Kids say the darndest things...

Our boys always keep us smiling, and Wendy has been good about writing down the funny things they say and do. Those records are already becoming real family treasures, so we thought we would share a few of them with you.


Wesley:

Out of the blue, Wesley once asked: "Do vampires have pet mosquitoes?"

Once Wesley looked at his toys, and asked "Does it say 'Made in China'?" I told him it did, and he said "Oh my gosh, like all my toys are made in China. Are all the people there Santa's elves or something?"


For family home evening, we were working on saying new things in our prayers, not just repeating the same old ones. So in his next prayer, Wesley prayed "please help us that we won't kill anyone". Fortunately, that prayer has been answered so far.

One night I burped without closing my mouth, and Wesley quickly rebuked me: "Dad, if you keep burping with your mouth open you're going to have to go talk to the bishop".

Out of the blue, Wesley said "Pigs are so lucky!". When I asked him why, he said "Because they get to play in the mud all the time."


Cameron:

We were helping our friends move, and Cameron wanted to go in and play. Wendy explained that there wasn't anything fun inside because all their toys were boxed up, and his friend Logan wasn't even there. Cameron then asked "Is Logan all boxed up?".


Cameron wanted to know exactly how old he was, and Wendy told him he was 3 years and 8 months. He said "Wow. I am two things. That's pretty big for a little guy!"

At dinner, I was going to say the prayer, and Cameron asked "can you say a long one so my biscuit can cool off?". I guess my reputation preceeds me.


Wendy and Cameron were talking about babies and how he really wants to have a sister, and said "Mommy, only boys come out of your tummy, we'll have to go to a different guy's house to get a girl" - Umm, probably no.


We were talking about how animals are useful to us, and he said, "Yeah, chickens give us french fries and pigs give us mud". Guess it's time to visit a real farm.

When we went to a chior concert, Carter would clap with everybody after the numbers were over. When Cameron saw this, he said "Look, Carter thinks he won!"


Carter:

Carter isn't saying much yet, but he still cracks us up. Whenever I'm on the computer, he walks up and pulls my hand off of the mouse, saying "no no no", and he proceeds to move the mouse around and click. I have no idea where he gets this strange affinity for computers from.


On Halloween, Carter would walk up to the houses with his bucket and knock on the door. When the people would open it, he would walk right into their house, hold his bucket out for candy, then turn around when he got something in it, and say "nay new" for thank-you, and walk out. He's a real pro already.

Flashback: Leslie comes to town

We'll probably be mixing in some older pictures in with the next few posts to get caught up. Leslie (Wendy's sister) visited us in the beginning of October for about a week, and brought her son Conner here, and we had a great visit! It was so much fun to have her here with us (and hopefully we didn't scare her away from coming back!).

Carter and Conner are pretty close in age, but Carter always wanted to grab Conner's head, so they didn't always get along super well. In fact, much of the time they were together, it looked something like this:


With poor little Conner crying because of big mean Carter, but I'm sure that will change as time goes on.

One of the neatest things is that a girl in our ward, Anna, was taught the gospel by Leslie when she was on her mission in Poland, and so they were able to get together and catch up. She has a son, Ryan, who was born just a few days after Conner, so it was fun for them to let the kids play together.

The three of them were partners in crime - it's probably good they're not always together :)


They also went with us on our visit to the pumpkin patch, and had a lot of fun!


Some other highlights from the pumpkin patch were:

Wesley learning to balance pumpkins on his head (I'll leave it up to your imagination what happened to this pumpkin seconds after this picture was taken - HINT: also the name of a one-hit wonder band from the 90's):


Cameron getting some pretty serious air on the blow-up slide:


Carter found a fun place to play peek-a-boo from:

Wesley had fun in the giant hay maze:


Then it was off to our town's firestation presentation...


There were demonstrations from all of the city's different service branches:

The guys from the SWAT team let the kids dress up and play with their gear. Wesley got decked out in a full flak-jacket, bulletproof helmet, and MP5 - he's now ready to go to Iraq and settle things down:

They had a team and dogs from search and rescue:


The boys had a great time putting out a fake fire on a dog house with a miniature fire hose:



My personal favorite demonstration was the jaws of life - where they started with a perfecly good junker car, and then just destroyed it:

First the windows were taken out:


Then the doors:


Then the entire top was removed:


Until the final product (Now it's a convertible!):


The entire process took just a few minutes. It was really amazing to me - and to think all this fun and destruction is done in the name of saving lives - can you say career change???

This was all topped off by rides on the giant fire ladder and a police bike, and all the free hot dogs and popcorn you could eat. All around, it was a really great event, and loads of fun for all.

Spooky Times!

We had a fun Halloween this year. The boys loved carving their "scary" pumpkins (they designed them on their own).


We went to the pumpkin patch again - it has become a family tradition for us to go here each year.

We had a few ideas about what to have the boys dress up as for Halloween:
A very scary soccer player...

A Mud Monster...Or perhaps Betty Boop??

Or maybe just a happy, smiling witch...


We ended up going with some more traditional characters in the end:

Nanny made the Superman and pirate costumes for Steve and Craig when they were young. It was fun that Wesley and Cameron could wear them about 20 years later.
The kids had a lot of fun trick-or-treating. Carter would just walk in the people's houses when they opened the door and make himself right at home.