we had pizza for dinner and it was awful. Truly some of the worst we've ever had. And as everyone started complaining about it Parker piped up and said, "Well, we can at least be grateful that it's food and not poop," and the laughter that followed more than made up for the pizza.

That's about it from the desk here at Bonehead central, so until next time be grateful for food. It could be worse.

The PTG and the Crux of Therapy

Well, it's been a great few weeks here at the Bonehead Farm. We recently went to the DCI performance in Ogden, UT and for those of you not familiar with it I've included a link to a video you can watch. The boys were mesmerized for nearly 3 hours and I think it's safe to say that they all want to play brass or percussion instruments. Marcus especially liked the performances and vomited profuse amounts of praise. Ahem.

Speaking of Marcus, he has learned how to be polite when saying "No" (which happens a lot). Now, instead of just yelling "NO!" he yells, "No Sir!" Well, it ain't perfect but what're ya gonna do? He is learning new words everyday. Yesterday's word was "Tremendous." I took a big bite of apple in front of him and he yelled "Wow! That was tremendous!" Not sure where he learned it, but ok we can deal with that. Marcus has also entered the PTG, that mystical path which a young man must travel before reaching the noble position of "big boy" at the Johnson house. The PTG, or Potty Training Gauntlet has always held a place of trepidation and anxiety at our house and now that we're in it, there's no going back. Ugh. Thankfully he's learning fast although he hasn't quite figured out what to do with poo when it comes around. Usually he'll come and ask us which, as you might guess is the makings for a fecal fiasco.

The other boys are doing great as you can see from the pix. They are enjoying every last second of summer on the trampoline and digging in our huge pile of dirt which they have named "Skull Mountain" after digging a couple of holes in one side that eerily resemble a real skeleton head. BTW, how much dirt do you put in a grave? A skele-ton. Get it? I made that up last night.

The last part of today's title deals with what I do. You learn in grad school many of the intricate processes that combine to create change in a persons' life. A person comes in at a point of conflict in their life and our job is to help them get past it, to make the needed change in order to have a more fulfilling future. In layman's terms we sell change. But the path is sometimes delicate and hard to follow. There are times when it isn't clear where to go or what to say. Therefore I have included this short video from Bob Newhart that demonstrates in a clear manner what so many therapists long to say to their clients. Follow the link here: http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE

And that is the news from Bonehead Central so until next time, keep smiling. People will wonder what you're up to.

Home Sweet Home

Well, it's done. We're in. Game over, man. Our ship has finally arrived. And so on, and so on. Our home is nearly complete and although getting from the front door to the kitchen is like a maze, we are totally happy about it.

You know, a while back I wrote about what I learned from moving. Back then this is what I said:

#1 Don't.

#2 If you absolutely must move, don't take your cat.

#3 Especially if it stinks.

#4 When you tell the people who come to help pack the truck "just make it fit", some wonderful surprises are going to come about. I still can't figure out how to put my computer desk back together.

#5 Guys who move refrigerators don't communicate very well.

#6 Don't have a child the week before.

#7 Being stuck in a van with 4 young children and a nervous mother-in-law may require therapy.

I would like to offer you one piece of moving advice. Pianos are evil. I also want to discover the correlation between being a Mormon and owning a 5000lb. piano. I'm not sure why it is, but it seems to be a hidden doctrine that says "In order to make it to heaven you must own an insanely heavy piano that was owned by someone who lived a long time ago and who, consequently, bought the piano from a company that handmade their pianos using steel, led, and granite. Said piano must have enough sentimental value to keep you from making the rational decision to buy a dog instead." The people that helped us move discovered Saturday that "well-built" is hidden code for "this piano is your worst nightmare". Suffice it to say, the piano is still alive, Neisha is happy, and the next Elders Quorum activity will be held at the Chiropractor's office.

Well now, that WAS enlightening! Even so, I have been blessed to learn a few more gems of wisdom that I would like to share...

To start, let me give you an update on the insanely heavy piano or as we (the movers) affectionately named it "The Herninator". It truly has become the stuff of legend. Several people who helped us move came inside, saw it growling in the corner and said "I've heard about this piano." I'm telling you, it did not want to be moved. I don't know how it managed it, but it made itself heavier and wider and I think it even bit someone. But 3 hours later the Herninator was wrestled into its final resting place (don't worry it's in the house) and Neisha played Hymns to pacify it. As for the rest of what I learned:

#8 Unpacking toys which have been gone for 6 months is like Christmas.

#9 Do it twice a year and you won't have to buy Christmas presents ever again.

#10 Never trust someone to move your fridge who's favorite phrase is, "Did I just hit something?"

#11 Hiring someone to fix drywall is expensive.

Really the move went fine. Marcus has been way excited to get boxes in his room even though it's only food storage. they're "his" boxes and that makes them great. And while we're on the topic of food storage let me just say that creating a bed frame out of buckets of wheat will make your bed over 5 ft. tall. We don't even need to kneel down to say our prayers!

This next week we'll finish up the house. Stucco, sidewalk, driveway, and then I get to start landscaping! That's about it from the desk here at Bonehead Central so until next time, encourage your kids to play the flute!

Introduction

As I looked up the definition to “Bonehead” I was struck by the fact that the word showed up in 1909. I’ve done a fair amount of family ancestry and I’ve never found anyone in my line that knew Webster. Guess I’ll have to check into my wife’s line. In any case, coming up with a title for this book took some thinking. And as you can see, it didn’t take very much.
The Bonehead News started out in 1999 as a family newsletter, outlining life in the great state of New Hampshire. From there it just sort of morphed into a compilation of weirdness that chronicles the life of two parents raising four aliens and trying to pretend that we are normal when we go out to eat.
Seriously, being a parent has been the greatest joy of my life. It has been wisely said that the most important work we will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes, and that has proven to be true over and over again. It is especially true when your children discover where mommy hides her lipstick and they paint pictures for you on the walls and on the baby, who, after being assailed by “Mocha Freeze” and “Raisin Berry” looks like some sort of freaky circus leprechaun. I’m not exactly sure that’s what President Lee meant but hey; when you’re right you’re right.
Being a parent is hard work. When my wife and I got married in 1995 we had no idea how much work went in to being a parent, nor did we know the joy that children could bring to our lives. I can honestly say that my greatest happiness has come from hearing the word “Dad”. Whether it’s “Dad will you read me a story?” or “Dad do you want to play a game with me” or “Dad do you want to go to the store and get candy?” I never tire of hearing that word. I know there will come a time when my kids will be embarrassed to admit that they’re related to me so I want to make sure that I never turn down an opportunity to be with them while they are young. That’s not to say that I don’t feel other things when I hear the word “Dad”. For instance, when I hear “Dad, Marcus (the baby) is throwing cat litter again”, I feel panicked and when I hear “Dad remember that nice cabinet that you built for mom?” I feel a sudden spike of father angst. Sometimes my kids play jokes on me, just to see what I’ll do. They think its great fun. Like the time they came running around the side of the house yelling to me that someone had thrown a baseball at our van and cracked the windshield. They watched me take off running full tilt toward the front of the house with absolute glee. Once I saw the fake baseball stuck to the windshield I knew I’d been shanghaied and my 5 year old said, “Wow Dad, you run really fast.” That day I felt angry. And I felt that someday revenge would be mine… (Insert evil laugh here)
What follows is not a story, nor is it book of sagely advice from a wizened father unless you’d consider “Lessons I’ve learned from scary movies” or “Feeding your baby is like chasing a greased pig” sagely. No, It is simply a collection of tales about my unusual family and the importance of having fun with life.