Definitions by Stephen--1/10

Vacation: only working 8 hours a day.

Desk: any flat--no, every flat surface.

Potluck: An event with big metal chairs that your kids fall through the back of, tall tables and strange food that your kid's won't eat and where you don't get to enjoy your food because you are chasing your kids around.

Backlog of quotes

Stephen, about trying to figure out whether or not to marry me:

"I was looking for more than I got."

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Mason: I just realized there are only two rules in football, I mean soccer: 1) you throw the ball into the other team's hoop...

(laughter from everyone in the car)

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While driving home from Thanksgiving dinner the kids were discussing what they want for Christmas...

Elise to Lincoln: I only have ten dollars for your present, so if it costs more than that, you might want to ask Mom or Dad or Santa.
Mason: Well, Santa might give it to you if you are good and if it is in his budget.
Sammy: What about Mrs. Claus?

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When a foot soak turns into a bath...

Before & after shots of Lincoln's tooth extraction

Lincoln parrot

Lincoln kept spacing out while repeating scriptures the other morning. Stephen finally asked, "Lincoln, are you paying attention?" Lincoln, hearing his name, parroted back, "Lincoln, are you paying attention?", then burst into laughter when he realized what he had done.

It's kind of a relief to have a quote to record for him--for weeks he has been trying to say witty and clever things for me to quote on the blog. He'll say something he things is funny and immediately remind me to record it on the blog, which in itself it hilarious.

Tick-tock

The other day I found a little beetle crawling in Trevor's hair. Very uncharacteristically, I picked it out all by myself. (Usually I get Sammy to take care of bug removal.) As I went to flick it outside, Stephen commented on how brave I was. I replied, "Well, it's small, and NOT a tick."

Trevor perked up at this comment and innocently asked, "Was it a tock?"

Recent quotes

One of my kids' favorite things for me to do is go back and read my blog entries to them--especially the quotes of the day. Lincoln has really, really wanted me to record some of his quotes, so for the last week has been trying to say witty and clever things. It's hilarious, because they aren't witty or clever, though he thinks they are, which makes me laugh every time. Which makes him think they were witty or clever and I should record them. Like I said, hilarious.

Here are some quotes I've recorded over the last couple of weeks (sadly, none of them belong to Lincoln...):

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Trevor, calling from the outside door, "Moooooooooom! My feet are muddy!"

Me, unfeelingly: Take them off.

Trevor, incredulously: My feet???

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Trevor and Lincoln were running around the house when Trevor suddenly ran up to me and kissed me three times on the arm. Then he proclaimed, "now I have your soul!"

Later Sammy decided, "no more soul sucking."

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At 6:52 the other morning Trevor came to my bedside (I had slept in a little) and informed me that it was 7-10. I freaked out a little because Elise and Stephen need to leave the house at 7:35, and I hadn't woken Elise up yet. He then went on to inform me:

TD: The clock says 7-10. 7 + 10 is 17 so it's 17 o'clock. (Think analog clock)

Me: If we find the little yellow clock I'll teach you how to tell time today!

TD, with the utmost confidence: I already know. It's 17.

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Mason to Trevor: When I was younger you didn't have any of my memories.

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While reading Mosiah 23, Stephen, to everyone's delight, added in many references to Yertle the Turtle. Trevor, of course, didn't quite understand that Stephen was combining stories, and exclaimed, "the prophets are funny!!"

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The final quote is from months ago, again from Trevor.

"Mommy, when you cry your heart is breaking. Sometimes you cry when Grammy is dying."

QOTD--brothers

Trevor was annoyed with Lincoln (who was being bossy):

"I'm never going to be your brother again!!!"

QOTD--game rules

Lincoln to Trevor while playing a game:

"I'm not playing with you unless you agree with me!"

Let me know how that works out for you, Lincoln!

QOTD x 2

While eating breakfast I told everyone about an personal email I received asking if Elise was going to attend the Royal Winnipeg Ballet summer intensive this year. Stephen's response was great:

"Did you get a hand-written email?"

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We need a new car, I know, I know. The kids are getting bigger and there aren't enough seat belts as it is. The only time it's really a problem is when we all go to church in the same car...like today. Elise, Mason and Trevor (in his booster seat) were all in the back seat. Some sort of squabbling was going on between Mason and Trevor, and Elise exclaimed, 

"MASON! Stop acting like a 4-year-old!!!"

Mason: "Well, HE started it!!"

QOTD--Mason

Mason was upset with Stephen during a recent game of Killer Bunnies...

Mason: I'm going to make my life as hard as possible for you!

Stephen: ???

