Wild Imaginations

"Mom, the boys are playing stupid games.

Right now they are pretending their parents are dead 

and they're monkeys with super powers 

who are trying to break into a city. 

Booooring!"

She shook her head in disappointment and walked away muttering,

"Why can't they do something fun, like play with dolls?

Oh the complaints I hear from Sarah during the long days of summer.

Daniel certainly looks full of mischief- his head is brimming with schemes!

Joke Journal- Sarah

Sarah started interjecting humor into her conversations lately. It's hilarious. It's been more and more entertaining to talk to her...she's just getting generally more funny, and she knows it. 


Yesterday the children were talking with Nathan about age and maturity, and how some 
people act much older than they really are, etc.

Sarah: How old would you think I am, Dad?
Nathan: Well, you're pretty mature...so I'd say 22.
Sarah (throwing her hands in the air with mock horror): Twenty-TWO?! What happened 
to my childhood?!

Greek Profanity

Daniel wanted to say an expletive. He knew he isn't allowed to swear in English, so he tried Greek instead: Aphrodite!

Joke Journal Entries

Matthew and Daniel were playing pretend and were both dressed up as Batman. I was working outside when Matthew marched across the driveway announcing in a very authoritative voice,

"Make way! Batman's looking for his tricycle!"


Background- Sarah never wears pants. Ever.

Daniel is taunting Sarah, "Liar, liar, skirt on fire!"


Daniel was drinking some soda pop, and giggled. He exclaimed to Matthew, 

"I love drinking pop because it feels like popcorn is popping in my stomach!"


Nathan was snoring, so I gently jostled him. He replied, "I'm snoring? What fun and great games!" Then he promptly fell asleep. 

Joke Journal entry

Matthew and Daniel were in a tussle over a black permanent marker. In the tussle, the lid came off and the marker left a 2 inch vertical mark on Matthew's forehead. In great agitation, Matthew ran to the mirror to inspect the damage. From the other room I heard him exclaim in disbelief: "Oh NO! I'm a human piggy-bank!"

Joke Journal entries

Matthew and Daniel were playing pretend and were both dressed up as Batman. I was working outside when Matthew marched across the driveway announcing in a very authoritative voice, "Make way! Batman's looking for his tricycle!"

Daniel was drinking some soda pop, and giggled. He exclaimed to Matthew, "I love drinking pop because it feels like popcorn is popping in my stomach!"

Matthew and Sarah were discussing anatomical functions. Sarah said, "I wish we made a different sound when we swallowed, instead of 'glug'."
Matthew immediately replied, "Yeah! We could swallow and go 'Dippity-dop, do-wah-wah, Doopy-doopy-doo, (and here he went off singing for some time)."
Sarah exclaimed, "That would be so much easier than actually singing. We could just swallow over and over again!"

Daniel's mask of flames. 

Joke Journal entries

"Mommy, there's no ice cream on the moon. There's really not."- Deep thoughts by Daniel Kingsley.

Matthew asked me, "Mom, what does 'sexy' mean?" After a long and somewhat detailed explanation, he said in exasperation, "That doesn't make sense! Why would they put that on a box?!" It turns out he was looking at a random box label that said '6C'. 

Matthew ran into my bathroom to see his reflection int he mirror. His hair was spiky-looking. He sighed in frustration and said, "Ug, I don't want 'cool boy' hair!" Quickly combing his hair into a tidy side part and slicking it down a bit, he said with satisfaction, "Nice! Now I have 'smart-boy' hair!"

I was leading the music for the Primary children on Sunday. We were singing "I'm so Glad When Daddy Comes Home", which is a song with lots of hand actions. The children were watching me closely and copying my every move. In the middle of the song, I drew a complete blank on the lyrics and stood there with my mouth open in shock for a moment. The entire room of 30 children all imitated me and sat with open mouths for a long time while the piano music moved on without us. 

Video Games

Matthew was busy explaining a video game to Nathan. 

M- "You walk around shotting people and (rambles on about other details....)"

N- "Matthew, we don't want you to play games where you shoot people."

M- "I mean, you don't shoot them with bullets. You just point at people, then this blue stuff flies over to them and...they...faint?"

Nice try bucko.

Joke Journal entry

Daniel- "Mom, why do you always ask me to pick up all the shoes?"
Mom- "Because you are so good at it."
Daniel- "Clever, Mom. Very clever."

At a friend's house, whose son is named Christopher, Daniel yells, "Christopher, I love you so much, so you're in my dictionary!"

Joke Journal entry

 This is Daniel's version of the classic Primary song. He takes big artistic liberties, but this is the way he sings it every time:

Book of Mormon stories that my teacher bought for me.
Long ago the Lamanites came walking across the sea.
Given this land, this old land, Righteously!

