Peek a boo!

Keeley loves to play peek a boo. She will cover her eyes for a second, then pull them away and smile at you.

 It is funny and cute and just so sweet.

She sometimes gets going too fast, and barely covers her eyes at all before pulling them away, and there is no time to even say boo before she covers them back up. If she really gets going, she just pats, pats, pats over her eyes.

She is a cutie!

funny kids

The kids are always saying some pretty silly or strange things--here are a few of them.

Isaac adds endings onto nouns to turn them into adjectives. For intance, he has said, "that shirt is pretty Halloweeniful." 

Isaac knows how to say first, but if he is trying say an ordinal number that comes after that, like second or third, he will say "the twof," or "threef." At least he's aware the word should be different, right?

At Christmastime, Isaac's class had to color a picture of Santa stuck in the chimney and write what they would do to help him. Isaac's paper said, "if santa was stuck in the chimney--I'd jump on his bottom." That made me laugh.

On the drive back and forth from Grammy Jo and Bampa's house, there are a lot of empty stretches of road. The only real cities we pass though are Kingman and Wickenberg. On our last trip, after passing Hoover Dam and driving for a bit, Isaac asked, "Are we at Kingberger yet?"

One day when I was in my swimming suit, Isaac looked at my tummy (which admittedly is rather large, unfortunately) and said, "Maybe one of your eggs is trying to hatch."

When Sareny was younger, she had a lot of strange ways of saying things. Here are a few of them.
pretend--tootend, Hannah Montana--hanna tana, Hair-do--hair stu, Excuse me--weesies. She also didn't like sleeping in her big girl bed and always wanted to either sleep in our bed or have us lay with her until she fell asleep. She would say, "I'm too lonn," meaning I'm too lonely.

The other day, Sareny was asking us, "Who's that scary guy bampa is always talking about?" It took some detective work, but Keith figured out she was talking about when Bampa tells them spooky stories about Injun Joe from Tom Sawyer. Sareny said, "Engine Joe--I knew it started with a train, like Train Joe."

I have taken some flack over the years for mishearing the lyrics to a song from The Parent Trap. Apparently the line says, "A gruesome twosome we will be." And I mistakenly said, "A busta-chusta we will be." What is a busta-chusta, you ask? I have absolutely no idea. We've decided Sareny is as bad as me at mishearing song lyrics. The other day she was singing along to a song by One Direction that says, "Baby just shout it out, shout it out, yeah." And she was singing, "Baby just sha-vida, sha-vida, yeah." She didn't know what shavida meant either.

Finley is well known around these parts for her wicked temper tantrums. One day Keith and I were eating drumsticks, and Finley came in and saw us and wanted one. We had two kinds of drumsticks in the freezer--the kind with nuts and some with a cookie topping, and Finley only liked the cookie kind. I told Keith "Go find out if we have any of those cookie kinds left, or if Finley is going to throw a fit." When he came in, she said "Is I'm going to throw a fit?"

Finley had the spotlight bag for primary, and she was supposed to bring in some items that she liked. She packed the bag by herself, but not knowing that she had already put a watch in, I put in a pretty one that I knew she liked. When she pulled the first watch out, she said, "I like to wear watches." Later when she pulled the second watch out, I was wondering what she was going to say. Apparently, she's a fast thinker, because she said, "I like to know what time it is."

One day I heard her playing piano with her friend. Finley was playing the lower notes and the friend was playing the higher notes. Finley said to her friend, "I'll play the bad notes and you do the good ones."

A few months ago, she had to go to the dentist for some fillings, and it took two appointments. At the second appointment, she asked me, "Are my lips going to be yum again?" Since then she has said a couple of times, "Remember when I went to the dentist and my lips were yum?" When we left the dentists office, he said she should eat soft food and listed a few things, including scrambled eggs. When we got home, that is what she wanted to eat. Later in the day, she said, "I want some more rotten eggs."

Pretty much everytime she says a prayer, she includes, "Thank thee that keekee will stop biting mommy's boobies." I think we're all looking forward to that day...

One Sunday she was getting ready for church and said she was going to wear her boots and put on perfume because, "I want to look 'tacular."

The other day, Finley's friend Sydney said, "Keeley still looks cute, even though she had to get her beautiful helmet off."

One of Keeley's favorite things to do is pinch me repeatedly (rather hard, I might add) and say "Ow!" with each pinch.

Another of her favorite games is dropping her sippy cup repeatedly on the floor and saying, "Uh-oh!" each time. You, of course, keep handing it to her, and she starts dropping it practically before you even let go of the cup. She also likes to walk around the house holding various items (phones, remotes, crackers, whatever is handy) up to her head and saying, "Hi!" repeatedly.

I love these cute and silly kiddos!

Memorial Day Weekend at the Ostrich Ranch

We had so much fun when we visited the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch at Picacho Peak last year that we took the kids back for a Memorial Day trip. The first feeding station is these donkeys, and I think it's because they are the easiest and least scary to feed. Keeley thought it was pretty silly when they licked the food off her hand.

 Sareny and Isaac were both willing to give it a try.

