The things they say . . .

My nephew, Jonny, was over for the afternoon. As he walked through the room, I noticed an unpleasant odor following him, so I asked, "Jonny, are you stinky?"

Owen was nearby and came to the rescue, "I'll check, Mom."

He leans over, sniffs Jonny's backside and states, "Oh yeah, Jonny stepped on a duck."



No, I have no idea where most of his comment come from . . .

Baby Girl's First Steps

They must be homeschooled . . .

I have accumulated quite a collection of highly intellectual tidbits from my kids lately . . .

***
One child was watching Bugs Bunny. Bugs is tunneling along and pops up into the screen and is bewildered about where he is. Come to find out he should have taken a right turn at Albuquerque . . . but that is beside the point. He looks around and spots a few familiar sights such as the Eiffel Tower and various French road signs. He perks up and begins to munch a carrot as he states, "Oh, I must be in Paris!"

My child turns to me and remarks, "What? I thought the Eiffel Tower was in France?"

***
Carra wants to know why everyone in our family is white . . . but Owen is tan . . .

***
A child was looking for a specific book in the "For Dummies" series and went to search the library catalog. This child returned without a book, so I asked what happened.

This child stated, "I gave up. I couldn't spell the word 'dummies'."

I'm still giggling.

***
Carra peeled an onion and stuffed it in her pocket. (No, I don't know why.) She came to me a bit disturbed because she didn't know why her eyes kept watering.

***
We were reading a book together and a discussion about the Queen of England came up. The kids began to speculate about where she is from originally (too many Princess Diaries type movies - I'm wondering if they think all royalty is just "discovered"). One child pipes up excitedly . . . "Oh, I know where she is from. She is from Kentucky."

Seriously, of all the places to choose . . .

(In this child's defense, we had recently watched a PBS documentary on the Queen's visit to the U.S. and it briefly described her attendance to the Kentucky Derby while she was here. That was the only part of the documentary in which the child was listening . . . which is ironic because I stopped listening to the child explain this because I was giggling so hard.)

***
And as every cultured child should, Owen has learned a little poetry . . .




Yeah, they're homeschooled . . .

Chicago . . .

We LOVE Chicago.

Our friends are nice too.

But we LOVE Chicago.

Recently we went down to visit our nice friends . . . and being the nice friends that they are . . . they help us to enjoy Chicago without the extra hassles of parking and getting lost.

Okay. We LOVE our friends too.

The first place they took us was the "Bean."

Here is our family photo under the "Bean." I think I'm going to use it for this year's Christmas card. It was a good hair day and everyone was smiling.


Apparently . . .they glued the thing down because Brice and Owen just couldn't budge the thing.


In case you were wondering . . .

I was there too . . .

And there were lots of kiddos. I have no idea who those other kids are, but they were so happy to get their picture taken with my kids that I just couldn't say no.

Actually, they belong to the nice people who made this day possible. Don't you love the Chicago skyline in the "Bean"?

Brice pulled the usual Powers stunt . . . .

and landed safely . . .

Sometimes I wonder who is the bigger idiot. The one jumping or the one snapping pictures of it . . . must be genetic . . .

We then found a fun area for the kids to splash around . . .




and we were exposed to true Chicago culture . . .

Just so you know . . .
This . . .
is . . .
art . . .

We waited around and watched a guy's face twitch and smirk at us . . . and then act like he was spitting on us.

You just can't dream up memories like this . . .

And that's why we LOVE Chicago . . .

A bloggable life . . .

As life happens around here, I always picture in my head how I would blog it. I think in blog format. I plan for blog format. I just rarely blog in blog format. Ironically, it is because of that thing called life that is always happening around here.

I am always taking pictures. The camera sits on my counter . . . just in case something "bloggable" runs through the kitchen. Like the day I was having a serious conversation on the phone. The woman on the other end was crying and pouring out her heart to me . . . and Owen and Carra raced through the kitchen . . . with underwear on their heads.

I totally missed it.

I just couldn't figure out how to put the poor woman on hold so I could photograph our crazy life that was running through the kitchen - at the worst possible moment.

You would have loved that post . . . just imagine . . . Buzz Lightyear . . . and two ready-made eyeholes . . .

But . . . I did manage to get this . . .

As the story goes . . .

Carra and Owen play very well together (well . . . most of the time). On this particular day, the older kids were gone all day so Carra and Owen were left to entertain themselves.

Carra decided that it would make the day more interesting if she and Owen traded identities. You know, she would become Owen and he would become her. Brilliant.

So, they traded clothes and practiced answering to each other's names. To complete the deal and make it "official" . . . she spit in his mouth . . . so he would become her - and he totally went along with it. Not so brilliant. It worked for a while until Owen wanted to be Owen again, so he spit back at her.


She was no longer in control . . . . and that irritated her . . . so she gave him a mohawk.

There is a green stamp on his head too. I think it was part of the initiation . . . little green giraffes. Makes total sense - cuz Carra always has one of those on her head.

By the way, the greasy look to her hair is gel. They really tried to give her a mohawk too . . . but quickly realized it just wasn't going to work.

Yes, that night became bath night.

This is the kind of stuff that makes up my life. I have so much more I want to say, but so little time to share . . . but stay tuned . . . just in case I have another spare minute . . . because my camera is full again.