Joke Journal entry

We overheard this conversation between Matthew and Daniel-

M- Daniel, what's 5+5?
D- Eight!
M- Wrong. It's 10. What's 5+5?
D- Eight!
M- No! It's 10. What's 5+5?
D- Eight?
M- Nope! It's 10. What's 5+5?
D- Four?
M- Arg! It's TEN! What's 5+5?
D- (pause) Ten?
M- Woohoo! You're right!

We've long had suspicions about Daniel. We now have conclusive evidence that Daniel doesn't listen to what we say.

Joke Journal entry

Sarah was working on a poem for school today. It's the type of poem where the author writes down an adjective for each letter of their name. Sarah was having a hard time thinking of another adjective that began with the letter 'A'. Nathan pulled out the dictionary and began scanning, coming up with 'Abject', 'Abominable', 'Abrasive', 'Absent', etc. From the other room Matthew piped up: "Hey Sarah! You can write 'absent' and MAIL the homework to your teacher tomorrow!" We all had a good laugh.

Vikers

Background: Matthew was playing a game that involved several sailing vessels from different time periods. One of these is a Viking boat.

Matthew: Look at this! It's my own Hiking Boat!
Sarah: No, that's a 'V'. VIKING boat. The people on it are Vikers.

Chicken antics

An occurance we observed in our chicken flock---

Recently we made gingerbread houses. The left over icing sat out overnight and hardened into crunchy candy. I decided to treat our hens to some holiday sugar, so I scraped a couple cups of hard icing into their pasture. Immediately the hens flocked to the site to investigate the new food. One of our hens, named Princess, is an extremely fat Cochin.   Somehow she was the first one on the scene and gave the white mound a tentative peck. Tasting sugar for the first time in her life must have been earth-shattering for this little hen. It transformed her completely.

She realized a good thing when she tasted it and strategically she placed a foot on either side of the mound and lowered her head aggressively, like a bull about to charge. She looked all the other hens in the eye and clearly said, "Don't even think about it. This ambrosia is MINE." Some of the younger hens were too eager to notice her warning, and they ran in to peck crumbles of icing from under Princess' wings. She turned and bit them quickly to send them on their way, but alas, now they, too, had a taste of sugar. Throwing caution to the wind, they ran circles around Princess, popping their beaks down to skim pieces of candy off the hill of sugar.

Princess frantically spun in circles trying to punish each offender with a bite. There were 10 of them, and only one of her. Her spinning managed to break large pieces of icing off of the pile, and one young hen saw her chance. Rushing quickly for the prize, she plucked up a large piece of candy  the size of her head and dashed away so she could eat it. Unfortunately, Princess saw the theft and wanted it back. Nevermind about the food she already claimed; she must have every last piece to herself.  Forgetting about the bounties beneath her, she immediately left the pile of candy and ran after the young hen.

On the other side of the pasture, Princess chased the young hen, who was much faster than her. Princess is so fat that she waddled awkwardly as she desperately tried to tell the hen to stop taking bites of her treasure.  She squawked on the top of her lungs (between gasps for air as she tried to catch her breath). The young hen mocked her openly, holding candy in its mouth as it danced just out of Princess' reach, when it would quickly take a bite and then dash off again before Princess could catch up.

Meanwhile, the pile of candy was descended upon in the blink of an eye by over a dozen eager chickens. In a matter of seconds, it was all gone, leaving not even a trace of white against the ground.

When Princess caught up to the offending hen and realized the candy was gone, she screeched in frustration, turned tail, and ran as fast as she could (which by now was pathetically slow) back to the original pile of candy, only to find it gone without a trace. She turned a few frantic circles looking for any crumb of sugar, gave up and squawked in frustration, plopping herself on the ground in a mixture of exhaustion and disappointment. I've never seen such expressive body language in a chicken.

We all had a great laugh at the expence of Princess' pride. It reminded me of the Aesop fable of the greedy dog and the bone. What a great teaching moment for our kids! Greediness yields misery!

From the mouth of babes-

Daniel told me today: Mom, candy doesn't taste good until you take the wrapper off.

Joke Journal entries

These are a couple stories from our family joke Journal, a compilation of funny or random things our kids say. I love reading these on occasion and laughing with my kids.



Matthew is doing a puppet show for me. He has a pile of puppets on the floor, ready for his disposal. The main character is looking for a friend.

Puppet 1: I'm so sad I don't have any friends!
Puppet 2 (entering): I'll be your friend! And I have lots of other friends that will be your friend too! (Matthew reaches for another puppet, looks at his two hands already occupied, quickly glances around for any way to add more puppets, then sheepishly continues) Actually, I don't have any other friends.




