General Awesomeness

Our family is awesome.  I say this because Halloween was even better this year than last year.  We had a costume party with the kids at Uncle Kenny’s and another one for adults at our house.  We had fake mustaches for everyone and got people to dance on video to our X-Box Just Dance game.  That’s right.  We have footage of a church-acquaintance dressed up like Winnie-the-Pooh and dancing to Kung Fu Fighting (you know who you are).  Linda was Maid Marian.  Kenny was . . . Kenny.  A 1985 version of quarterback Kenny that should never die.  Talia bought a complete Disney Belle costume and had her friend put her hair in an up-do. 

Mike and I were Napoleon Dynamite and a disco dancer, respectively, except I performed the Napoleon Dynamite dance, not him.  Lina was actually embarrassed of me.  That’s how awesome I was.  I’m sorry, but you just don’t get happiness like that Halloween very often.  Carter watches the dancing video on my foot nearly every day and I get happy every time I hear the music even if I’m serving dinner.  (My thoughts on dinner) 

An Awesome Sunset from our Neighborhood

The weather has been so gorgeous that Mike and I made a grave error.  We took our entire family of seven to a BYU game even though the forecast called for snow.  It was as if we’d forgotten what snow was.  Snow is cold.  Snow is wet.   Snow makes babies cry and three-year-old refuse to go potty so that you have to force them onto the toilet so that they pee on their underwear anyway because of Mom-caused aim-issues and then their shoe falls into the toilet while you’re changing their clothes in a 30 degree bathroom while BYU grandmas shiver in the background offering to help because that’s just how BYU is.  Holy cow, no wonder the tickets were free.  Next year we must try a warm game.  Mike, Lina, and Cora stayed the entire time and enjoyed it.  The rest of us went out for hot cocoa and visited with our awesome friend, Heather, who provided Fairy Princess underwear for Carter and pants, too.  (We’re equal-opportunity-underwear people.)

Kid quotes:

Oh my gosh—the word “wonky.”  How have I mentioned wonky to you yet?  Carter is in love with his invented word.  It’s a noun.  It’s a verb.  It’s an adjective.  It is everything you ever dreamed it would be.

“I just wonky this one.”

“I wonky eat it!”

“Yeah, it’s the big, big, wonky underwear.  It’s the only, only big one.  Yeah, I need actually underwear.”

“I need to hello to him.  Wait, what is this wonkies in here?”

“I climb over you for the wonky pillow.”

“That’s a huge, huge wonky.”

“No, go this wonky!”

We try to get Carter to describe what the wonky is, which leads to discussions like the following:

Cora: What is a wonky?

Carter:  It’s not a wonky wonky.

Cora: It’s not  a wonky wonky?

Carter: Yes. 

 

Meanwhile, Mia and Cora have decided to speak just like adults, except that Mia still has a munchkin voice and Cora can’t quite say her r’s.

Mike: Mia, your hair is so thick.

Mia:  Yes.  It has a mind of its own.

 

Cora: I know where Wrachal’s house is.  I think I know.  I’m 70% sure.  (Mike trusted her and alas, the 30% won out.  We just think it’s so funny that she quantifies her certainty.)

 

Mike: My forearms are so sore.

Mia: (Laughing)  You only have two arms!

 

Mia: (while in the car) Who is going faster, us or the trees?

Me: Trees don’t move, silly.   So we’re moving faster.

Mia: No, they are moving.

Me: If you stood by the tress, would it look like the car is moving?

Mia:  Yes.  But we’re in the car so the trees are moving.

Me:  That’s called point of reference.

Mia:  Is big the same as tall?

Me: Big can mean tall or wide or heavy.

Mia:  Oh, that tree is wide, not tall.

Me:  That’s right.

Mia is so logical.  It’s delicious to me.  She’s also the one who reminds me daily of the large reminder on my calendar: HENDRIX IS ALLERGIC TO PEANUT BUTTER.  I have almost killed our four-year-old neighbor twice.  Meaning, I was bribing him to eat peanut butter by coating it with honey because he said he didn’t like it, and it was on his lips twice.  And both times, he’s got it on his mouth and says, really confused, “But I’m allergic to peanut butter.”  And then I freak out and make him wash all over.  We gave him hives one time.  I don’t know what is wrong with me. 

 

Mia: Guys, guys.  I think we need to focus on the mousetraps.

Cora: I love how Mia just said, “focus.”

Me and Talia: (laughing)  Did you just hear them?

We were talking about mousetraps because we had mice.  Talia saw one in the bathroom and ran back in with a bowl to catch it.  It was hilarious.  Needless to say, the mouse won that round.  We never even managed to locate it again.  A trap worked a few days later.

Carter: (distraught)  I broke my naked! 

No amount of talking convinced him that he’d cut the skin of his stomach.  No, he’d broken his naked.  That’s what he gets for running around with no clothes on all the time, often singing:

Carter : (♫) I am a nakey-pants, fooling around.

Recently Carter ran out of sacrament meeting and I followed him (without running, unwisely).  He circled the building, ran back into the chapel from the other side (this time with his pants down because they’d fallen down again), raced past the pulpit, and then settled back in with the family like nothing happened. 

This leads to comments like the one overheard in primary:

First Counselor:  I just love seeing Carter running around; all his boy parts hanging out.

The day I got a call from Melanie, who got a call from Lynette, who got a call from Kaylee that Carter and Melanie’s daughter, Taryn, were running down the middle of the street while I was “babysitting” (sad that I have to put that in quotes), I rushed to save their lives thinking, “At least Carter’s pants are still up.  How surprising.”  Carter escapes the house without me noticing pretty frequently.  Sometimes he goes to friends’ houses.  Sometime he transports all of the bicycles in the garage to a patch of grass four houses down for no apparent reason. 

Graham likes to empty kitchen drawers and the fill them.  I pulled one out and this is what I found underneath:

That’s right, Graham’s private stash includes bottles and medicine droppers.  Make of that what you will.

Okay, that’s it for this post.  Sorry there’s not much about Lina.  She does chores and homework and is generally awesome, too.  She was a gypsy or a disco dancer for Halloween, depending on her mood.  Today she went to her dance class barefoot so as not to mess up her ballet shoes in the rain (Yes, rain!  In November!) and I honestly thought, “I should carry her so her feet don’t get wet.”  Um . . . she’s like forty pounds past those days.  But it doesn’t seem that long ago, I swear!!!