Conjugating verbs with Todd

Earlier today Todd told me he hadn't been feeling well this morning. "My stomach was hurting for a while," he said, " but then the feeling subsided." I mentioned to Jack that Todd's vocabulary really impresses me sometimes.

After Todd arrived home from Youth this evening, he told me he had presented his pollution project in his literacy class today. The following conversation ensued.

Me: "How did it go?"

Todd: "I think I done great!"

Me: "Todd, you need to phrase that properly."

Todd: " I think I done fantastic?"

Me: "Agh! No. Rephrase that sentence."

Todd: "I done great?"

Me: "No."

Kyle whispered in Todd's ear.

Todd: "I done good?"

Me: "Double agh! Now there are two things wrong in your sentence!"

Todd: "Oh! I done VERY good!"

Sometimes his vocabulary impresses me. Occasionally, it doesn't.

I congratulated him on a job well done.

Then I sat him and Kyle down for a discussion about past and perfect form verbs, with a quick review of adverbs.

I think I done pretty good.

I am a pitiful blogger

It is sad that all of this last year's posts fit on the front page of my blog. I miss blogging, though.

I have managed to squeeze some time in to scrap in the last couple of months. I figured if I shared some of those, I might get a few things covered at once.

Basically, my kids are growing. (Faster everyday.)

Chet is still being seen regularly and staying pretty stable.

We had a fun, busy summer!

I still get a kick out of letting the kids and grandkids do silly things.

School has been going well, and I don't have pictures up yet, but we got Matt off to college where he is thriving!

Did I mention my kids are growing up too fast?

We have had a great year with family visiting.

And even though there are always struggles to deal with, we still spend as much time laughing and enjoying life as we can.

So how have you all been?

Portraiture

Beth has been working on her art skills. Her siblings have been her unwitting models.

I love how she showed her series of practice portraits on Faith's drawing. Faith has been asking me to let her dye her hair. I think this shade of blue looks stunning on her. 

Beth really captured Todd's personality in the expression on his face in this one. I don't think she missed a single freckle! He does have two ears in real life, though. I know - I counted them when he was born!

Apparently Beth only sees Kyle in black and white. And he doesn't even get a name banner or hearts on his page. At least she still sees him as human, though....

because she apparently thinks Todd is a little bit "squirrely."

There are some things you hear all the time when you have a houseful of kids. One of the top ten has to be, "I would go insane with all those kids around!" Naaahhh... I don't have time to be insane, but more importantly, I like these strange little people. I like picking a new "favorite" everyday. I like experiencing all their different personalities and quirks, and I like to laugh. The simple truth is that no matter how busy, how stressful, or how downright worrisome life can be sometimes, these guys keep me laughing with all their antics. All. The. Time.

I have to laugh when Beth just has to kiss the first frog she has caught this season.  I won't let her kiss me until she has sterilized her face, but I will laugh! (Nope, this one wasn't a prince either.)

I have to laugh when Ariel thinks seeing Beth kiss that frog is the funniest thing she has seen in a while. (I am so used to Beth's froggy antics that I forget what it can be like for someone new to witness the obsession first hand.)

I have to laugh when my little boys decide to play "World War Z"... and then arm themselves with pillows, hunting caps, skate helmets, baseball helmets, hoodies, blanket capes, nerf guns, and paper guns to go save the world. Apparently with all that protection, Todd doesn't need shoes. Shoes are for wimps!

I have to laugh when Faith falls asleep in the middle of solving a puzzle, but won't let go of the pen as I unsuccessfully try to take it out of her hand without waking her. Her sleeping death grip is amazing.

I have to laugh while Chet is so engrossed in reading a book that he doesn't hear an entire baseball audience hollering, "Chet!!!! Head's Up!!!!" This was funny until the ball landed four feet away from him. Jack sent him to the truck to read. Chet jokingly wondered why he was being 86'ed from a game. That is what happens when you give your dad a heart attack when he sees a ball flying pretty much straight to your lost-in-your-book head!

Jack and I both started laughing when we pulled up to pick Faith up from track practice, and saw her grinning at us around a bag of ice pressed to her cheek. Instead of going over the hurdle she went through it, and then proceeded to drag the hurdle another 25 feet face first in the dirt. It doesn't sound like it should be funny, but her remarks were hilarious.She is so proud that she didn't cry, and is mostly disappointed that it didn't turn into a brilliant black and blue eye. Yep, if you're not going to cry about it, it is best to laugh it off!

