Crazy little people

L came walking in pulling a xylophone and said, "mommy look!" I replied, "what a nice xylophone." She looked at me, at it, and then held it to her ear with a slightly quizzical look and asked, "hello?"

Happy mom moments:

After dude drew a picture in church of Kylo Ren killing Han, Coop told him to draw something happier. So he drew flowers. Flowers being killed by Kylo Ren.

I was just told the RS president was in primary and asked G her name. She said it but she didn't understand twice and then G said, maybe "I'll just tell you a different name instead."

Oh and during the primary program, in which G clearly had no idea what where or who she was, we just barely stopped her from slingshotting her headband into the congregation by shaking our heads so vigorously that she actually noticed, and slowly lowered the weapon. When the teacher tried to help Dude with his part, he shook his head, looked alarmed and whispered emphatically, "I don't need that. I. Have. It. Memorized." Awesome.

After reading Corduroy, I asked dude and G to draw a picture of themselves in our house with a stuffed animal. Apparently Dude believes we live next to a jail?

For bad monsters of course.

And G thinks we live in a tent with the sheep. Ha! At least there's something to count when we can't sleep? 

G just said to Coop "mom told me to tell you to make her nachos right now or else mom will buy a gun and shoot you with a hard dart." Dad: "Nope. "Then, "Dad. I want you to stop doing what you're doing and make what I want. Think about it. In your head."

Me: "G! How could you not have seen your blanket?? You walked right over it!"

G: "well, when I walked by I was looking at the ceiling. I thought it was probably on the ceiling."

G: "look at me mom! I'm so awesome."

Grace is making up the words to a new library book she's reading to herself. Just overheard, "why did you say Boom-Shaka-laka? Bc you're awesome. Oh, ok!"

Watching Dude do math is hilarious. A word problem said a fish store had 90 fish and a customer bought 40. Dude then spent the next five minutes telling everyone who would listen, "WHY WOULD ONE PERSON NEED 40 FISH?!?!?!?" He ended up decided after considering many possibilities that the most likely reason was the guy had as a pet this giant worm thing that lives deep in the sea and eats lots of fish. Right.

Next time, maybe I shouldn't make the smoothie so thick. And yes, I did take a picture before helping her. But I felt bad about it! Face freeze!

L looked at this pic of herself and cooed, "oh what a cute little face!" This right after she'd whined and whined about her boot hurting her, only to pull a fork out of her boot minutes later.

When soccer took over our life

J's on Team Artemis (they play on full-size fields! Holy running!):

M's on the Seahawks (she was quite upset that their name didn't make any sense with their color! She wanted to be the Blazers. Good girl):

Dude's on the Hawks where they don't keep score (try telling that to the kids), and parents aren't to yell instructions from the sideline but only encouragement equally to all players on the field:

So yeah. Our Saturdays are toast. And at least one somebody has practice every evening of the week, except Friday when they go to Show-Stopping Singers. Oh and Coop is M's assistant coach. Thank heavens we decided G wasn't old enough to need to play yet!

P.S. Sometimes soccer weather in Oregon isn't all that great!

Summertime Busies

(Just found this post that I never actually published!)

L: what doing mama? 

Me: putting on mascara. 

L: why?

Me: to make my eyes pretty.

L(said in a tone that says I'm being rediculous): you no pretty mom! 

This is the face of exhaustion.

On a separate note, we happened upon an excellent way of getting through church with L! Have Grammy offend her by saying no so that L pouts on the ground. She's so dang stubborn that she will then refuse to get up or look up, and will in fact lie there so long that she'll fall asleep. Most delightful first hour of church we've had in years! Course then she may not be too happy to wake up...

Courtesy of my sister: 

G: when I grow up, I wanna be a cheetah.

Dude: you can't be a cheetah! you cannot grow up to be anything but a human.

M: you can be anything you want to be.

(So amazingly indicative of their personalities!)

She's got her own style:

Do you know how hard it is to ride a bike with somebody asleep on your arm?

Science and craft day at the library was awesome. Including the moment when L walked into a little girl who was holding her freshly painted masterpiece, and ended up with it plastered to her hair. I only stopped laughing long enough to take a picture.

Oh and there was reptile day at the library - EEK!

Read this line to G in a book, "and her heart melted." G a few pages later, very concerned asked, "so did she not have a heart anymore?"

Seconds after getting out of her bath. This girl.

Blueberries for Sal. 

25 lbs of them in less than an hour with these stellar helpers! Sure, some ran out of gas a bit before we were done and sure some of them probably should have been charged for their weight gain but I'm still impressed!

So I'm taping this instructional watercolor video and G walks up, I guess thinks I'm talking to her and starts saying ok after every sentence I say.

I just asked the kids to come do their chores and M pipes up, "it's Sunday! No work on Sunday!" Dude clarifies, "no work for ANGELS on Sunday." Not even sure what to say about that.

But we've been having tons of fun lately too while my brother's family was in town! We went to the beach where we ran like crazy from those ice-cold waves:

Dug holes to sit in:

And got comforted when the waves were faster than we were:

Oh and we went to the zoo:

And to Omsi too: 

Future chemists in the house?

Or perhaps Martians? Only time can tell.