Spiders

RaKell found a spider in her room. She ran upstairs and announced,

"I'm gonna invent spider shock collars! That way, if they bite you, they die! "

I asked,  "do the shock collars go on you or the spiders?"

"The spiders (duuuuh)."

Realistic

Landon asked if I had ever seen The Giant Pear movie.

I said, "No, I've never even heard of it."

Landon,  "Well, it's kind of like James and the Giant Peach but a little less realistic."

Can anyone tell me any part of James and the Giant Peach that is realistic?

Gravity

A conversation that took place between me and 5- year old RaKell:


RaKell: What's gravity?
Mom: Well, if you jumped off this chair what would happen?
R: I would land on the floor.
M: Yes. Gravity is what holds things to the earth. If you drop something it falls down instead of flying up.
R: Aaaawwww. I want to fly.
M: You can,  in an airplane.
R: I want to fly by myself.
M: That would be so fun.
R: Why can't I fly by myself?
M: People weren't made to fly.
R: Yeah,  just fairies.
M: And dragons.
R: Mom,  dragons aren't real.
M: Oh, and fairies are?
R: Ummmmm yyyyeah.

Definitions

We were in the car driving and Landon was going through his backpack. He pulled out a bunch of miscellaneous items...

Landon: I got these...these... things at school.

RaKell: You call them 'thingymajigs' if you don't know what they are called.

Dinner Delights

RaKell just asked me to turn on the oven light so she could see dinner cooking.

I turned it on.

She looked in the top oven and said the food looked delicious.

Um, dinner was in the bottom oven. I didn't put anything in the top oven.

Spaghetti squash?!!!! How long has that been there!!!????

Turns out Dalan had cooked some last week and forgot about it.

Sure Thing Dear

RaKell opened the fridge to get an orange. . .

"Ooooo! I'm so cold in this fridge!"
"This fridge is freezing!"
"Mom, can we get a new fridge?"

First Day of School

 First Day!

 Preschool. They grow up way too fast!

No, it isn't the camera or the lighting, it really is the color of her pants.

2nd Grade

3rd Grade

                                                         

9th Grade. He is a Freshman! High School?! I feel like I should still be in High School.

7th grade. Middle School. I had to chase this one down to the bus stop to get a photo. :) Not because she didn't want one, but we had kids going in all directions at different times and we simply forgot.

35th Grade.

Off to teach the bright young minds of the future. Please stay alive. :)

Rrrrriiiight

RaKell came to me and matter-of-factly said,

"Mom, the phone accidentally fell into the fish tank, but I got it out. It's ok. It was dead so I hung it up to charge."

Seriously?!

Weight

There has been a scale sitting in our hallway for a few days.
Getting ready for school yesterday morning, Landon stood on the scale.
His fists shot straight up in the air and, with excitement, he exclaimed, "NEW RECORD! I'm not 53 anymore, I'm 55!"

Refreshing!?

The kids ran in from playing outside. They were breathing heavily and all grabbed cups and headed to the sink to fill up for a nice refreshing cup of water.

RaKell had her cup in hand when she spotted the pickles on the table. . .

"Mmmmm pickle juice!"

She set her cup on the table and filled it with the juice from the pickle jar and drank the whole thing!

FHE

Aunalee gave the Family Home Evening lesson tonight. It was about gratitude. We had to each write something down we were thankful for and put it in a box.
As she was trying to wrap up the lesson through the noise of all the kids, this is what I heard:
"When we write down what we are thankful for and not worry about all the things we don't have, maybe one day we will get some of the things we didn't have before and we can add that to our list of what we are thankful for."
Makes sense.

Happy Halloween

Here are some of the photos of pumpkin carvings. You can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Dalan carved something from Legend of Zelda.















Katelyn carved a happy pumpkin.

Landon carved a spider.

Aunalee carved a pattern of shapes.

RaKell carved Anna and Elsa (with a tiny bit of help from mom).

 Mom carved Olaf.

Dad didn't get around to carving this year.

Costumes:
Dalan is Link from Legend of Zelda.
Katelyn is the Monopoly guy. She came up with that on her own.
Landon is Bozo (he was also Larry the Cucumber and a Spider throughout the day. This just happened to be what he picked to wear for Trick-or-Treat night.
Aunalee is NOT Little Red Ridinghood. She never did really explain what she was.
RaKell is a flower. Her hat fell off.

Yes, Bob tried to photo bomb this one.

Happy Halloween!

