The Lighter Side of Having 5 Kids — Part 3

Staying sane while raising 5 children can sometimes require large doses of humor. This is my third installment of this series.

Gina Karasek
Pickle Fork
3 min readJul 6, 2019

--

Luckily our children have made us laugh more times than I can count. Over the years, I’ve had multiple requests from my readers to share some of our mini-stories with others. Here are some of them from past years.

(Remember as you read to use the age-appropriate voices and pronunciations in your head — sometimes that’s the funniest part).

The semi-annual black belt dinner selfie photo for Mom… © Challis Karasek

Still 2012

Reagan (4 years old): Mom, I know how to make wedding cake!
Mom: How?
Reagan: First you take a potato and then you add some butter. Then you put some sugar in and mix it together. Then you put wedding stuff on top! I learned that at school!

I’ll have some sour cream on the side please…

*****

Called the kids down for dinner last night and Challis ran ahead of Andy on the stairs and when they got to the bottom, she jumped around to face him, and said “HA!”
Andy (3): Chally, it’s not about winning! It’s about Jesus!

*****

Starting to eat dinner…

Me: Andy, did you remember to pray?
Andy (3): <pointing at his pizza> Naw, mine is ok…
Me: <with puzzled look on face> Huh?
Andy: <takes a bite> It’s not too hot to eat.
Me: <realization dawning> Andy! We don’t pray just to wait for our food to cool down!

Dear God, please don’t let my pizza cheese burn the roof of my mouth this time. Amen.

*****

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VP7FQSB2VUo/maxresdefault.jpg

Chris (6 years old) came running into the kitchen one morning.

Chris: We are NOT going to be able to go out west this summer!
Dad: Why not?
Chris: I was just watching FOXNews and they said there was a raging forest fire out there!

*****

Dad: Good morning Kelsey! Smile! It’s going to be a beautiful day!
Kelsey (13): I just woke up. I’ll smile in about 3 hours…

Six years later this still holds true.

*****

Getting ready to go swimming one night, Chris (6) and Reagan (4) put on their swimsuits and came out of the bathroom…

© Gina Karasek

Chris: Ok, Challis- you guys can go in to change now.
Me: Um… no Chris. Challis and her boyfriend are NOT going into the bathroom together to put on their swimsuits!
Chris: Why not? Rea and I just did and we weren’t grossed out by each other!

*****

Our summer vacation was coming up…

Andy (3): Mommy, guess where we’re going?
Me: Swimming? Camping?
Andy: No! We’re going where they climb on people’s noses!
Me: ??!?
Tim: <laughing> We watched a show today about how workers climb on Mt Rushmore to fill cracks…

A worker installs scanning targets on George Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore. ©National Park Service

*****

More vacation conversations:

Tim explaining what the kids could expect when we were on our way out West…
Tim: Yellowstone is kind of like a zoo without fences.
Challis <old enough to know better>: Will we see zebras there?

A buffalo sneaking up on some zebras at “Yellowstone” © Gina Karasek

We rented a van at Yellowstone to give us something to drive besides the motorhome…

Andy (3): Mom, how did your car break?
Me: It didn’t, Andy.
Andy: Then why did you steal this car?

******

(See the first article in this series here :
https://blog.usejournal.com/the-lighter-side-of-having-5-kids-17242cfd94a2

and the second article here:
https://medium.com/pickle-fork/the-lighter-side-of-having-5-kids-part-2-f21ba37bfd98)

--

--