Indeed

Lilly brought home a 9-1-1 info booklet from pre-school. Lilly and Will were both sitting at the counter with me while I was flipping thru it so I asked them both, "When do we call 9-1-1?" William had a quick answer, "When there's a fire." I agreed but asked further, "When else do we call 9-1-1?" William had another quick answer, "When we make a big fire by accident without asking."

(We stopped talking so as not to encourage any more great ideas.)

He's got IT!

Oh, yeah! It's finally happened! One of my kids was finally funny so I get to write another blog! None of the 5 kids have done or said anything funny since June 18th so it was such a relief when I overheard this awesome conversation between Will and his friend Colten.

Artistic Beauty

Remember in "Toy Story 2" when mint-in-the-box Stinky Pete is plopped into a little girl's backpack and Barbie with graffiti all over her face turns to Stinky Pete and says, "You'll like Julie--she's an ARTIST!" Well, at our house we say, "You'll like Lilly--she's an ARTIST!"

Firstly, she's a make-up artist:

And lately she's been showing off her flower-arranging skills by leaving bouquets on my bedside table:



And boy oh boy! Has she been sharpening her eye-hand coordination lately! She started with paper....







...but plain old paper got boring so she took her scissors to my new geranium, creating a new artsy look to my bathroom:








And since I just don't have the creative eye to create proper decoration in my bedroom, she spruced it up with bright red crayon all over my bed and bedspread (pictures couldn't do it justice) and even in the entry on the tile, down the hall, on the glass and on the doors.



Look, she chose smiley faces to cheer us all up!




And lastly, she drew a pencil mural for her favorite brothers just outside their bedroom door and she even made it life-size, just for them. She sure loves them!

"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost." -Isak Dineson

Comfort Food

Anne loves to cook. And to bake. And to eat cooking and baking. And to leave nice big messes for Mom to clean up afterwards. She loves macaroni and cheese. She loves homemade macaroni and cheese. Usually when she asks if I will make macaroni and cheese I answer, "If you'll help me make it!" I thought about letting Anne make a batch all by herself. I only thought for a minute about the cake she recently made that she forgot to put flour in. And I only thought for 2 or 3 minutes about the microwavable macaroni and cheese that Anne left the water out of.



Yummy. Smelled that one for over a week.

Needless to say, I helped Anne with her homemade macaroni and cheese. I let her start the sauce of butter and flour and spices while I worked on the noodles and cheese. When it was time to add Anne's sauce to my noodles and cheese, I was having a hard time combining everything. It was just seperating so much. I thought it was because we were in a hurry and didn't cook the sauce long enough to get it thick. Oh, well, gotta hurry. Popped the really soggy dish in the oven, only to pull it out and grab the paper towels to swab up all the grease off the top. I mean, I know this is a comfort food dish but sheesh, I should feel a little more guilty about enjoying this one, it's just so greasy! After blotting and blotting and blotting and blotting with only more grease flowing up to the top, I started getting suspicious and asked Anne about the butter. She replied she put in a cup just like the recipe said. So I looked at the recipe. Yep, half a cup is called for.

My solution: let it stand for about an hour, stir like crazy and keep heaping it on my 37-pound 3rd-grader's plate. Hmmmmm, commmmmfort.

I love Anne.

(Go ahead, click on the picture to get the FULL effect):

Excuses, excuses...

I'm late posting--it's been more than a month. I was too busy with Spring Break:

Are you saying I'm...?

The other day I was sitting with Oliver on the porch (in the sun!) when the kids (big kids) came home from school. Our neighbor Shaun Pace pulled up in his little white car and kids started piling out of it. This was unusual as normally it is Shaun's wife pulling up in her big minivan. (Like that oxymoron?) Anne ran up to me on the porch and panted, "Wow! The Bishop drove his car today and me and Isaac and Emily and Kaitlin barely FAT!!!!"

We'll Sure Miss Him...

Memorial Day 2002

We were up very late as we were out playing for the holiday and it was 11:30 PM(!) by the time I was getting Anne in bed. After she was in bed, she yelled from her room, "Mom, we forgot to read the scriptures!" My response from the other room was, "Well, we'll have to read two tomorrow--it's too late now."

Anne's next inquiry was strange: "What if the President gets mad?"
"What President?" I asked.
Anne (very annoyed) responded, "You KNOW--the one who talks on TV!"
Mom: "What president? President Hinckley?" (made most sense to me)
Anne's response was now not annoyed by rather unsure: "No, the one who talks in wars..."
"President Bush?"
"Yah."
"He won't get mad. Good night."

Go Mike!

Surprise! It hasn't even been a month!

So Lilly is a singer. Dave noticed this too and commented recently, "She's got music in her!" Indeed she does. The other day she was singing Angels We Have Heard on High while she was coloring: "Come little saw door him!" But my favorite was when she was singing Michael Row the Boat Ashore -- I liked her version better: "Michael row the whore ashore!"

I'm sure the picture in your mind is the same as mine, just admit it.

