Well, Obviously!

Megan: I want to be a missionary pilot when I get older.
Dad: So you want to fly an airplane and tell people about Jesus?
Megan: No, I want to use rocket boots.

Tense?

The girls got several sets of Shrinky Dinks for Christmas this year, and they attacked them with gusto while I was doing our morning reading.  (Every day I read between 3-4 hours to the kids and they're allowed to color, draw, play with LEGOs and other quiet toys while I read.)

I spent most of lunch time cutting out the things they'd colored, then everyone gathered around the oven to watch them shrink.  This was the fun part for all of us - them because it was something "amazing" that they'd never seen, and me because I remember experiencing that in my childhood and enjoyed watching them experience it for the first time.

Andrew was home late tonight, and I was in the shower when he went to tuck the girls in.  Apparently Kaitlyn (7) was still excited over the shrinking plastic, because she shared with him all about it.  He came in to tell me how excited she was...and also how we might need some grammar practice.

Apparently, when the plastic started to shrink, Kaitlyn told him, "I FROKE OUT!"

THIRSTY?

This evening we had a community church service at the local county 4-H fairgrounds as part of the church's community outreach week.  It was an all-inclusive service, so all the kids were in with us for the entire time.  Part of the service was our community outreach pastor speaking with a woman who had had several projects done to her home over the course of the week.  The pastor asked her to tell her story, and she spoke for several minutes about how she'd married very young, had six children in five years, and her husband cheated on her for years before she divorced him.  Shen then explained that she'd "gone wild" after the divorce, and that she'd started drinking.  She said that it wasn't until she began raising her grandson that she really started turning her life around, and that included the choice to stop drinking.  In her words, "That was over 40 years ago, and I haven't had a drink since."

At that point, Kaitlyn turned to me and whispered, very seriously, "Her mouth must be really dry."

SCARIEST CONVERSATION EVER!

Kaitlyn: "Ryan, you know Joe-Joe?"
Ryan: "Yeah?"
Kaitlyn: "Well, I've been sleeping with him."
(Mom: severe heart attack, completely freaking out, "MY CHILD IS SIX YEARS OLD, WHY ARE THESE WORDS COMING OUT OF HER MOUTH???")
Ryan: "What?"
Kaitlyn: "Aaron's Joe-Joe stuffed dog?  I've been sleeping with it at night."

I'll let you know when my heart rate returns to normal.

Watch where you put your hand

Ryan: "Mom, did you know that the ground on Mars is called mars?"
Mom: "What?"
Ryan: "It only makes sense.  The ground on Earth is called "earth" so the ground on Mars must be called "mars.""
Ryan: "And if you stick your hand down into Venus, you are sticking your hand in "venus.""
Aaron: "And you don't want to stick your hand in the ground on Uranus!"

Funny Girl

We got quite the mother-load of funny from Megan (4) on the way home from church last night:

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, you guys are great!" 

 Later, she was explaining about taking communion:

 "Communion isn't a snack, because God's body isn't a snack."

And finally, just a cutie-pie mixed-up word.

Mom: "Megan, what do you call things like dogs, cats, rabbits and squirrels?"   

Megan: "I don't know."

Mom: "They're not people, they're...?"

Megan: "Oh, aminals."

Fashion?

The kids and I went swimming this evening and had a blast with the pool all to ourselves.  The swim lessons were a pricey, but SO WORTH IT investment!

After returning home, I sent all the kids off to change out of their suits and take care of their towels while I showered and got dressed.  Megan (4) came into the bathroom while I was brushing my hair and complained that she couldn't find any pajamas.  Since I'd seen a pair when inspecting her room earlier today, I told her where they were and sent her to find them.  She came back, not in those pajamas, but instead wearing a long-sleeve pajama shirt under a sleeveless nightgown.  An odd combination, but the girls often do that to "stay warm" so I didn't say anything.

A couple minutes later, she came back and asked if the pair of pajama shorts she'd found in the laundry were hers.  I told her to check the tag, and she confirmed "4T" and ran off to put them on.  She came back and proudly displayed her pajamas, and I stifled a laugh at the mismatched items.  She'd just added the pajama shorts under the other two items.

