The Funny Man

"Laughter is an instant vacation." ~Milton Berle

Today I'm expressing my thanks for my youngest son, Kipp.

If I could pick just one thing I love about Kipp, it's his laugh. Not just the little chuckley one, but the big belly laughs only reserved for tickling, silly animal you tubes and slapstick comedy.

As part of our sabbath day observance we initially said no TV with the exception of a few select family movies. When we discovered that ABC is leaking through our cable internet hook up (we haven't had cable TV for years) we started watching "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition". Then Kipp discovered that "America's Funniest Videos" was on before it and we agreed he could watch that too. It is totally worth it to hear him laugh. Hopefully Santa will bring us a DVD recorder and I will secretly record it someday and post it here.

Not only is his laugh great, but he's funny too! He has a memory like a vault and can quote movie lines verbatim after one viewing. He loves to quote them and use the voices too. That really helped him in auditioning for the part of Tweedle-dum in the play Alice in Wonderland. He got the part and already had the lines memorized. It's the perfect part for him, totally corny! If anyone in the family is going to make us laugh, it's Kipp. He takes after his Dad that way. (Don't tell him that!)

Along with his laugh and sense of humor are his big brown eyes with those long lashes. It's not so much that they're gorgeous, but that they conceal nothing. Every feeling, every mood is expressed through those eyes. I can tell when he is happy, ill, tired, mad, sad and unfortunately for him, when he's fibbing! Poor kid, he'll never take up poker...and thank goodness for that!

When motivated by money or privileges Kipp is our number one worker. He really loves to be praised for his hard work too. We have found him to be the best salesman of all our kids at shows and the first to volunteer to do a something that needs to be done for the business. This spring the kids wanted to earn money for vacation and we told them if they pulled up t-posts from our property they could keep all the money they got from selling them. Kipp alone pulled 30 of the 60 + posts - and that was by hand in clay soil, with no puller!

Kipp is in Archery 4-H and is getting better and better at shooting his 40 pound compound bow. He hopes one day to be able to hunt with it. He also played soccer for the first time this year and enjoyed it so much he wants to play indoor too so he can play all year round. This summer he cleared a rough field behind our house and mowed it down to play soccer and to set up his archery target, like I said, he can be such a hard worker!

Kipp turns 11 next month and I'm so grateful our funny man is a part of our family!