With his great big tooth gap

Blinking contest & fire ants

Trevor, age 4, is one darling kiddo. He has these deep brown eyes and a sincere look that just kills me. The other day the kids were having staring contests after dinner, and he decided it would be so cool to have a blinking contest...

Trevor loves hearing and telling stories. This afternoon we were resting together and, while trying to get him to go to sleep, I told him his birth story--how it was so calm and peaceful with quiet music playing (that I had on at that moment), how he was born in the water and we got to snuggle. Then he told me a story about when I was born. In the water and we got to snuggle and that he kissed me and hugged me and loved me. Aww...

Also this afternoon (still trying to get him to go to sleep...) while snuggling, I smoothed his hair from his forehead and noticed an awful-looking yellow bruise. I asked him what happened and he calmly responded, "Oh, yeah. The fire ants just came and gave me that."

Quotes from the past month

In church today Trevor was rolling around on the floor under the pews. He had my pen up his nose, going "pew-pew-pew"--shooting something though his nose-pen gun.

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While practicing company manners during FHE last week, Stephen asked Trevor what he should do if he needs to go to the bathroom (hoping for an answer like "ask politely to be excused").

Trevor: Close the door.

Yes, please!

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Elise: Can I just teleport my brain thoughts to you?

FHE QOTD

After FHE tonight everyone started talking to me at once...

Mom!

Mom?

Mom!

Mom!

Mom!

Me: Okay, okay, one at a time! Trevor, then Mason, then Elise, then Sammy, then Lincoln

Trevor: Remember the song "oh where oh where"?

Me: (sings the song) Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone? Oh where, oh where can she be? Etc., etc.

Still me: Mason?

Mason: What is the name of the programming language that MIT developed to use in Scratch?

Dad: You're asking Mom that?

Other kids: It's not your turn to talk!

Mason: No, you.

Me: Next!

Elise: I wrapped up this knee and it feels really good to not bend it when I walk. Do you know where the other ACE bandage is?

Me: No idea, sorry. Sammy?

Sammy: I'm sad I finished my book because now I don't have anything to look forward to, because when I have a book I'm not bored at night time.

Me: You checked out another book, too, remember?

Sammy: Oh yeah!

Me: Lincoln?

Lincoln: I know! Her was abducted by aliens so you can't find her now!

And a cute picture of Ruthie--see the pillow fight in the background?

QOTD & Sable

We got a dog about a month ago, and she is truly fantastic. So many reasons why, but it is bedtime, so the one I want to highlight tonight is that she doesn't bark. Ever. Many nights Trevor will pray, "Thank you that Sable doesn't barf." He talks about how "Sable never barfs, Mom" during the day, and no matter how often I repeat back to him, "No, Sable doesn't barK", he still doesn't get it.

We had some new friends over the other evening, and to our great surprise, Sable actually barked at them. Trevor was shocked and came running to me, "Mom! Sable barfed at our friends!"

Sometimes she thinks she is a lap dog...

We go walking on our property ever morning, and Sable is fantastic off-leash. She learned quickly not to go under the fence, even when chasing antelope. She loves chasing the antelope and jackrabbits!

Surveying her kingdom

At Vedauwoo

QOTD

While playing Catch Phrase the other day with the kids, I had the word "wavy".

Me: When my hair isn't straight or curly, it is...?
Mason: Frizzy!

True dat.

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For some reason Barney the purple dinosaur came up in conversation last week. However, since my kids have been raised without (much) television, they weren't quite sure who he was.

Mason: Who was Barney anyhow?
Sammy: Didn't he drink a lot? I know he was in jail a couple times...

QOTD

My kitchen is a mess, family room unwalkable and front room a disaster, but if I don't write down these quotes I know I'll forget!

Lincoln, extremely disappointed that he couldn't go to the park with the older boys, "Why do they get to go to the park? It has super, SUPER fun stuff, and we only have fun stuff."

I appreciate his honesty.

Trevor loves to talk at night, and the other night he told me, "When the sun goes to bed and the moon wakes up we only get to talk for a little bit. When the moon goes to bed and the sun comes up we can talk a lot!"

Random snippets

IT'S A GIRL!!!!!

And she looks healthy and like she might be a thumb sucker. :)

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When I was a kid, I remember having my little brothers pray with me and encouraging them to say two new things in every prayer they said. I never dreamed that one day my kids' prayers would include:

"Please bless A that her cancer counts can go down. Please bless B that he can be kind and helpful and do what he knows he should. Please bless C that the doctors can fix the hole in her heart. Please bless D that her kidneys can start to work again."

