Father's Day 2009 at the Barrington Home

Great Father's Day at our home on June 21, 2009. All but our son in Florida and Daughter in California were there. We didn't get pictures of our cute little Cade but the following are of the other wonderful grandchildren we have (and the parents are okay too!)

Construction Pictures - New Basement

The following are images of work done in the basement, February 2009.

Tyson begins w/wallpaper ---- Breaking down the wall -------Tyson in the dust

The wall before it comes down--- New room is born----- Looking across the room(s)

New paint in the room--------Furnishings come in------ Last look before bar installation

Ent. center around the TV------new room w/light----------new bar and lihgt

--Sorry we don't have pictures of David, Shawn, and Dad struggling with the new furniture coming in the bedroom window upstairs, then down the stairs and into the basement. We could not have done it without their help!!

We have had a number of visitors during the construction and work -- two of the most recent are here:

Bridger & Ian - March 1, 2009

February 2009 Update

The pressure of commitments, the pace of life, and just too little time has prevented recent updates to this blog. Sorry!

Critical events in the Barrington PG home since late November (our last posting):

December -- little Ian Wadley was born and joined the family.

Christmas: wonderful family experience with our annual Family Getaway -- we played Deal or No Deal complete with an electronic game board (thanks to Dustin) and prizes worth dollars (congrats to Tyson and Mckenna who won the biggest prizes); on Christmas eve we had a fantastic nativity re-enactment complete with our own little stable (see pics below).

January: Shanell & Ryan's baby, Bridger Byrd was born as our #5 child gave birth to our #5 grandchild. Yahoo!!

February 4th was a big day for the Barringtons -- Elder Riley J. Barrington entered the MTC as a full time missionary assigned to serve in the Florida Ft. Lauderdale Mission, Spanish speaking. He will be there until April when he goes to Florida to begin teaching and serving.

Mid-February: a remodeling project in the basement began, with the removal of the main wall between the family room and the game/sewing room. The end objective is to create a bigger room for family gatherings. When completed (later this week) it will include new lights, a new counter, new entertainment center, as well as newly painted and conditioned walls (even more electrical outlets have been added). It will be a welcomed change for the house (and mom is anxious to get all this mess cleaned up -- there is dust everywhere!).

Thanks especially to Shawn and David who helped remove a bedroom window, and then bring in some of the big furniture destined for the basement, but which temporarily is being stored in the mid-level bedroom. We could not have done it without their help.

We will post a few construction pictures when the project is finished later this week.

More on Trip to Europe

Amy has been posting about our current travels in South America (be sure to look there), so before I (Dad) share my own insights on Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, I want to respond to the request for more photos of the Germany trip we went on in October.

1st from Tyson's file of interesting vehicles which he collected -a covered motorcyle, then a picture of the boys after the girls hit us with a cucumber facial (thanks to Janice Riggs), and a pic of Moritz with his dog Nemo, and Tyson -- they had a lot of fun together, especially throwing sticks and having the dog race after them.

Next, we have pictures of our boat tour of Hamburg Harbor, sitting on the side of the Alster Lake near the middle of Hamburg, and a shot of the boat which took us across the harbor to the professional theatre to view The Lion King -- a fabulous production with amazing sets, costumes, and music (sung in German, but we knew the gist of the story so it was okay).

Next, a few shots of the small town of Blankenese, which we visited on a short trip away from Hamburg. On a longer trip, to the East Germany city of Saaleck, we saw some great sights, like the photo below of the city, taken from a castle on the hill above, and of the kids at a lion monument also above the town on that ridge.

As noted earlier, we visited Leipzig and Weimar, old Germany cities with tremendous histories. The pics below are from those cities. First us with our good friend Johann Sebastian Bach, who was an organist and composer in the church behind. Then a shot of the fascinating old style architecture in Leipzig; finally a shot of the famous German writer & politician's home, that of Johann Goethe.

Hope you all enjoy these sights of Germany.

