Curly's Favorite Story

You already know that we gather the kids around us each evening before bed and we read from the scriptures and have family prayer. So tonight Curly could hardly sit still...he just had to tell his story...for the fiftieth time!

It's his favorite story and it goes like this.

A couple of weeks ago, we had our weekly family fun night. After a sit-down lesson, we decided to do some arrowpoint activities out of Sport's book just to help him move a little further down the Cub Scout trail. We started with some lessons on what to do if you meet a stray dog and the use of 8 different machines. Then we turned the page to our one last activity, the standing long jump.

Now our living room is long and rather narrow, but it was originally intended to be two rooms, a living room and a formal dining room. The living room half is about 13' x 13' and it is covered in carpet. The dining room side is the same size but covered with hardwood. We have our church pew on one side of the room under the windows, and on the other side we have a couch and a loveseat. That leaves the entire center of the room just perfect for doing the standing long jump.

We started on one edge of the carpet and the kids jumped as far as they could. Princess seemed to have the competition sewed up at first, but then the Dog Walker got up there and with his long legs, he could make it more than halfway across the carpeted area, so we crowned him the winner.

Then we decided to let them have a couple of jumps to see who could get all the way across the carpet in the fewest jumps. Curly hopped across like a little bunny with the most jumps and as you can imagine, the
Dog Walker was again the winner. He spanned the carpet with only two jumps!

Fast forward to the next day...

It was Tuesday and the Gym Rat stopped by.  That is typically his day off and we love it when he spends a few minutes with us. Curly and I and Baby Doll were the only ones home and Curly started telling the Gym Rat about our jumping contest. "Let's see how far you can jump," I suggested.

The Gym Rat is usually up for any competition that involves brute strength, so he readily agreed. He slipped off his shoes and lined up on the edge of the carpet. He is 6'6" and his long legs took him nearly 2/3 of the way across the carpet. Curly was so excited! It was definitely the best jump we had seen.

Then we started telling him about the other contest. We wanted to see if he could clear the carpet in 2 jumps. On his first try, he had an extra little hop in the middle. Curly would have none of that and he insisted that the Gym Rat do it again. Not one to be outdone by his little brother, the Gym Rat lined up again. He swung his long arms back and forth as he prepared to make his best jump yet.

Curly was bouncing up and down on the couch (which is against the rules, by the way), but he was so excited!

I think his excitement fueled the Gym Rat's hopes of being awesome. He hit the carpet about 3/4 of the way across and landed  almost in the middle of the hardwood on the other side. The problem was that he was wearing socks...

His feet slipped right out from under him and he totally landed on his backside!

Curly and I were so surprised we didn't know what to do. As soon as we were sure he was OK, we started to laugh! Then the Gym Rat joined in too. His jump was definitely the best by at least a foot (or maybe a butt...).