So I asked her, "Why not just wear the shirt and the shorts?  Take off your nightgown?"

She looked at me as though I was clearly stupid, and answered, "Because, that would look ridiculous."  I had to giggle a little at that, because from where I was standing, she did look pretty ridiculous already.  But she wasn't done.


"You can't SEE the shorts under my nightgown, see?  If I took my nightgown off you could see them and THEN it would look really REALLY ridiculous."


Oh...I see.  

Can you say carbs?

Dad: "What did you have for breakfast?"
Megan: "Poppa-tarts and Texas Road Buns."

Spelling Lesson

Kaitlyn (6): "Ryan, what comes after the "R" in your name?"

Ryan (13): "Y"

Kaitlyn: "Because, I want to learn how to spell your name."

Animal radar?

Kaitlyn was looking at a giraffe and saw the little horns on its head.  She stared at it for a long time and then finally asked dad, "Are those supposed to be Montanas?"  (antenna)

Behold, the inappropriate son!

Those of you with boys, you'll understand.


We sometimes watch a TV show called “Good Eats” on the Food Network channel.  The host, Alton Brown spends each episode talking about how to make a certain dish or cook a certain food.  He also throws in all the interesting tidbits about food, culture, physics, etc.  It’s really very informative and interesting.

Tonight the show was on carrots and during one part, he was explaining why you can’t see when you go from a brightly lit room to a suddenly dim or dark room.  As a visual for this explanation, he walked over to his BBQ grill, which was painted like an eyeball, and said “Behold, the human eye!”  (Following this, he used the grill to help explain the way an eye/iris works).

Well, Ryan got a big kick out of that (he thinks Alton Brown is very funny and spends most of the show laughing).  He said the line “Behold, the human eye” no less than 8 times before the show was over.  I finally had to tell him to stop it!!!  After the show, I sent the boys to get ready for bed.  I could hear them messing around in the bathroom; arguing, fighting, being silly.  Then suddenly Ryan says “I’m telling” and comes tromping up the hall to find me.

“Aaron did a bad thing!”  He tells me.  Then he proceeds to tell me that they are in the bathroom playing around and Ryan decides to do the gag one more time.  So he pulls his eyelids apart really wide and says “Behold, the human eye!”  In response, Aaron promptly pulled down his pants and says, “Behold, the human penis!”

This is one of those times that I’ve utterly defeated myself as a parent.  I promptly burst out laughing, so you know that he will repeat that story anywhere and everywhere he can.  I couldn’t help it though.  It was so unexpected, so “classic boy”, and honestly, so funny!  

My blue, very soft shoes

Everyone is always asking me what kinds of things it is that Aaron does that make me want to pull my hair out. I thought maybe I'd start blogging those things (not to "keep record of wrongs") but because I know some day in the future, I'll want to tell these stories and laugh.

Today, Aaron came in to the living room and said "I'm sorry, I accidently spilled blue stuff in your shoes." ??? Given that he's nearly naked (in his underwear), I'm guessing that he came from the laundry room, but what blue stuff? Last night, I purchased a small bottle of Clorox 2, but it was still in the bag. Following him to the laundry room, I discover that he has managed to dump about 1/2 a gallon of Ultra Downy liquid fabric softener into my blue canvas shoes and all over the floor. Not only are my shoes full, but there's this huge puddle of blue guck on the floor and this overwhelming fabric softener smell coming from the room. According to Aaron, he "didn't know the lid was off" when he managed to do this. I haven't quite figured out whether he knocked the bottle over when climbing on/off the washer or whether he actually dumped the bottle over on purpose.

The ubiquitous "they"

Ryan says to me "You know what they say?" And I asked him, "What who says?"

"The people who make phrases." LOL! It turns out that they say "One person's trash is another person's treasure." And the reason he brought it up was that I had suggested that the best way to clean up his room was to get rid of some non-essentials. I suppose that if they have a good reason for keeping what I consider to be trash, he ought to find a place for it.