October 2008

Hello All,

It's been quite a while since I've tried posting anything to our severely neglected blog. I've been really busy with kids and life and to be completely honest, I've lost a lot of enthusiasm for blogging. But hopefully that is going to change. I'm going to try a lot harder to be on the ball and keep everyone up do date with our ever growing and changing family. Kids just grow up so fast and I want to capture every stage.

Our most recent stage includes a funny little story. At church Joshua and Tucker attend what we call Primary (sunday school for children) and every year in October (I think) the Primary does a program during the main meeting for everyone to enjoy. This year, besides learning some new songs to sing, Joshua and Tucker were assigned to speak a line into the microphone. I'm a primary teacher and you can bet they would assign me one as well. So Joshua's line is simple and he delivers it well, "The Book of Mormon and Docterine and Covenants teach me how to live the gospel". Tucker's line is simple and he's delivered it just fine all the umpteen times we praticed it, "My name is Tucker and I am a child of God". The only problem with Tucker is that he loooooves an audience. It doesn't matter who it is, if you're watching him you're in his power of influence and he's mostly interested in influencing humor. Watch out. During practice our very patient Primary President would encourage the children to settle down and be quiet with a key word, "Oatmeal". Well that's just fodder for the fire. Everytime she would try, Tucker would pipe in with that cute little voice of his, "Oatmeal!". Even while the children were in the middle of singing - "Oatmeal!". The other teachers think he's hilarious, all I can do is try not to laugh or cry since he's totally embarrassing. I try giving him looks from accross the room but he never looks my way, I try reasoning with and threatening him but there's not much to do while we're in the middle of sunday school. Well, it's time for the kids to say their line into the microphone. I'm seated up on the stand behind the podium with the rest of the children and you can expect I was holding my breath waiting for some insane comment like "Oatmeal" to come bursting out of the speakers. I tried threats, I tried reasoning, I even tried bribing. And God said, "Let there be patience" and blessed me with Tucker. "Oatmeal" would have been welcome compared to what happened. Tucker was just itching to get his turn in front of the microphone. When he did, he looked out with that wicked little twinkle in his eyes and couldn't help himself. "My name is Tucker.........poo poo, ha-ha-ha-ha........and I'm a child of God." I went scarlett. I couldn't see John from where I sat but I can imagine he was too. Later he said he wanted to die. One of our friends said he'd never laughed so hard during sacrament meeting. I imagine it was only magnified by our horrified expressions. Oh well, have a good laugh, move on. Right? Last night we went to a Halloween carnival at church. The kids lined up to parade and walked up to the stage. They each took a turn at the microphone (again) to say their name and what they were supposed to be dressed up as. Joshua had a hard time speaking clearly since his costume covered his mouth (he was the best one there!!!! see pictures) but he eventually got out, "My name is Joshua and I'm Optimus Prime." Then it was Tucker's turn. He was dressed as a ninja except he said, "My name is Tucker and I'm a child of God." Again, lots of snickering and laughing. He wasn't even trying to be funny! He was just trying to say the right thing. Now he does.

By the way, Clayton was also dressed up. He was Franken-baby. Though I kept calling him "freakin baby!" He was cute till we got in the car and we had the cupcakes we were bringing for the cake walk on the dashboard. He screamed almost the entire drive there. Freakin baby.

Joshua won "most creative" and Tucker won "most lethal". We had fun.