And I have to laugh when I am driving down the road, and hear Todd and Kyle joking around in the back seat, causing Todd to laugh so hard he starts crying, which makes Kyle laugh more, which makes Todd laugh and cry harder, which makes Kyle start snorting, which makes Todd laugh so hard he loses his breath. I don't even know what they were joking about. It must have been pretty funny, though.

They say with kids there is never a dull moment.

I beg to differ. In my life, there is never a dull nano-second. I never know what they will say, do, or come up with next.

And I like it that way.

Our jack-0-lantern pack

I haven't had time to post about it, but we had a big fire this summer. Our storage shed and their contents were lost. Part of those contents were our holiday decorations, so our home is woefully decorated for the fall. Brandon and Jessica took care of that, though, and came home with half a pumpkin patch and some carving tools. Last night the kids set to work giving them all some faces.

Beth liked cutting the cap off of her pumpkin, but she was less than impressed with the goo-removal process.
(She thinks this is gross, but manhandles frogs and worms all the time. Strange child.)

Soon everybody was deep into the process of de-gunking the pumpkins.

Faith was the first one done scraping hers out. Please don't ask me why she has this expression on her face. She is about to become a teenager, and all kinds of weird things are happening with her lately.

Speaking of weird.... Kyle, why?

Won't do that again, will you?

Todd can't resist.... if he sees me aiming a camera at somebody and he has nothing better to do, he just has to make a Broadway slide into the shot.

Finally all the goop was disposed of, and the stenciling and carving began.

Todd wanted a werewolf, but upon completion he decided his looks like a Razorback. Woo Pig Sooie!

Chet had some kind of screaming face, but it fell off right after he stood up. It is now precariously balanced on the tips of its teeth. He is the only that actually modeled his pumkpin carving.

Kyle made his own pattern.

Beth's took a while to get done. I missed getting shots of Jessica, Brandon, and Faith with their creations.

In the end, though, Beth had a cute pumpkin.

We took them all out on the porch and lit up the night with them.

Then the best thing happened.... Brandon cleaned up all the mess, leaving nary a seed nor glop of goop behind.

The Coconut Experience

A few weeks ago Todd  asked me to buy a coconut for him. Somewhere along the line he had read about drinking coconut milk from the coconut, and decided he wanted to try it. In fact, he even asked me to make sure it had "fresh milk" in it.

How does one ensure a coconut is fresh? I truly don't know, so I offered to go on a tropical vacation and pick him one straight from a tree. To my deep consternation, he didn't want me to do that. It would take too long.

So I went to Walmart and found my monkey a coconut. Then he had to wait three days due to back-to-back football games to try it. When we got home from his Saturday game, he immediately got his coconut out of the fridge and got Jack to drill it open for him.

Then he found a straw, and with every ounce of pent-up anticipation in his little frame, he took a deep drink of his coconut milk.

The verdict?

He wasn't impressed. So Beth tried it...

and wasn't impressed.

So Kyle tried it... and wasn't impressed.

This has me thinking I really should go on a tropical vacation and bring home a coconut with fresh milk to see if we might get better results.  I would make that kind of sacrifice for my children because I am a vacation-starved loving mom that way.

Don't worry about the rest of the coconut going to waste, though. After his initial disappointment, Todd perked right up. "Mom!" he said, "If you can find me some long grass to make a hulu skirt out of, I can turn this into a coconut bra and do the hulu dance for Halloween!"

On second thought, maybe I better stay home and make sure my boy isn't going out in public wearing a coconut bra.

Extortion in Church

As we sat in church yesterday, I noticed Kyle and Beth passing notes. When they went up to the front for the children's sermon, I read the notes and discovered a hot bed of extortion and conspiracy.

I suppose it started out innocently enough. Kyle wanted some more paper to draw on, but he wasn't asking for it very nicely.

Beth responded with a terse "no", wherein Kyle proceeded with his extortion tactics.

This apparently did not sit well with Beth, who threatened to blow the whole thing wide open with an ill-timed screaming match.

She even drew a picture to let Kyle know how this would not be pretty.

Thank goodness the Children's Sermon began when it did. Who knows how far they would have taken this!