Yesterday, Davison was convinced that a young neighborhood lad (and good friend of Brock) had pocketed and walked off with one of the really cool minifigs from his latest Lego set. He was contemplating a plan of going over to said miscreant’s house to play, and while there he would case the joint for the missing minifigure.

By way of background, the bedtime book that I’ve been reading to the boys has been “Anne of Green Gables”. During this particular counselling session with Davison on the appropriate way of handling the situation, we reminded Davison of the amethyst brooch and shawl incident in the Anne of Green Gables story, where Marilla could not find her amethyst brooch and accused Anne of stealing it. Our point being that it is easy to jump to conclusions when dealing with other people’s motives and actions, and possibly being wrong in our over-reactions. Upon being reminded of such, Davison’s response was “Dad, I’m not going to find the Lego minifigure stuck in my shawl.” The decision was made to let the incident go without trying to confront the neighborhood lego pocketer.

A couple of hours later, Davison came downstairs and was chuckling. Upon being asked, he told us that he had found the missing stormtrooper, The really funny part was that the stormtrooper had somehow got tangled up in the corner of a dress-up shawl that was hanging out of a not-quite-closed drawer in the playroom.

We’re not sure how the story resolution could have been any more perfect, but were quite happy that a big scene was not part of it.

Layne, Elissa and Brody are currently visiting us in Houston for a couple of weeks.  As Layne is not the world’s biggest fan of competitive cooking shows, we watched one of the original Star Trek episodes last night.  In this case “watched” means, watched most of, but fast forwarded through the romantic interludes.

One of the girls (who will remain nameless for this part of the post), Brock and I were sitting at the kitchen table.  Part way into the episode, nameless girl was puzzling through something.  “Speck?  Spunk?, Dad – what is his name?”  As it turned out the name she was searching for was “Spock”.

A few minutes later Brock finished his meal and migrated to the couch.  This particular episode had the transporters malfunction and send the away teams simultaneously to a space ship in an alternative universe (the other universe of course, being an evil one).  This led to the Brock comment to Elissa “What, there are two Spunks in this episode?”

So, a couple of fun pictures that I found out on the Internet commemorating this particular Star Trek episode, one of which I doctored up in honor of Brock.

Picture of evil Spock

picture of good and evil Spunk

And on to the other set of Brockisms for yesterday evening.  The setting is that it is about 7:45 in the evening and the boys are hoping to go swimming with Layne.  Sadly, there are some dark clouds partly overhead, making loud noises.  We’ll pick up the conversation there.

Mom would not allow us to go swimming during a thunderstorm.  – Heidi

Mom is not always right – Brock

Yes, but she usually is – Dad

She usually is, but not always – Brock

Rather than moving away, the clouds moved in overhead, there was more light and noise and quite a bit of rain.  Nobody went swimming; Mom was right again.

In my last post I talked about the fun that we were having with the pass and play portion of the Galaxy Trucker iPad app. Over the last couple of days we (Dad, Davison, Brock) have been exploring the Campaign mode of the game. This is more of a longer term adventure where you are travelling around and exploring a galaxy (well in all likelihood it will be a very small galaxy with fifty locations or so). On each leg of the trip you are competing against 1 to 3 other ships in building your ship and then going through a number of adventures cards trying to accumulate credits and keep uour ship together. In this mode, the ship building phase is like the physical game where dexterity, speed, and mental clarity are all needed. I’m more of a meticulous ship builder, taking the time to get it, but usually being the last ship to be built which puts you at a disadvantage during the adventure resolution part.
Brock, on the other hand is rather haphazard, usually using each piece that he turns over (whereas you normally put them back in the pile if they don’t fit in with your plans) and building a less than complete and optimal ship. The funny thing is that he is doing it so quickly that the competing computer players also end up with rather haphazard ships as well. On one of the runs that Brock did yesterday, after he built his ship, he observed, “Oops, I forgot to give it any engines.”
Davison and I watched him tonight, and snagged the following screenshot of Brock trailing (that’s his ship at the bottom of the screen consisting of two modules. – crew module and an engine, the two bare essentials to finishing a run) with 3 adventure cards yet to turn over. Brock ended up winning this run, as the ship in front of him got blown to bits and his was the sole ship to complete the trip.