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While Stephen was away for 5 days at a conference, Sammy took over the "camel" duty. Every evening after family prayer he would give the little boys a camel ride in to bed. This is also my boy who asked me the other day, "What would you do without Daddy?" I replied that I honestly didn't know. He said, "I would do the things that Daddy does to help you out." What a sweetie!

A few weeks ago Elise and some of her classmates performed at a Mexican restaurant to help raise money for an orphanage in Mexico. They warmed up in the arcade...

We spend about an hour with a fire fighter touring the truck and asking questions that he had never heard before. People who take the time to answer our questions are gems in our homeschooling world!

Mason and Sammy finished up a fun summer playing soccer--Sammy especially loved it, and now has dreams of going to the World Cup (we watched a good bit of soccer this summer...).

We dogsat a friend's dog for a couple of weeks--what an angel dog! I think I could handle having a dog like Cooper! Trevor (and Lincoln) took great pride in taking him on walks.

Trevor stole Sammy's glasses...

What to do when it dumps buckets of water from the sky? PLAY TIME!!

Another Lincoln quote

Lincoln came into the bathroom this morning while I was showering and proceeded to do his business. All of a sudden he pipes up with, "Well, I'm mostly a big boy, but sometimes I still put my underwear on backwards."

It made me think--I'm mostly a big girl, but I still...
...get annoyed at little things
...slam doors when I'm really mad
...can't stand sudden changes
...say things that I know I shouldn't
...get impatient with children acting their ages
...and the list goes on...

BUT--Lincoln won't put his underwear on backwards for his entire life...in fact, it's only rarely that he still does--and it doesn't bring him down that he slips up sometimes. There is hope for me, too! I'll just make the goal of being better today than I was yesterday, and take it one day at a time, remembering to look behind me and see how far I've come.

Lincoln

Every so often I have the chance to have some one-on-one time with Lincoln. Last week we dropped Elise off at ballet and were driving home when he asked me "Who is my name from?"

It took me a second to grasp what he was asking me, then remembered that in family scripture study we recently read Helaman 5:6-7, where it talks about how Helaman gave his sons specific names so that they would remember to act like those they were named for. We went through each of the kids' names and talked about why their names were special. On this particular day, Lincoln was thinking about that but couldn't remember who he was named for.

I told him his first name was from Abraham Lincoln and his middle name, Xavier, was Mormor's daddy. I reminded him of some of the fun stories--how he used to be a sheep herder in the mountains of Utah and how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would bring him supplies...how he owned a butcher shop and once had bananas--a new and exotic fruit--and how a man came in and bought 2 bananas and proceeded to eat them both on the spot--he asked for paper to wrap the peels in so he could "show his wife what a banana looked like"--grandpa refused.

One story led to another, and soon I told Lincoln about how "Zave" was married and had 10 kids before he married Mormor's mom. His first wife died after caring for a son with Typhoid, and soon after Zave married my great-grandma. For some reason, Lincoln was very intrigued by this story and asked some follow-up questions:

"What did her die of?" And after a brief moment of thought, "Oh, I know! I think her was eaten by a dragon."

He quickly hedged that thought with, "Well, maybe her just died because her was so old."

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Lincoln with his good buddy Elder Schmidt, weeding on the side of the house, and then with Elder Thompson, playing soccer on the 4th of July. Lincoln sure loves these two missionaries!

Being silly at ballet and learning to ride a bike--thank goodness for awesome older brothers!

Quotes

Lincoln loves the breath mints that I very rarely buy...

Lincoln: "Mommy? I have two stinky breaths. I need two mints.
Me: "That's not how it works."
Lincoln, confused: "How does it work?"

While out walking Lincoln pulled out some breath mints I recently purchased, "cause maybe we might get a stinky breath."

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I have a bad habit of sometimes falling asleep while reading to the kids in the mornings (those mornings where I stayed up too late the night before...), and did just that the other morning. Trevor got a blanket and tried to cover me, then got his blanky--the very, very special one--and put it on me and crawled next to me and rested.

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Last Friday we went to a pretty cool park--the "Chutes and Ladders" park. I'm not a fan of huge man-made play areas; I get a little stressed worrying about where everyone is. Adding to my stress was the heat, lack of shade and crowds of people. When we got home I was wiped out and went to rest on the couch. Lincoln came in and saw me resting and brought me a blanket, "Because I just take care of you, Momma."

QOTD

Mason has been playing with software that changes the pitch of songs to be very high. Sammy, on hearing the resulting high-pitched, annoying songs, said, "Mason is changing all of the singing to make it sound either like chipmunks or tenors!"