Funnies

I love kids. They are so funny and say the most hilarious things.
For instance:

We have some stray cats that hang around our backyard. Actually they hang around the field behind our backyard, but seem to have adopted our yard and our garden as their personal hunting and litterbox area.
(Hunting mice is fine, the litterbox I have a problem with...eeew. That is why Burke got a pellet gun for Christmas. He is too soft-hearted to use it, however.)
Anyway, one of the cats is expecting and we were talking about kittens over dinner one evening when Kade announced that he thought he had seen one of them "laying her kittens" in the garden. (Thankfully, it didn't really happen. I think he was just witnessing something else. Eeeeww....)

Adrienne loves swimming lessons. She thinks she is a pro. She thinks she already knows how to swim. How wrong she is. She jumped off the side of the pool with no floatie or teacher around.
Once she was rescued and after I regained my ability to speak, she told me, "See, I told you I can swim."
She has been repeating the desire to not wake up on the wrong side of the bed whenever she says her prayers. I finally asked her what that was all about when I tucked her in one night. She told me she had to move all the way over to the side of the bed against the wall because if she slept close to the edge of the bed, she might fall out and land on the floor. And that-- she said-- is the wrong side of the bed.

We had a ward pool party last month. Burke told me he was going to take Annika and Kade over to the diving pool. I assumed (you know what they say about ass-u-me) that he was going to have them hang out in the shallow area while he dived.
When he came back about half an hour later, he told me, "Hey, did you know that if the lifeguards have to rescue you, you have to fill out paperwork?"
Apparently Annika jumped off the diving board and floated like a rock.
Burke didn't realize that when I told him about the kids jumping off the diving board at swimming lessons, they always had a floatie.

Nathan keeps telling me that he thinks he has hit puberty. I hear it every day when he comes up with something else. The latest was when he left me a message on the answering machine. He listened to it himself later and then proudly told me, "See, I don't sound like a girl anymore."

Cousins and More Cousins

We have had lots of family time lately. We spent the 4th of July with Burke's family. Everyone gathered together to remember Burke's dad, as it has been one year since he passed away.
The cousins were so eager to play with each other.
Adrienne especially loves her cousins Acacia and Ava.
They are joined at the hip.
They absolutely love each other.
I'm sure they made Grandpa laugh.
We also were able to be present for the blessing of my newest nieces, Paisley and Zoey. I forget how tiny and sweet babies are until I am around them.
They were adorable and fun and I loved holding them and giving them a bottle, and everything else that comes with babies.
I am sure Grandpa would have loved to have been in the circle to bless his granddaughters, and celebrate their birth at the family gathering afterward. He was missed.
Later that week we traveled to visit Burke's brother Justin and his family. Justin was called to be in the bishopric in his ward, and asked Burke to ordain him as a high priest. It wasa wonderful opportunity for all of us to be there and for Burke to perform the ordination in place of his dad.

As we were leaving, they invited Nathan to stay with them for another week. He jumped at the opportunity, and we (a little wistfully) re-packed his belongings and said good-bye.

He was so excited, and I was thrilled for him. But I am a mother hen and have been worried about him already and it has only been one day.

Burke and I called him tonight. I reminded him to brush his teeth. Really good. Because his aunt really can't tell him they look gross the same way his mom can. Can she?
He sounds like he is having fun, but maybe missing us a little more than he thought. (Or that's what I'd like to think.)

Maybe we're missing him a little more than we thought too...