(We're leaving on a 3-week vacation tomorrow, the kids are arguing)

Matthew: Okay fine! I'm NOT going to spend any time with you.
Sarah(giggling): Well good luck with that. Try doing that on our vacation!




(When speeding downhill on a steep highway)

Matthew: When you drive down the hills, I feel like there's an Easter egg in my throat!




Matthew: "When I look at a bright light it makes my eyes feel like they need to roll over, and they're trying really hard to roll over, but they can't do it."




Daniel: (Running up to me brandishing a hurt thumb) Mommy! My daddy-finger hurts!!



We're playing an improvisation game where I call out a noun and the children pretend to be that object. Sarah tells me to call out 'candy', so I do. Matthew lays on the floor with his arms flat against his body, like a log. He calls out, "I'm a Tootsie Roll!" Daniel immediately wrapped his little arms and legs around Matthew and laughed, "I'm the wrapper!"



Renae to Nathan: I want you to be nice to other people so I'm not the only one knowing that you're good on the inside!



Nathan: Matthew- what was your favorite part of sledding?
Matthew: Going down!



Matthew going inside: I'm outta here!
Matthew coming back outside 10 seconds later: I'm inna here!



Renae: There's cold air coming in along the whole door here.
Matthew: Cold air in the dool whore here? What?! WHAT'S a WHORE?!



Renae: What gifts did the wise men bring for Jesus?
Matthew (ecstatically): Candy Canes!!




We were decorating the Christmas tree. Daniel was lifting ornaments out of the box and hanging them all on the same branch directly above the box. We have one figurine of a baby Jesus that he was hanging. Each time he hung it, it immediately fell back into the box. He didn't realize this and kept getting more and more excited each time he pulled out another Jesus ornament. The fourth and fifth time he hung the ornament he was positively ecstatic and laughing with glee, talking in an unbelievably high-pitched voice. Sarah and I were watching the entire affair and holding our sides laughing really hard.

Daniel: Wow! Mommy, LOOK! ANOTHER baby Jesus! Lucky me!




Sarah was excitedly telling me about all the cooking she's done with Nathan in preparation for Thanksgiving. She was gushing about cracking eggs, fetching milk and butter, stirring ingredients, etc.
She asked "Isn't that FUN?!"

Matthew muttered under his breath: "It just sounds like work to me."




It's dinner time. We all sat down to a meal of enchiladas, refried beans, corn, and rice.

Sarah looks at her beans and before diving into them exclaims,
Sarah: I LOVE these guys!

Daniel (from the other side of the table): ME?!?!




After camping the kids and I played at a really nice park in an old pecan orchard. Usually there is a stream and a large pond. This was a very dry year and apparently the park maintainers were taking advantage of the opportunity to improve the pond. They diverted the water and were dredging out the pond and stream. All that was there was a dry bed and a very large pile of earth.

In the bathrooms and around the park were notices that to stay out of the pond area and not to fish. Sarah asked what one of the notices said and I read it to her.

She looked around very dramatically and exlaimed:
Sarah: Pond?! Pond?!? I see no pond!




We were camping as a family. We were sitting together in our tent after it was dark. I commented that it was getting dark earlier and this sparked a conversation with the kids about seasons and timezones.

Sarah: It's dark right now but where Gracie lives (Alaska) it's still light!
Nathan: How do you know it is light in Alaska?
Sarah: Well, if it was dark all the time then Alaska would never be able to play!

Renae was working with Sarah on some makeup homeschool assignments on a weekend. Sarah had a break and was playing when the break ended.

Renae: Sarah! Come back to do school!
Sarah: I'm sorry. I'm not available on Saturdays... And today is Saturday.

Sarah ran off giggling.




Nathan, emptying his lunch bag after work, pulled out a bag full of croutons.

Nathan: There were more croutons than salad this time.
Renae: I know. I tripped.
Nathan: You tripped?
Renae: Well... My hand sort of tripped.



Daniel was calling people names.

Dan: Ha, ha, baby! Ha, ha, baby!
Renae: Daniel, say something nice.
Dan: Playdough!



Matthew and I were chatting. He was trying to refer to a cookie he ate 5 minutes ago.

Matthew: I had a cookie now, but not really now, just almost now.




We were in the car on our way to a rodeo for the first time.

Nathan (trying to watch the road and make conversation with the kids): Have you ever seen a rodeo before?

As I pondered on what a ridiculous question that was since I knew full well that they never had, Sarah answered very matter-of-factly:

Sarah: No. And neither have you.



