Write it down or you'll forget!!

I'm quoting my mom in my title. She's right though and I realized today that I hadn't written down a few of the 'cute' things my kids said that I like to remember. I've told these stories MANY times but never wrote them down so hopefully, typing them into my blog counts.

Our 9 year old, 'CT' was out working on another 'fort' today and found a couple of really fat frogs.

He loves searching for frogs and lizards and garter snakes in our yard each spring and is allowed to keep a couple of aquariums in his room to set up little reptile motels for a few he catches each year. He then has to capture food for these reptiles and amphibians which is the real challenge. I make him set them loose in late fall so they can hibernate outdoors. This green one is one of the ones he found today.

This brown one has been in our underground hose bib since he set her free here at the end of summer. I see she's close to starving. Good grief, I guess all that stored fat kept her warm during our last few snowfalls. Finding the frogs today reminded me of something he said two years ago when he'd caught a frog and set up a lovely home for her in his room. He was talking to me about the frog he'd caught the year before that. One that had laid eggs under the moss in the aquarium but they'd never hatched. He said " Maybe this new frog will lay eggs this year too, but I'll have to get a boy frog because Grandma says you need a boy frog to manure the eggs if you want them to hatch." It took me a second and I was about to correct him and tell him Grandma would have said you need the boy frog to 'fertilize' the eggs. Then I realized, to CT ,- manure and fertilize are the same thing. I told my mom she'd better be careful when cleaning up manure in her sheep pen, she might get manure on herself and end up pregnant.

This is the same kid that while driving down a road close to home last spring, he noticed a guy out in his fruit trees. CT says " Bet ( from Paddle in the Pond ) says she likes plumming her apple trees cause she can climb to the top and sit up there and see out for miles." I noticed the word choice - 'plumming' and said " You mean 'pruning'. ?" He said, " No, plumming the trees, you know when they cut branches. " I said " No, it's called pruning - do you know what a prune is? " He replied that he had no idea what a prune was! And yet, he confused the two words perfectly! I explained that I figured that he'd mixed the words up because a prune is a dried plum, but since he didn't know a prune and plum are the same fruit ???? I'm not sure how he mixed them up.

This is our Mini Lop rabbit " Grasshopper". I raised Mini Lops growing up. I guess you could say rabbits were my 'thing'. My hobby, my collection, my job. I had around 50 at one time and made quite a bit of money raising them as a kid. We only have one now and he produces a nice amount of fertilizer for our garden.This is a picture of the flower box my husband built for our daughter 'KN.' She has always had a love for flowers and anything girly. At age one, my mom and I were shopping and we passed the shoe isle and she gasped and said "SHOES!" She's always been super picky about the shoes she picks out and if there aren't any in the store she likes - she's happy to go home without buying anything. She also slows us down when we pass the jewelry and women's underwear sections in the stores. At age 3 she pulled me to a stop and said " DIAMONDS!" when strolling past the glass jewelry case. She does not get this trait from me.

Anyway, my point is, she loves girlish things and abhors stinky things. She says " Why do we even HAVE dogs ... all they do is poop in the yard and it's so gross!" Our other daughter is a master poop scooper and has even requested a pink pooper scooper for her 5th birthday! That's my girl!

When my husband was building the flower box in front of the rabbit pen, KN was so excited to have someplace for her very own flowers. Not long after her daddy was done with the building, she came inside stomping and sobbing. I asked " What's wrong?" She says " Daddy built the flower box all nice and everything and now ... he's putting POOP in it!!! " ( said like it was the most horrible thing to ever happen. ) Oh, sorry, I laughed at her. Then I explained that it was fertilizer from the bunny to help her flowers grow.