2-Second Post

Just a quick hee-hee moment from the kids tonight: Caleb and Joseph were singing "I've been looking for the railroad" tonight. When we tried to explain to them that it was "working" they just giggled, I guess they thought we were teasing.
Then, before bed Farris asked Joseph if he was going to be happy in the morning (sometimes we have problems with that), and Joseph answered. "Yes, I'm going to play and say funny things." At least he knows his job in our family.

Sharin' the humor

My parents visited this weekend and took us out to eat at a Chinese Restaurant. Of course at the end of the meal we got the check with a fortune cookie for each of us. The fortunes always make me laugh, but I don't take them seriously (see, I put one to the test once. When I lived with my sisters in Salt Lake for a year, I got a fortune that said "You will be married in one year." We laughed and put the date on it, then carried it around in my day planner for a year. True scientific experiment.) Anyway, back to the point. Mine said "Share your abundant humor with others at this time. They need it." Don't we all at this time! But I live with four little abundant humor-machines (and one big one), so I'm going to share away. At first I thought I could just offer a chances to babysit, but then I decided to share it with everyone who reads this blog. Although if you would like to babysit... And to make this a Humor Fest, please leave some of your own stories in the comments and we can all lose a little stress.

First, Joseph's fortune said: "You will soon be changing your present line of work." So I'm wondering if that means he's going to stop being a barber, an Artist (on the wall or couch, usually), a boxer, a Super Hero, or a professional Irritator of the Sister. I'll keep you informed on which ever he gives up.

Tonight at dinner, the kids must have caught a sharing the humor vibe, because they began their barrage of Knock-Knock Jokes. Farris shakes his head and says"It's just like Pa Grape says 'You just don't get it.'" (and I've never been to Boston in the fall...) Caleb began: "Knock Knock!"
We said: "Who's there?" Caleb: "Banana" Us: "Banana who?" Caleb:"I'm a banana, come in and eat me!" So then Joseph chimes in. Joseph: Knock Knock!" Us: "Who's there?" Joseph: "Banana!" Us: "Banana who?" Joseph: "Banana eye!" (hysterical laughing) Caleb: "Banana eye who?" Joseph: "Banana eye CHICKEN!" (More hysterical laughing)

Joseph has been on an "anything chicken, is funny" kick for awhile. The other day when my parents were here, we were talking about what Farris would say if the kids were gone. I said"He'd say 'where's my kids?'" and Joseph said "No, he'd say 'where's my CHICKEN!'" I think he gets it from the Child side of the family.

The funniest story I've heard for awhile is from my sister Melissa, who works at a Walgreen's Pharmacy. She said that a small, wrinkled old man came in, saying he wanted this drug that he had heard about. He said that it made the guy on T.V. feel younger, stronger, faster, healthier, lose weight, etc. Then he slid the paper with the name of the medicine written on it across the counter to my sister. It said "Triathlon."

Celebrate the Boy

We're half way through February, but I just wanted to let all of you crafty people who have sons, nephews or brothers that there are two bloggers that decided to celebrate February as the month to Celebrate the Boy! They noticed the shortage of fun, cute crafty prjects for boys and decided to retaliate by spending a whole month just on dirt, tools, cars, and dinosaurs. And other boyish things. AND for you who have girls that like to play in the dirt, you can get some good ideas that aren't pink and ruffly. So anyway, here's the addresses: http://www.dana-made-it.com/
and: http://madebyrae.blogspot.com/
Very cute things, I love the Presidents Day shirt with George Washington (it says "okay, okay, I chopped it down"). I can totally see this one specific little boy wearing it...hmmm, I wonder who that can be...

A Little Dose of Hope

I don't usually talk about serious things on here, but today a lady in my ward started a blog for people (especially women) who have lost hope and are drifting. There are a lot of pressures in this world and then we tend to add to that by expecting ourselves to be perfect in every area. I believe that we try to become perfect by ourselves forgetting our human-ness and our God-given weaknesses. Just last night someone called me to the mat about our church's policy on repentance. It says that one of the important steps is to forsake your sins and never do them again. For some sins, for some people, this can be easy. It's easy for me to forsake the sin of not paying tithing. For me, that's an easy one. But there are other places where I go to again and again, namely my temper, especially in the car and especially, especially with my kids. And last night I realized that because I believe in the steps for repentance, and because I know my own weakness in that area, I haven't been asking for forgiveness as regularly as I should. I've been asking for help to stop my temper and remember my love for them, but I feel silly asking for repentance when I know that I will probably do it again the next day. How's that for a big lack of faith! I've been doing only half of the steps and asking for help. Girls, can we just sit back and remember our Savior? We have so many blessings in this life, all of us, and the biggest one is that we have an older Brother who is perfect, but still knows how we feel when we let that favorite sin our ours back into our lives. He knows our weaknesses because our Father has given them to us, and gave us Christ to pay for them. AND to help us forsake them. My friend thinks that she can't be perfect. We can't, only with help from our Savior. And probably not all the way in this life, either. We can't just try, we need to strive, we need to work, and the biggest is that we need to pray. We can follow the steps to repentance over and over again. It's slow, it's painful but with Christ it's possible. I have been struggling so much with this temper, and I have a feeling it will take years, years, years to control it. But like we learned in YW/YM yesterday, Onward and Upward. And don't forget to pack your Faith, your Charity, and your Hope.

