Reid Richards aka Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four makes gray hair pretty cool with those racing stripes running right above his ears.  I’ve noticed that I’m getting more and more gray hair, but not like Mr. Fantastic.  My gray hairs make racing stripes on the sides of my NECK!  I posted on Facebook that I was getting gray hair and many people commented that it was the kids that were aging me.  I think that the stress that comes with Fatherhood and adult life can cause gray hair, but it can also keep me young.  Here is my evidence that I am actually a Seasoned Youth!

The Duct Tape Bandits rummage through the recycle bin for resource to manufacture Intergalactic Cruisers.

Who can argue with a boy that wants to dress up the Snow White costume with a pirate hat?

  What are you going to do with a boy that dresses as Tinkerbell and goes out to fly on the trampoline?  Maybe I’m going gray from playing with all these kids!

We decided to participate in a church activity to make a little commercial with a scripture message. The scripture that we chose if from the first part of the Book of Mormon where the prophet Lehi and his family were traveling in the wilderness leaving Jerusalem.  We decided that we had plenty of people in the house to recreate this ancient exodus.

Due to hardships in their families, of my wife’s sisters and their children have moved in with us. There are currently 17 people living in my house and this video is a snapshot from a day in MY life. Heaven help us….

I came home to a sad little girl yesterday.  When I found out that she was crying because she sad that I was selling the Bandit, I decided to let her explain in her own words.

Dear Post Cereal,

I would like to point out a gross misrepresentation on the packaging of your cereal Honey Bunches of Oats.  There is a large red banner across the top of the box with the claim that the cereal is “Family Size”.  I haven’t really seen any other markings on the box to define the size of a family but I have to tell you, it doesn’t work for my family.  You see, my wife and I have SIX children, but we are also helping out with my wife’s sisters.  One sister has moved in with us from Indiana with her SIX children and the other has come from Utah with ONE child.  This brings our grand total to SEVENTEEN people in our FAMILY.  Our newborn won’t be eating any solid foods for a while but as you can see in the photo below, we’ve got lots of mouths to feed.

Please keep us in mind as you prepare your products that are created and designated as “Family Size”.  If you would like to contact us to test out any of these “Family Size” products we would be more than happy to give you a full survey of consumption and general level of satisfaction.

Thank you,

Spencer L. Brinkerhoff III and the B-17s

Yup, I had a birthday.  I decided for my cake this year that I would like to have warm brownies and vanilla bean ice cream, with crushed sugar cones and chocolate syrup.  mmmmmmm :]

There were a couple of problems though.  It was hard to get all the candles lit without burning my hands.  Then, when I blew out the candles, we had to open up the doors and turn on the fans so that the smoke detector wouldn’t go off!

I think that this photo says it all.

Today is the baby’s due date.  We don’t mind that she came early, really.  About 1 1/2 weeks ago at the doctor appointment my wife was told that there wasn’t much progress and that the baby wouldn’t be born till her due date or maybe not until October.  My poor wife was crushed!  She has been so uncomfortable and has been working so hard to prepare for the baby.  This was some bad news.

Well, the Sunday following that appointment she started having some major contractions.  They were timed close enough that she woke me up and told me to get ready to go.  We got ready, and she took a shower and they all stopped.  Again, she was crushed.

She went to the doctor on Monday and they told her the same thing as last time.  No real changes, the baby was on track for the due date and maybe even later.  CRUSHED!!!!

I noticed late Tuesday afternoon that she was  in a really good mood.  I asked her what was going on and she said with a grin, “I’m having contractions!”  Odd that so much pain and discomfort can make someone so happy.  We put the kids to bed at 8:00 PM, called over a friend, went to the hospital and the baby came just before midnight. 

I’m sure that we’ve can all understand the sound reasoning behind the phrase “Measure Twice, Cut Once”.  I mean, it makes perfect sense!  You can only cut a piece of wood to the correct length one time.  So I am thankful and grateful for the forgiving nature of dirt.  The Trampoline was sitting where we wanted the hole.  So I moved I marked the area that the trampoline covered, moved it out of the way and started digging.  We decided that we wanted to have a block retaining wall in the hole.  So we turned the trampoline upside down, put it over the hole, and then put some block around it to make sure the hole was big enough.  It wasn’t so I dug it a bit more.

We were able to get some block from my brother-in-law and it all got moved in.  The Block didn’t come all the way up to the ground level, so when it started raining, we had some errosion.  Not a huge problem compaired to the fact that the block that we got was bigger than the block we used to measure the hole with. :S

So, it’s time to dig some more.  I’m glad that it only gets to be about 100 degrees these days.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that digging holes for a trampoline in not my specialty….BUT IT WILL BE!! 

My 2 year old son wanted to play with some of the new Galactic Heroes sets.  We had some old ones in there too, but I really didn’t want him to lose Darth Vader’s helmet (not to mention that the box clearly states the this toy has a choking hazard and is meat for ages 3+).  So I took the helmet aside and put it with our little R4-P17 that came to us with two left feet (AND it can’t dance!).  I was looking for someplace to put the helmet down and found the perfect spot.

And thus was born R4-V8r (pronounced ARE-Four VADER).

…and then I couldn’t get up in the morning.  My poor girl tried to sneak into our bed last night.  She snuggled up to my wife and fell asleep on the edge of the bed.  I was awoken when she rolled out of bed and hit her head.  We snuggled up and made sure she felt better and then I took her back to bed when she was sound asleep.  It wasn’t until this morning that we noticed the eye!  poor girl.

With everything that has been happening, we ended up missing out on 2 of our birthday breakfasts so we made up for it with our third one.  So I made some waffles, cut some fresh strawberries and topped it off with whipped cream, oh and a ton of kids!