Busy Fall Filled with Travel

To chronologically update our history we have two busy months to review -- October's exciting trip to Germany, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Ireland, and November's exploits to Argentina, Uruguay, and (in another week) Paraguay. Perhaps here we should review the first, and later (in a week or so) give a review of the latter.

EUROPE 2008

In October Mom, Dad, and Tyson (as a surprise no one over there knew about) flew from Salt Lake City to Paris, to Hamburg, Germany to spend 10 great days with Moritz and his family -- Maria, Julia, his father, Willi, and his mother, Doris. We also saw Hecki and met his mother. Among the many things we did, we: walked along the River Elbe, went to a German production of "The Lion King", rode bicycles around town, visited the river-side city of Blankenese, went to Mortiz' school, and learned a lot about German history.

We had an amazing experience for several days as we traveled to Saaleck, Germany, to the Muller-Preisser family's home there, in that once-Eastern Germany city. There along the Saale River we had a great time visiting castles, hiking mountains, visiting ancient Abbey's, and making side trips to Leipzig (home of Johann Sebastian Bach) and Weimar (important location for Johan Wolfgang Goethe). The spare time was taken playing card games, soccer (European football), and having long talks.

After a great German time, we had to leave and do some work for BYU. We flew to Manchester, England, and visited 2 cities of Wales, 3 cities of England, flew to Belfast, and went to 5 more cities of Ireland. Driving on the left side of the road resulted in many varied and interesting experiences -- but thank goodness for a GPS machine that mostly get us where we needed to go. We visited the north coast of Ireland -- Giant's Causeway it is called, and there were practically blown away by a fierce wind (see photo below). We also visited Bunratty Castle near Limerick, Ireland. It was mostly work for me (BYU Singers Tour), and mom and Tyson patiently endured the meetings and work, mingled with a few fun stops. We flew home just in time for Halloween.

During our trip Riley's mission call came, to serve in the Fl. Ft. Lauderdale Spanish speaking mission. We were thrilled with his call to serve and know he'll have a great experience.

For now this is just to give a few ideas of our October -- in word and picture. More to come later on the South American advance with Amy and me.

Summer Ends; School Begins

As we come to the end of August we reflect on a very busy summer -- trips, visitors, saying goodbye to Moritz & his sisters who came to visit, service for our ward goal of 1,000 hours of service this summer, BYU Education Week classes, and harvesting a garden. Mom has been very pleased with her flowers and gardens -- as always she gives a little tender loving care to these plants almost every morning, and it shows!

Our garden has grown well -- in most areas -- and the result has been some delicious corn on the cob - but only in limited quantities. It seems we have learned a lesson: you can't plant corn too close together or the corn will only grow on one side, and not on the inside (only puny little ones on the inside). The only thing we really have to show on the other side of the corn patch is a pumpkin, which has crept in from that side to avoid being eaten by the birds. Pumpkins are another item we are in short supply of -- only two, it appears after last years gigantic pumpkins. What did we do wrong?

We have done very well with tomatoes, peppers, and onions, which have been combined together for several great batches of salsa for another year. It has been one party after another as neighbors and family members have taken their turn cutting, dicing, crying, cooking, and canning salsa for the coming year. Some of our onions are nothing short of huge. Later we will see if the carrots, and potatoes do as well, but we have high hopes. More to be said about the zuchinni below. Here's pictures of the garden:

The Great Zuchinni Race

On Saturday we realized that our out-of-control zuchinni plants had gotten out of hand, and the result was 5 very large, long, un-eatable zuchinni that just cried out to us that they needed some attention. So with Tyson leading the charge, first he and then later Shawn, David, Mckenna, Josh, and even Dad started slicing and creating the family zuchinni boats for a race in the canal later that day. Mom and Sally were busy with salsa, but the creative juices were flowing out in the garage (and even some scientific testing took place in the bathtub).

After the "water craft" were ready, complete with flags, decorations, and names (dad's was called the "albatross" and Shawn's was the "Flying Dutchman") it was time for racers to take your marks!