But this is about as close as Finley was willing to get. No amount of coaxing would convince her to hold her hand up to a large animal's mouth. She would occassionally toss food in their general direction.

 Keeley thought if she pointed at her brain, we would all know how smart she is.

 These donkeys really were pretty gentle.

Keeley was pretty good natured the whole day. I love this picture of her and Keith with Picacho Peak in the background.

 Next up were the deer, which were only slightly scarier/more aggressive than the donkeys.

Finley's favorite thing to feed is the goats...as long as they are up at the top of their goat penthouse. You put the food in a little cup that is attached to this belt system, then crank the food up to the goats waiting at the top.

  The kids all really liked this part.

 

 And apparently I didn't get any pictures of the goats at the top.

The rest of the goats poke their heads out these holes and you feed them. In my opinion, goats are a little bit scarier to feed than the previous animals, but I tried it anyway. Some of the kids were trying to throw the food at the goats, which just didn't work.

Then we went on the Monster Truck Tour. Sareny and Isaac wanted to sit in the back, because there is one part where the ride gets pretty wild and the back of the truck is the wildest.

 Rivvy girl got a bit scared on this ride. When the truck would stop for the tour guide to talk to us, she turned the truck off. Keeley would jump down and stand on the floor for a bit, but the minute she heard the engine turning back on, she scrambled onto my lap super quick.

Isaac got picked to go stand on a real ostrich egg. Those things are tough! I guess they have to be when the guy laying on top of them weighs several hundred pounds.

When we got to the wild area, the tour guide made some people move over so Finley, Keely, and I could sit in the front, supposedly tamer area. (And I was secretly glad she did.) I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but it was a little terrifying! Imagine flying around in your seat getting some serious air while simultaneously gripping your baby as tightly as you can and also offering some support for her neck with one arm, hanging on as best as you can with your other arm, and doing what little you can to keep your frightened preschooler from flying out the window. I came close to flying off the seat myself.

 Surprisngly, Keeley lay there like a slug and didn't let out one peep.

The last part of the tour includes osctrich fishing.

You attach some orange slices to the end of these poles, and hang them over for the ostriches to gobble up.

 The kids all liked this part.

 A family photo.

And we all made it back in one piece. You can see just how giant that truck is.

I wanted a picture of all the kids by the wheel, but Finley didn't want to be in the picture, and apparently neither did Keeley.

 She was making her escape.

 And a parting shot of Isaac making one of his classic crazy poses.

And this concludes the first half of this blog post. I just took too many pictures to fit in one post. Next up: feeding the ostriches, groundhogs, ducks, and birds.

Funny Finley, Impish Isaac, and Silly Sareny

Wow, that's a pretty cheesy title. Well, we all know that kids say the darndest things. Here's a few funny things the kids have done recently.

One day, Finley asked the Magic 8 Ball, "When is I'm going to get older?"
Finley likes me and Lexi to play Duck, Duck, Goose with her, however, she plays the game a little differently than most. She goes around the circle and says things like, "Baby Duck," "Cutie Duck," "Fighting Duck," "Tooting Duck what likes to dance." Whatever she assigns you, you have to act out. It's a pretty silly game.
One evening we put the kids to bed, and Sareny was reading a story to Finley before they turned out the lights. Pretty soon, down they came for a drink of water. Isn't the whole "I'm thirsty" bit one of the classic bedtime delay tactics? As they came down the stairs, Sareny said, "All that reading made me thirsty." Finley said, "Yeah, and all that listening made me thirsty!"

When Isaac is telling you about things, he frequently says, "This one's much more better." It's pretty cute, and Lexi and I like to use that expression now too.

On his school picture day, I asked him to show me how he was going to smile. He walked over to show me, and I saw that he had syrup smeared all over his face. He smiled, and I said he looked handsome. He said, "Except the food on my face isn't very handsome, right?"
We just went to check out a nativity display at the church, where lots of people had set up their nativities for everyone to enjoy. We came up to one that featured bears as the characters in the nativity, and Isaac said in a very puzzled voice, "What? That one has bears!" I'll be honest, I thought the bears were pretty strange too, and it made me laugh. There was also a framed picture of baby Jesus on an easel. Isaac pointed that out, and said, "Someone has a picture of Jesus!" I said, "Yeah, that's pretty nice, huh?" He said, "It would be pretty hard to take a picture of baby Jesus."

I recently came across a post I started back in 2009 that I apparently forgot to finish. It featured some silly things Sareny had said back then. It's possible I've recorded these things somewhere else, but just in case, here they are for posterity.

One day she said, "I can't marry Isaac, because he's my brother. I'll marry Rhys. (he's her first cousin.) That's okay, right mom?"

We were looking at an old baby picture of me, which had always been my favorite photo of myself as a baby. My mom had styled my hair in a little baby mohawk/swoop type of curl--you know the type I mean. Sareny saw it and asked, "How come you have a snarl on top of your head??"
In 2010, we'd been looking at houses for a while, and as we drove through a neighborhood, Sareny said, "Ooh, a cul-de-sac!" Guess she'd been paying attention.