Here's the address to the blog that started all this (you'll enjoy the story about her daughter and the Evil Hairbrush): EnjoyingTheJourneyLLL.blogspot.com
I'm also going to put this on the side of this blog, and I'm sure she'll be glad to share this if you want to put a link from your own blog.

As far as they translate us correctly...

Have you ever noticed how kids take things we say and do and spit something back out at us that's a little off, or just funny?

Since our families live an hour or more away from us, I've taken to praying something like this "we're thankful for our families that are away from us..." Joseph translated it a litttle wrong and prayed "we're thankful our families are away from us..."

Today Caleb came back from kindergarten and indignantly told me about a little boy that said poopie. I said something about how he's a silly boy, and Caleb sighed and said "No, he just makes wrong choices sometimes."

Give me a few more days and I'll come up with much more.

Also, other news: Seth said Apple. Sort of anyway. Joseph has declared him a SuperBaby. We've been playing hide and seek a lot lately, and it's funny to watch him duck down and check under the beds all seriously. He knows exactly what to do. Hiding...we're still working on that.
Joseph's hair is growing back, which he is pleased with.
Caleb is planning his birthday party. It's at the end of May, but he's excited.
Felicity started a dance class as part of the afterschool 4H. She's having loads of fun and demonstrated a move for us during dinner the other night. Was she excited or was she putting off eating those vegetables for a little longer?

Root Beer Cookies

My camera and computer are having a tiff, so I can't post pictures on here from Christmas, so instead I'm going to post a recipe. My mom used to make these cookies, but I haven't had them for awhile. A few days ago I caught a whiff that smelled like them...and so I made a double batch today. The glaze makes this recipe, don't skip it, but don't be tempted to make it any stronger. And if you double the recipe, don't double the glaze, it makes plenty.

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 egg
1/4 cup buttermilk or water (if you don't have any buttermilk, take put 1/4 tbls of lemon juice concentrate, add enough milk to make a 1/4 cup and let sit for five minutes before adding it to the recipe)
1 tsp root beer extract (it's the same stuff you use to make home made root beer)
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Cream brown sugar, butter and egg until fluffy. Stir in buttermilk, root beer extract, flour, baking soda and salt. Mix until smooth; cover and refrigerate for at least an hour. Drop by rounded spoonfuls about two inches apart onto greased cookie sheet (if you forget to grease it, just take them off before they cool too much) Bake at 400 for 6-8 minutes. Spoon glaze on hot cookies.

Root Beer Glaze:
2 cups powered sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
2 tbls. hot water
1 1/2 tbls. Root Beer Extract

Enjoy!

And I'll see if I can get the camera and computer to make up so I can post about Christmas. =)

Whoa! He's bald!

I have to blog about this today, just because I'll sleep better getting this off my chest. Have any of you ever had one of those days when your husband walks in the door you feel like crying with relief? Because of those sweet innocent little boys you have? Look at these two, so good. Joseph was trying to read a story to Seth. He wasn't exactly sitting still, but I thought it was adorable anyway. Oh, by the way, get a good look at Joseph's hair.

All innocence this morning.

Huh. Yeah, not so innocent now. This is the second time in about half an hour that Seth decided to throw flour all about. I cleaned up the first one, walked into another room to deal with another crisis and, pow, he was back at it. So I took a picture.

So you wanted to know what the other crisis was? I was getting out my clippers. To finish a haircut. That wasn't started by me. Even though it was my SEWING SCISSORS THAT STARTED IT (sorry, just my mom's past admonishing: Don't cut ANYTHING but fabric with your sewing scissors. Huh. Maybe Grandma needs to talk to her innocent little grandson.) Don't you like how he started right in the middle of his forehead. Front and center.

I showed him a mirror and told him (I wasn't even yelling at this point-- that was before-- but I was being good now) we were going to have to cut all his hair off. He didn't really like that idea, but it had to be done. I love the expression in this picture. Very expressive.

Such a stinker.

I had to chase him around to get a picture, he was a little embarrassed. Funny the same kid who streaked in our yard is embarrassed about an (almost) naked head.

The other kids reactions were great:

Felicity: Wow, that doesn't look very good.

Caleb: Whoa! He's bald!

Seth: (pointing) Wow! hee-hee! Wow!

The rest of the night whenever Seth saw Joseph, he would laugh and say Wow! I didn't think he was old enough to really notice, but he thought it was hilarious. He even kept trying to rub Joseph's head. I've had people tell me that if you shave a baby's head they will have thicker hair when it grows back in. Hmmmm, maybe it's too late at age three, but we'll see. What a stinker. At least Seth is entertained.