Max Said This

If I were on track, I would have, by my estimate, 16 blog posts by this point in the year if I had posted every week.  This is post #9.  So...I'm behind, but not so far behind that reaching my goal of 52 is totally out of reach.  Let's do this.

So, one of the things I occasionally do--some may even say it's something I like to do, though that's probably up for debate--is make crazy and purposefully lame raps to try to get the kids to laugh or smile or acknowledge my presence.  It's usually free style, which means that it's pretty terrible.

One of the kids' favorites from past attempts is:

Pajamas, pajimmas, I like to go swimming.

(Yes, you can see why I'm the guitarist in the band, not the singer or lyricist.)

Well, today I was at it again when Max stopped me and said, "Dad, you shouldn't rap.  Rappers use cuss words, and that's not good."

I then tried to explain to him that not all rappers used cuss words and attempted to demonstrate:

Sit down and press play on the recorder
Your room has lots of stuff in it because you are a hoarder

(Don't judge me.  They are purposefully bad.  Seriously.  Purposefully.)

Max then proceeded to explain, and I quote, "Dad, that is still offensive to me.  You called me a hoarder."

I'm glad that the boy has high standards.  But, I guess it's time for me to hang up the giant clock around my neck for good and stick with what I actually do well musically: listen to the radio at deafening volumes.

Olivia's Obstacle Course

So, I'm downstairs working on putting the living room back together after we brought desks, crayons, rolling chairs, floormats, "conference packets," , games, baby dolls, notebooks, pens, bowls of treats and dress up clothes downstairs to be able to watch General Conference and make sure we had all of the tools necessary to get as much out of it as possible.

From upstairs, Kaitlyn calls out, "Umm...Dad.  Can you up here for a minute?" in that tone of voice--the half-puzzled, half Houston-we-have-a-problem one.  I paused my vacuuming and sauntered upstairs to investigate what the problem, or potential problem, might be.

When I got there, Kaitlyn said, "Look what Olivia did--all by herself" and pointed to the most unique indoor obstacle course anyone in the family has ever assembled:

She had lined up the indoor slide at the top of the 2 stairs that step down into Alison and Kailyn's room to land on the indoor, mini trampoline.  From there, it stepped back up onto Kaitlyn's gymnastics pad which was folded in thirds. 

Next to that, she had dumped out one of the bins of toys from the play room and turned it upside down to serve as a giant step stool onto the kids play table which she had also brought in from the play room.

She then proceeded to show me how it worked (click to view):

Of course, once the older kids (who weren't too big to break the thing) saw how it was done, they wanted in on the action.

My first instinct was to bust them, but, then I thought, let's party!

Fortunately, they were able to cry hysterically when I asked them to take it down so that Ali and Kaitlyn could actually get in and out of their bedroom and go to bed.