Laughing With My Kids

I ask you, is there anything better than a good belly laugh with children? I can't think of anything. Here are a few things that made us laugh tonight:

Ross was making up his Christmas list. (Ross makes me laugh nearly everyday. He has a wacky sense of humor. I should blog about him more. I can't think of them right now. He's always drawing cartoons that make me laugh. About a month ago, he brought home one of his 80 page notebooks that I bought for him at the beginning of school. It was completely full of his silly drawings. I should scan them in, so you can see them. Anyway, I'm digressing.) So, Ross is making up his Christmas list. There are the normal things on there ex: a rip stick -it's on all of my children's lists, well the ones that are old enough to make lists. Benderoos (not sure if I spelled that right. I don't even know what it is, but it's on Mark's list too.) Then there are the impossible things: a Segway. Then he had this: Nationwide Insurance. We laughed about that.

Mark was feeling sad about something. I don't even remember what it was. I told him he should be happy because 1) he got to play with Tyler, 2) he got to have dinner and dessert at his friend Kendal's house, and 3) his mother pinched him - at which point I reached out and gave him a playful pinch. That made him smile in spite of himself. I explained that people like to be pinched. After all when people are so happy, they say "pinch me, I'm dreaming," so it must mean that pinching is a happy thing. ;) We then had a fun pinching war. We'd pinch each other and jump around pretending to be deliriously happy. Justice joined in, and we pinched, laughed, clapped our hands, and squealed like crazy.

At scripture time, Justice kept getting up and running across the room, hitting Mark, and darting back to his side of the room. I kept having to stop reading to tell him to sit down. Which of course, he did not. I was starting to get ticked off. He did it again just as I was reading " '...can you imagine to yourselves that ye hear voice of the Lord , saying unto you...' (here I broke off to yell at Justice, not realizing at the moment how funny it sounded) SIT DOWN!!" The kids all fell out laughing. Well, Justice continued to misbehave, so much so that I eventually sent him to his room for the duration of scriptures. I have to lock him in his room, or else he comes right back out. (No, don't call anyone on me, I don't keep him locked up too long. But I do need a way to discipline that boy.) Anyway, so we were reading scriptures again finally with some semblance of peace. We were ignoring Justice's yells from up in his room, to be let out. All of a sudden, the tone of his yelling changed from anger, to real panic, fright, and an urgent cry for help. I couldn't make out the words of his hysterical cries, but one thing was clear, and that was that the boy was terrified about something. Well, if you know Justice at all, you can only imagine what kinds of trouble this maniac dare-devil boy is capable of getting into. Imagining all kinds of impossibilities from him setting fire to his bed, to him dangling out of the two story window, I pelted up the stairs at top speed, (with all of the other children trailing alarmedly right behind me) unlocked the door and threw it open. I found him sitting on his bed (which was not on fire) and frantically yelling "HELP! The ladybug's trying to kill me!" He was scared of a silly ladybug. We all laughed a lot!