Sarah: When I was four I used to put my fist in my eye and it looked like a party!
(Puts a fist in one eye)
I see stars!




Renae was playing a game with the kids that involved matching words that start with the same letter.

We let Matthew take the word mouse because he is usually really good about the letter 'M' for some reason. This time he was really struggling to come up with the right match.

Renae: Matthew. What sound does 'Mouse' start with?
Matthew (with a confused look): Squeak squeak?




Sarah and Matthew are baking a chocolate cake with Nathan. Matthew asks to taste the cocoa powder and Nathan explains that it's bitter and probably won't taste good. Matthew wants a taste anyway, so Nathan also offers a taste to Sarah.

She replies, "Not yet, I'm waiting to see the look on Matthew's face."

It's Daniel's birthday. Matthew is trying to persuade Daniel to give him a toy. Daniel refuses repeatedly. Matthew tries to ask nicely several times and finally exclaims in frustration, "Tough luck, Daniel! It's no longer your birthday!"

Matthew was praying:

Thank you for the alphabet. Amen.




Nathan had eaten Matthew's boiled egg and Matthew was angry.

Matt: Okay, Dad, then you CAN'T play with me!
Nathan: I wasn't playing with you before.
Matt: Okay, then you CAN play with me!

Matthew immediately tried to give Nathan a toy and force him to play.




We were playing the Gospel Game, where I ask the children different scripture-related questions. I asked Matthew who the mother of Jesus was.

Matthew: Mary.... Christmas!




The family was all in the van on the way to run a quick errand. Early that day Matthew had stepped on a sharp rock and had a band-aid on his foot. Additionally, since we left the house in quite a hurry several children, including Matthew, were not entirely dressed.

We all waited in the van as Renae ran in to run the errand. The children became restless.

Matthew: Why can't we go with mom?
Nathan: Because mom is going to be back really fast and several of us don't have shoes or even pants on!
Matthew: You have pants on!
Nathan: Yes that's true.
Matthew (Pointing to other family members): And you have pants and I have pants.
Sarah: You don't have pants on!
Matthew (very matter-of-factly): No I don't... But I have a band-aid!




Matthew was being sent to his room for arguing with Sarah. He was mad at me for sending him away.

Matthew: FINE! The next time a bad guy comes, then I WON'T be your hero, Mom!



Renae needed to use the restroom and Matthew was occupying it by playing in a full sink of water and bubbles. He's in it up to his elbows.

Renae: I need to use the bathroom, so I need you to leave.
Matt: But I won't peek, I promise!
Renae: That doesn't matter. I still need privacy.
Matt: But my bubbles!
Renae assures him that she'll leave the sink of water alone and he can come right back to play in it.
He leaves, saying(completely seriously): Okay, but please don't drown.




I was telling the children a scripture story for bedtime. We talked about Enos. I explained that he was a hunter and that the men in that time period hunted in the forest for their families food. I told how he pondered the Atonement and prayed. The following comments are from the end of the story:

Me: And do you know what? He prayed all day! What do you think of that?
Sarah (quietly laughing): Well, he certainly didn't bring any food home for his family that day!



Nathan was packing a lunch while Matthew watched. He included a can of V8 juice.

Matt: Can I have one, too?
Mom: You won't like it.
Matt: Yes I will. I know I will!
Mom: Really, you won't. I don't like it.
Matt: But I love pop.
Mom: It's not pop. It's tomato juice.
Matt: But I love toma-....(sudden realization)Ohh. (silence)




Matthew was running after Sarah, who had gone outside. He opened the door to tell me that he was following her.

Me: That's okay, but shut the door quickly, you're letting in hot air.
He dutifully came inside and did as I asked, then sheepishly said: Oops! I forgot to go outside!




Sarah loves singing "Once There was a Snowman" and acting out the parts. After singing it through and "melting small, small, small" she remained flat on the floor, silent and unmoving. After a few minutes, I urged her to get up, to which she replied (in a very sweet, high voice), "I can't. I'm a puddle!"



There you have it. Have a wonderful day! If you have funny stories, do share!

Pumbulation

Daniel loves to sing an educational song called 'Punctuation'. He'll sing it at the top of his lungs, and the chorus goes: Punc, Punc, Puncuation! He pronounces it "Pumbulation". I love it! He'll march around the house singing Pumbulation with such conviction.

Speaking of speech impediments (no pun intended), Matthew spells words according to his impediments. He says the 'th' sound like 'f'. For example, he was so pleased with himself when he spell MOF, or 'moth'. He'll do that with any word using the letters 'th', except for the word 'the'. He says it like 'deh', so he spells it 'DE'. I can see we have some work cut out for us before he starts kindergarten next fall.