Maxwell Calvin Waddell

Isaac very often wears his wolf suit. And makes mischief of one kind and other. But he's never been sent to bed without his supper. Yet.

Anne gave Max I mean Isaac a Calvin and Hobbes book for Christmas. He loves it. I started finding it beside his bed in the morning. I would move the book to see where it would be the next morning. It was always back by his bed the next morning. Soon a flashlight started showing up with the book. Isaac started being less and less cooperative during the day and the dark circles under his eyes became very apparent.

One morning the book and the flashlight weren't there. I was nice enough to straighten up his bed. Aaahhh, there they were: under the pillow.

I needed to take things into my own terrible claws. So one night about half an hour after putting Isaac to bed, I snuck back into Isaac's room. He was rolled up into a cocoon snoring loudly. I was almost convinced...until I found the Calvin and Hobbes book under his cocoon and, searching a little harder, I found the flashlight waiting for me...


...and it was still hot.

Smart Little Buggars

So I need to hurry and write something before it's been a month since I've written something. Oh brother.

I have to go back a few weeks (or has it been a few months? I can't remember? Oh brother) to an incident I had with Lillian.

Lillian is definitely imaginative. Let me start with how the incident ended and work backwards. I was sleeping on my bed. I should put "sleeping" in parenthesis. I wasn't sleeping. I was lying on my bed. (I almost wrote "laying" but I could hear Mom in my head saying, "Chickens lay eggs.") So I was not laying or sleeping on my bed but my body was on my bed. I was very out-of-it. I had the stomach flu. Again. Lilly came screeching in from the living room, crying hysterically and scolding me, "I told you not to do that!! I told you not to put those in there!!!" (repeat 7 times) I roused myself enough to find out where I was and I tried to settle Lilly down. What had I done? I could barely understand her through the sniffling and snorting, "I told you not to put the bugs in there!! I told you not to!" Even in my bleary-eyed state, things clicked in my head very quickly. "Bring me your pot, Lilly," I commanded as coherently as I could.

There they were. Two nice, fat, wiggly, white, completely disgusting worms wriggling around in the little play pot that Lilly was cooking something (not worms!) in just a few minutes ago.

Backing up: I had been trying to stay in the living room with Lilly that morning while I had the stomach flu so she wouldn't be lonely. I think being lonely is better than being accompanied by a barfing mother. When Lilly saw that I was sick and lying on the couch, she was kind enough to bring me her miniature play pot to serve as my throw-up catcher. She liked the idea of the play pots so she got the rest of them out and left one on my arm as a precaution I'm sure. Then she found the acorns to play with--the acorns she and Will had painted (?) with Grandma and Grandpa. She rested an acorn on my arm so that I could "participate" in what she was doing. Not long after that I had to make a run for the bathroom so I dropped the acorn in her pot and told her to cook it for me while I was gone. After the stop-off in the bathroom, I placed my body on the bed and drifted off, only to be awaken by Lilly's accusatory screams.

Like I said, it took a few minutes for my groggy mind to put it together but I was still amazed: How did those little things know to hatch out of that acorn right at that exact moment? I couldn't help but sneak out a little laugh.

Smart little buggars.

(Whew, made it with 20 minutes to spare before a month was up! Oh brother.)

Why Will! What a big nose you have!

Lilly and Will in the kitchen. Lilly crying. I come in and ask, “What’s the matter?” Will answers, “I didn’t hurt her. She fell right here.” (Hits his head on the island on the opposite side of the island Lilly is on.) I respond, “No, she wasn’t even on that side.” Will runs around to the end of the island, “Okay. How about right here? (bonks head) She hurt herself right here.”

Nice try, buddy.

Epilogue

Just in case the last post seemed a bit too cutesy:

A little while ago I noticed the Snuggle Puppy poster on the ground in Will's room (with everything else he and Isaac own) and when I peered a little closer I noticed markings all over the Puppy. I also noticed a Bic pen lying on the ground with everything else Will and Isaac own so I asked Will what all the markings were. They were arrows. Not the kind in a compass, the kind Robin Hood owns. Apparently Snuggle Puppy is now Slaughtered Puppy.

Oooodalolly ooodalolly!

Puppy Love

So the other day Will's teacher called me during school. I answered the phone rather nervously, wondering what was wrong. She informed me that Will had won a coloring contest and as a prize, he could choose a poster at the Book Fair and could I come and help him pick one out? Yes, you read that right: Will won a coloring contest.

I went after school and took Will up to the Book Fair to see the 3 giant boxes of posters he could choose from. He was clueless as to what was going on. I told him we would look through the posters in one box and then after he saw them all, he could choose. The very first poster we saw was a cute little puppy. We continued to flip for a few minutes past all kinds of posters of teen idols, Spiderman motorcycles and lots of "sweet" shiny sports cars. Three-fourths of the way through the box, there was a pink poster with hearts and a grey kitty. After seeing them all, it came down to the pink kitty or the snuggly puppy. A hard decision but the puppy came home with us. How appropriate for the snuggle bug of the family.