A Little Bribery Never Hurt Anyone

This is how I get my kids to listen to General Conference. Every time they hear the word, they get to eat. They get to help pick the words and assign them to the treat. After one session, they do some switching with words that they never heard to words they think they will hear more. So for Sunday afternoon we added "temple" to the mix. I have to thank Elder Bednar for his talk about "temple" and "service". We ate well during that one. We even ran out of our "temple" treat and had to combine with something else.

It must be noted that I don't expect my kids to sit motionless for the entire thing. The rule is they have to be close to the room with the TV. You'd be surprised how well they hear a word and come running in to get their snack.

Who says you shouldn't bribe your kids with food??

The Line

Some of you know this line. I'm sure you all have something like it in your own home. Everyone at Grandma Darlene's is very good about obeying the House Rules, especially the rule about not crossing the line (I wish they would listen this well at home). We are grateful to have somewhere close to go where people like us. Maybe I'm just it's my wishful thinking on that last part, but I'll just claim ignorance.

Thank you again for letting us crash for the night. Thank you also for watching all of our combined children for a couple of hours. It's nice to go out to dinner and pretend we don't have kids once in a while.

It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's...

Last night for Family Night, I decided to give a lesson on Manners. Now, I know the images are cheesy, but I decided to go with the superhero theme since my boys love that kind of thing (and my 2 1/2 -year-old daughter thought the girl superheroes were pretty). We talked about these specific superheroes coming to "live" at our house. After a slight interruption of our neighbor who was picking up their son who I had been watching all day, my 4-year-old started to cry. I thought he was sad because he didn't want his friend to leave. When we got him calmed down enough to understand what he was saying, this is what we heard:

"I'm just a little scared of those superheroes coming to live at our house".

Wow. I guess I needed to be a little more specific, Bob. (Kudos to whoever knows what movie that is from.) I had intended on posting the superheroes pictures on our fridge to remind us all to use our manners. This still scared him. He thought they could get off the fridge and fly around the house. (At least he's using him imagination, right?) To remedy the situation, I shrunk down the pictures and printed them to fit on one page and taped them to the inside of a kitchen cabinet (right next to the job charts). That way they "won't be able to get out unless we let them out". This seemed to satisfy him. Oh the things we come up with for our children.

Here's to many more adventurous family home evening lessons.

The Fun Never Ends

Well, it was one of those nights on Saturday night. We had just spent the evening at the Primary Talent Show. Now, the kids are cute with their singing and piano and violin playing, but when 4-year-old Little Little Mr. Meemoo says he wants to tell jokes for his talent, we knew we were in for a treat. He stood right up on that stage and with microphone in hand, rattled off some serious knock-knock jokes. Well, only one knock-knock, the others were the more traditional fare. We had to drag him off of the stage or he would have kept going all night. At least the audience was entertained.

On our way home, we stopped at some neighbors to check out their swamp cooler. Yes, we are in the market for some kind of cooling system for this summer. Still, I don't know how Mr. Meemoo feels about cutting a big, gaping hole in the side of our house. We may opt for a portable air conditioner. The older Little Mr. Meemoo decides he has to go to the bathroom but didn't know where one was (did I mention that our friends have the exact same floor plan as we do?). Needless to say, there was an accident. Then Little Miss Meemoo decides she has to go (luckily she is still in diapers).

As we are loading everyone up in the car, I sarcastically exclaim "Wow, the fun never stops at our house". The 4-year-old (fresh off his joke telling) replies "Uh-huh! The fun does too stop at our house!"

Yeah, we never let our kids have any fun.