And then, on the Murdock Canal in Pleasant Grove, it was ready, set, go!!

Alissa assisted in the launching, and the rapidly moving water soon had the fleet on its way. Shawn's boat led at first, but then David's and Dad's slowly overtook it. Tyson's didn't fully get off as it should, but continued the race as well. Unfortunately we don't know whose boat actually won, since we only watched them float down around the first 2 bends and then let them go on without us. David would say his was ahead....Shawn's and Dad's were perhaps closing in, and Tyson's was further behind since it was removed from the water, re-fitted, and then placed in again. But in our book, everyone was a winner!

Thanks to Sally as photographer, mom for all the encouragement, Alissa for the launch, and YOU for reading this blog!!

High Speed Cross Country Transit

July 27, 2008 Kansas City, MO

In the past days we have turned the eastern corner of our trip and headed back into the Midwest. In one day we went from Washington DC to Dayton, Ohio. The next day we stopped in Indianapolis, Indiana, & then drove into Missouri, visiting St. Louis and spending the night in Hannibal, on the Mississippi River. Yesterday we were in Nauvoo (and dad in Iowa for a meeting), and spent last night in Keokuk, Iowa. Today we traveled across Missouri to Kansas City, MO, on the edge next to Kansas (it is less than 2 miles away).


We have seen amazing sights across the USA: thick forests, expansive bridges, city skylines in the distance, wide multi-laned freeways and dirt roads, fireflies in Washington DC, dead skunks in Illinois, bulging rivers running over their banks and forever rolling hills of the midwest. Perhaps the most significant was the tie-up-Tyson episode in tonight's hotel room. A sight to behold.


Comments along the way (can you guess who said these):

"This is going to get messy, really messy!!!"
"Are your seat belts on??"
"Come on you meow mix"
"Let's have fun!" "Play with me!"
"Does our hotel have a swimming pool?"
"Seat belt check!!"
"I'm hungry!"
"Seriously, guys, we need water" "I need water, or I'll die!"
"I missed the turn; we'll have to turn around"
"Never eat soggy waffles"
"Dad! Slow down!"
"Dad, how long will it take to get to our hotel?"
"I'm hungry (again)"
"I've got another text message!"
(in the middle of all this, we missed hearing, at least once: "Moritz!!! stop touching me!!")

In Washington DC we saw the White House and the Smithsonian Institute and the boys just had to get an FBI t-shirt (at the Pentagon we checked out the parking lot, but didn't go in; we drove past the CIA headquarters, too). Thursday we didn't get to our hotel until 10:30 pm (road problems 3 times along the almost 500 mile trip that afternoon). In St. Louis dad's meeting turned out to be right next to the St. Louis Temple -- beautiful building on a hill overlooking the freeway. In Hannibal, MO we saw Mark Twain's home, and Becky Thatcher's home. Tyson practically got run over by a loonngggg train coming through. Mom and Riley climbed to a lighthouse, while Dad and Tyson hucked rocks into the Mississippi River in memory of Huckelberry Finn.

Saturday we had a great time in Nauvoo -- pioneer games -- especially "graces" (Tyson's favorite), a walk down the "Trail of Hope" to the river, special stage show in the visitor's center, t-shirts and souvenirs, Nauvoo Temple, checkers (Riley blasted his dad twice), a puppet show, and the evening ended with the marvelous Nauvoo Pageant -- friendly, warm, colorful, informative, musical -- a great event to visit which made us proud of our pioneer heritage and the early days of the Restoration of the gospel.



Today we attended church with the Keokuk IA Branch, and then drove across Missouri. It has been a day for scriptures, general conference talks, naps (not for the driver, however), and even a Chinese buffet....and when we arrived -- 99 degree weather.

After we visit Kansas tomorrow, we will have been to 15 states, 1 province of Canada, and the District of Columbia, in 13 days and will have traveled more than 3,300 miles!