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This morning was garage sale morning in our housing subdivision.  We found out this morning that the Coles Crossing subdivision (subdivision might not be the precise term, maybe community) does not allow garage sales except for one day a year, which was today.  Even then, they are only allowed to run until 2:00 pm.  We live in a very unique culdesac where the families are pretty close, so it ended up being a joint garage sale for the five families.  We didn’t take a lot of stuff out, and even then didn’t sell a whole lot.  Danaya sold some cards and earrings to our neighbours, but the garage salers were interested in bargains and not crafts per se.

Brock spent fifty cents on the combat outfit pictured below, buying it from our next door neighbors after wearing the helment and toting the gun for an hour or so.

picture of Brock in comabt outfit
Master Chief Brock

At the end of the garage sale (everyone in our culdesac packed it in at 1:00 pm, as it was sprinkling a bit and there hadn’t been any traffic in a while), Brock scored big when our next door neighbors told us they would be happy if we relieved them of the following toys.  Brock and Mom obliged them.

Brock and his haul
Brock and his haul

And finally, while we are on the topic of Brock, I have a bit of a funny store about said lad to relate.  On Friday evening we were babysitting the six children of another family.  We have our new dining room table, but the chairs have not arrived yet.  So, as a result, people were sort of scattered around the dining room and kitchen areas.  After a while (about half way through the meal), Brock announced “My food hasn’t arrived yet.”  Poor lad, he had been sitting patiently un-noticed at the table, watching the other kids eat.

 

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The other day, we were gathering all our dirty clothes and linens to take to the laundromat.

Brock, with a contemplative look on his face, came and found me and asked, “Are we taking our laundry to the laundromat?”

“Yes, we are Sweetie,” I answered, “since we don’t have a washer and dryer, yet.”

He looked even more contemplative. “Are we taking our clothes to Calgary?”

This was a surprising question, as the only times we go to a laundromat are when we are on vacation, which is not usually in Calgary. ;)

But, I said, “Well, no, Honey. We’re going to a laundromat in Houston.”

Brock considered this last bit of news for a moment.

Then he looked up at me with a “light bulb” look in his eyes. “So there’s s laundromat in Calgary AND Houston?!”

I tried to reflect in my face the solemnity of the discovery.

“There’s a laundromat in EVERY city,” I informed him.

He looked at me a moment more, and then ran off to play.

Homeschooling in July. In Houston.

Heidi in contemplation
Heidi in contemplation

“I enjoyed the lift-off, pop, and snacks. I would have preferred a whole can of pop, rather than just a little bit in a glass.”

“The swimming pool in our area is pretty big and fun. But I didn’t like it when the lifeguards blew their whistles and said, “Don’t swim (She realized later that they said, “Adult swim!”)!” All the kids had to get out for 10 minutes. That was just annoying.” ;)

“I like the little green lizards here, our big empty house, and air conditioning.”

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Mom: “What did you like about our trip down to Houston?”

Davison: “Everything!”

Mom: “Well, tell me something specific you liked.”

Davison: “The flight.”

OK, then.

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After arriving home from work this evening, I lay on my tummy across our bed to read a bit from my book, which was lying on the floor. Brock (4yo) took the occasion to jump and climb on me. Nearby was most (!) of a Calvin and Hobbes comic book. At one point, he pointed to the top right panel and asked, “What does that say?” (He had done that with a couple of other pages/panels prior to this). I scanned it and then edited it on the fly, saying “You think you’re so smart”.
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Brock went back to climbing and tumbling again (mostly enjoying falling down on the book that I was trying to read). After a while, he asked me again about the same panel. Then a couple of minutes later, he stopped and looked at it, and then he said, “Dad, what is this word, the one that starts with a D?”

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get something by Brock…

During the vacation trip, we made notes when the kids (usually Brock) said funny things.  So to (maybe) close out the vacation posts, here are some of the ‘Brockisms’ from the trip (along with some Brock pictures)…

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King Brock

Heard a while after Lori reviewed cabins and rewarded the kids with a   dollar each . . . “give me a piece of gum, I have a dollar”

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Playground Brock

Heard at the campfire, “I want to burn a marshmallow”

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Jail Brock

At the OMSI Omnimax show, while waiting through the previews, “is there a remote?”

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Gargoyle Brock

In the yurt one morning, Davison and Brock were playing hide & seek with some stuffed animals.  Davison: ‘Hide, Mom is coming’
Brock: ‘Are Moms bad?’
Davison: ‘No, Moms are good; they work for us.’

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Motorcycle Brock

And that is it.  Thanks for letting us share our experiences and family memories.