Melt My Heart

Landon came home from preschool and was in a bit of a somber mood. He was sitting on the floor and I sneaked up behind him and quickly pulled him onto my lap giving him a big hug, saying, "Here's my four-year-old boy! Oh, here he is! Will you please be my sweet, little four-year-old boy forever?" Please, please, please?"
He giggled and said sweetly, "Noooooo."
"No? Why not?"
"Because I want to be a dad."

Oh, melt my heart! I hugged him some more and said, "Well, okay."

Squeaky Clean

Preston was in the bathroom helping Landon brush his teeth. He came out laughing and relayed the following:

Landon: Dad, Katelyn and I helped mom today and clean the bathroom.

Preston: Landon, that is good.

Landon: We cleaned the sink.

Preston: Oh, it looks so good.

Landon: With our toothbrushes.

Preston: Uh, . . . That's not good.

Toilet Training

Landon will use the bathroom everytime his diaper gets changed. He does pretty well with it but does not like to go when we randomly, throughout the day, ask him to.

Today I caught him with that red, frog-face look that kids get when they are pushing (yes, surely adults get it too, but they tend to not have an audience). I hurried him into the bathroom to, as far as he knew, "change his diaper." He had already gone a bit in his diaper so I coaxed him onto the toilet to finish. I also knew I had to leave him alone or he wouldn't go.

"Landon, I am going to get you some clean clothes. Wait here and try to finish pooping in the toilet."

I was gone for about 2 minutes, returned and asked, "Did you go?"

"Yeah," was his little response.

"Hurray! You did it!"

With a firm feeling on the matter he declared, "Yeah, it really freaked me out!"

Morning Smiles

Katelyn woke up crying, which is unusual for her in the morning. She came into the kitchen and I asked her if she wanted breakfast to which she shook her head.
I then asked her if she wanted me to hold her. She shook her head and cried, "I want someone to read me a story."
Landon, standing by my side, shot his hand up in the air saying, "Me! Me! Me! I will read you a story."
He ran into the other room, "Let me go get a book."
I just shook my head laughing, wondering how little, upset Katelyn was going to react.
I sat on the floor by the heater vent and put her on my lap. She calmed down. We waited a moment before Landon came in with a book.
He, too, sat on my lap and opened the book.
He stared at the page for a moment, . . processing. . . processing. . . processing, handed me the book and said, "Here mom, you read it."

20,000 Bouncy Balls

This was so fun!

This week was Utah State University's science week (aka. Geek Week). A helicopter flew over a parking lot full of people and dropped over 20,000 bouncy balls into a roped off section. We were at the bottom of the downward slopped parking lot. As soon as the bouncy balls landed they came flying our way. The kids had a blast getting pelted with bouncy balls and shoving as much as they could into their pockets!

Here is an article if you want to know more about this story and the science experiment that was conducted:

http://hardnewscafe.usu.edu/?p=4366

Dinner Woes and Wows

As I was cooking dinner, Aunalee asked what I was making.
Sounding excited, knowing it isn't her choice meal, I said, "Spaghetti."
She dropped her head and whined, "Nooooho."
Kate came over and stomped her foot, "I don't like spaghetti!"
Landon joined in with a foot stomp, "I don't like it either."
I replied, "Super! You three go to bed and the rest of us will eat it all."
Knowing I was serious, they went on their way until dinner time.

Needless to say, when we did sit down for dinner they ate it up! The girls even had seconds. Hurray for yummy spaghetti!

Compliments to Aunalee

I was volunteering at the school today and saw a mom of some twin boys that are in Aunalee's class. We were visiting for a few minutes and this mom said, "My boy, Logan, sure talks about Aunalee a lot. They sit by each other and I help in the classroom quite a bit and she is such a sweet girl. The other day Logan said to me, 'Mom, one day I want to marry a girl just like Aunalee.' I told him that would be great. If he can keep this great taste in girls I will be just fine with that."

Later I was in the computer room getting something. The computer teacher said to me, "Oh your Aunalee (she put her hand to her heart) is such a sweetheart. She is just a sweet little girl." She proceeded to show me some of Aunalee's work and told me how much she loves to work with her on the computer.

Those compliments made me feel pleased to know that my child behaves so well at school and is kind to others.
She is a sweetheart and I love her.

Cousins and Canoes 

 

Never a dull moment! When cousins get together they combine their creative minds to come up with unique ways of having fun. 

Did you count how many kids are crammed in there?!