A Daily Dose of Mischief

#1 aka J is turning 11 today. Here are a few pics from over the years... Baby boy! Three and a half years old Awww...Six years old Cub Scout...Eight years old Last Summer, age 10

#4: All babies start out fat and chubby. #5: No they don't! Babies start out as a spiky ball! Earlier that day I had taken #5 to Costco where he flipped through a children's book on the human body. There was a section on the beginning of life, which included a small picture of an egg being fertilized. #5 who is only four years old, pointed to the picture and asked me what that was. I replied that that is how a baby starts. He must have remembered and it stuck in his head. Thus, babies start out as a spiky ball!

We were at the beach yesterday looking at tidepools and taking some pictures. D went ahead of us and climbed up on some tall rocks so he could take pictures. We waited for him to get done. For a long time he was standing there silhouetted against the sky while he took some pictures of a lighthouse out at sea. #4 noticed D and asked me: Does Daddy have hydrothermia? Me: No, Daddy doesn't have hypothermia. #4: Then why is he just standing there not moving? I thought it was cute that #4 thought Daddy was too cold to move. It was cold, but pretty warm for February.

After reading the label on a bottle of pickle relish, #2 expressed disgust it had been around for over 100 years. We explained that the company that made the relish was 100 years old, not the product. A brief moment later, #1 said, if the relish was 100 years old, it would be called relic .

#2: If it weren't for puberty I couldn't wait to be a teenager. Then I could drive... Gold nuggets of wisdom my friends...

From T's (7-yr-old) personal prayer tonight: "Please help me to not get hurt; Please help my family to not get hurt,... [a crooked smile crept up on his face] "...except for J" [his oldest brother] Who needs Calvin and Hobbes when you can live it every day?

Every night at dinner DMo will ask the boys what they learned that day. Sometimes they they can't come up with anything, but usually they have at least something they remember talking about or learning about at school. The other day #1 said that he learned about the horrors of puberty in health class so we asked him what some of them were. He mentioned things like pimples, and B.O. #2 piped up that starting to like girls would be one of those things too. I pointed out that #1 is almost 11 and that the horror for him could start soon. DMo mentioned that he was messed up back when he was 11, and that he cried over all kinds of little things. I made a comment that he must have done all his crying back then because I have only seen him cry once in the last 13 years. #1 was curious and asked me when I had seen Dad cry, and I replied honestly, "When you were born." Somehow it came out sounding wrong, and everyone (including #1) busted up laughing.

Today our 4-year-old told me very proudly and excitedly: Now I know how to spell CTR! C-T-R. [note: CTR stands for 'Choose The Right.']