That's a lot of bunk in one room.

And I'm not talking about the bullpen area where I sit at work.

Or the US Congress.

Or the Oval Office.

Although they all would fit the description...

Sophie isn't sleeping through the night and keeps waking Ella up, so she's been a nomad sleeping in blanket piles around the house. She said she wanted her own bed again.

The only option was to move her into the buckaroo bunkhouse.

Sophie better get her act together before summer, or that ceiling fan is going to take off a few heads...

It took less than a day for the crutch to become a gun

Lazy Sunday afternoon

We wondered how long it would take for someone to discover the shade sails could double as a giant hammock. Six and. Half years is the answer. And it surprises no one that Levi is the one who made the discovery...

Luke, watering the orange tree... And his brother and sister. If you look closely, you can see a screaming boy peeking out the very top of the tree. Again, no surprise that this is Levi.




Sophie has figured out how to fit in perfectly. Nothing says "Addink kid" like boy undies on your head!

Enjoy a little late breaking holiday spirit

Update to the post below:  I discovered that because I made the video during the exclusive 48 hour window when they were offering it free, I can post it.  Whoop-ee!  Enjoy!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Makes a father's heart swell with pride...

Levi and Noah had parent teacher conferences on Friday.  One of the sheets for review was Levi's sentence composition worksheet.  "Heat" is really "hate," and you should pronounce the last word with hard "c" sounds like "k."

Paige said she wasn't supposed to take this paper home, but had to because she was laughing so hard at it.

And when she finally stopped laughing, she promptly told their teacher that she blamed this all on his father.

Which is probably appropriate.

Before Christmas I got an email from Jib Jab informing me that they had a new Christmas themed video...

So I immediately clicked the link, and loaded up the Addink kid faces into the video.  Which, as you may have guessed, was the Nutcracker theme, performed with flatulence.

 

Unfortunately I can't post the video without paying $12 to become a member, but you can make your own here.

So as kids and I were dying laughing at the video of them prancing around and tooting the music... Mom walked up.

She was not impressed at my parenting skills.

I was immediately sent to time out, which the kids thought was even funnier than the video.

Thus Levi was inspired for his declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, imperative, and compound sentences (and got 100% on the worksheet, mildly inappropriate subject matter and all.)

Luke-isms

Luke is absoultely hilarious lately.  This kid talks non-stop, and lives in this imaginary universe full of space cowboys, desert bulls, and various other creatures.  Plus, he says most of his "r" and "l" sounds as this odd combinations of "w" and "h."  And all his "o" sounds come out like "awe."  That means his daily monologue is this minature version of Elmer Fudd, wandering through the house discussing desert bull potty behavior or space cowboy planet roping technique.

So here is a post dedicated to Luke-isms, some personally witnessed, others texted to me by Paige:

• One of my favorites is mouth, teeth, and breath.  The other days, as he is galloping out to the van, he says to me "Dad, I am gowing to cwose my mouse, and howd my bweast behind my teats."  Seriously... how do you respond to that sentence?
• "Mowm, wouwd lowng howrnie be a good name for a lowng howrn?"  I have no idea what he was talking about either.
• In an exasperated voice... "Mowm, wook what Sophie did.  She bwoke dis cap owff.  Ohhhh, this child!"
• "Dis shawrk has lownger teats than owther shawrks.  It's a tusk shawrk!"
• "What do weindeewr eat?  Ohhh, gwass!  OK, I'm going outside to eat gwass.  Hey wait!  How do dey eat gwass if they live in the awrtic?!"
• "Uncastwated means fixed, ownly diffewentewr."  Paige claims he made up the word "castrated" but I am convince Grandpa must have been telling his stories on the "farm" at Christmas.
• Space cowboy has been an ongoing theme for quite a while.  He wanders about talking about his plans for his spaceship, how mom is going to come along to make food, Dad is coming to come with the guns, and help rope the planets, Levi will bring donuts from his donut shop (Levi's current aspiration in life is to become a donut shop man.)  He describes how they will rope all the planets and crack them in half, and fly into the sun, and how the spaceship will have a soccer field inside it, and...  Seriously, it is non-stop chatter four hours about outer space plans.  And of course, all proper space cowboys wear purple pirate hats...

• Not sure exactly what he was being in this picture.  Maybe a gangster of love?

• Our other kids wrinkle up their nose at any food not covered in cheese or sugar.  Luke goes to the grocery store specifically so he can pick out things he has never tried before to see if he likes them.  The other day it was radishes.   Really? What kid does that?  Then a couple days ago it was cucumbers.  And he actually like them.
   

 

• He also loves to be a desert bull.  None of us are quite sure what a desert bull is, or where he got it from.  But he know everything about desert bull behavior.  "Dad, desewrt bowls don't even stop when they poop or pee.  They just go when they awre wunning, and get it white on dewr hooves!  And they awso have steam in their bewlies, and they wun weally fast, so fast they could catch Wevi, and the steam comes out of theiwr hooves to make them go fast!"  He knows their sleeping habits, what they like to eat, where they live.  Everything.
• He said to Sophie the other day "Come awn baby desewrt bowl, wet me show you mowre about bein a desewrt bowl!"
• Today he rolled in sand and told me "I'm takin a dort baff, cause that is what desewrt bowls do!"

 

• "Im a cowboy wit indian feddewrs on my head!"

 

 

Christmas at ground zero

We went to Grand Rapids for Michigan this Christmas.  My in-laws are currently in the middle of adding on to their house.  And ripping out the entire kitchen.  And laying down unfinished and very nice cherry flooring.

Just as we show up with five kids.

Needless to say, our Christmas vacation was a weeeee bit chaotic, what with waking to the sharp crack of nail guns every morning, to being holed up in the basement on the verge of cabin fever, the mud swamp of a front yard, and a kitchen that consisted of only the kitchen sink.

Family... that is what is important about the holidays, right?

Despite all the chaos, we did still have fun while we were there.

Sophie got all bundled up for her first snow (or summer in Ethiopia.  Seriously... we saw kids in snowsuits there.)

We got a dusting of snow on Christmas Eve, but the kids were just dying to go for a sled ride.  So out came the Kubota to drag them over the snow.



They had fun for a while but then got cold.

"Dad... my faith ith num."



Levi, however... that kid lives for danger.  While everybody else piled in the back of the Kubota, he was screaming to go faster.  Faster!  So he got his own ride with the go pedal on the floor.  Behind that spray of snow and partially frozen horse plops is a boy experiencing pure joy.



Not sure exactly what she was so upset about just prior to this picture, but she can still bust out the goofy grin on command.



Speaking of Christmas at ground zero... I don't believe I have ever seen presents opened so fast.  There were eight kids and every present disappeared from under the sad Charlie Brown tree in approximately a minute thirty five.  It was insane.



Levi got what he has been asking for for several months... four coconuts.



Ella and Luke went ice skating.





I sat in a deer blind and saw bupkis.



And then did it several more time.  Stilllllll bupkis.



Sophie got some bling in her ears.



Levi and Noah saw more deer action than I did, albeit cardboard.



On my last day there, we lit a big ol' bonfire with construction scraps.  Noah here is animatedly explaining the technique Indians would have used with this fabulous smoke signaling fire.





Luke and cousin Max helping to haul sticks.



Levi, helping to provide a nitrogen boost for some lucky tree.



"We awe sowdiers hiding in da gwass and pwotecting our fowest!"



Attack! ('Bout lost an eye taking this.)