Get ready to laugh at these embarrassing stories.

Sam and the Stump – My whole family was at my grandparent’s house one day. It was nice so we were outside most of the day. Our favorite games to play were wiffle ball and croquet. My grandparents had a lot of trees in the yard and one was recently cut down. Not gone…just cut down. The ladies were sitting in the shade talking and the guys were throwing the football around. Every once in a while someone would yell, “Watch out for the stump!” My Granny was a nervous wreck about the stump and the football throwing. And rightfully so, someone threw Sam the football and he forgot all about it. BAM! He ran into the stump and fell over. He was ok, so we all laughed. Then someone yelled, “How did you miss the tree in the middle of the yard?” You see…the stump wasn’t just a stump. My Papa didn’t have time to get the tree all the way down before the family got to his house. The stump was waist high on Sam. Did I mention that he’s six foot one. That’s one hard stump to miss. 

Kelly and the Sign – Do you remember Opryland? It was theme park in Nashville, Tn. Before I tell you what happened, you need to know a little about my daddy. He is the fastest man I know. By fast I mean, he is out of the car before he even has the car in park. If you ever go anywhere with my daddy, don’t be slow or you’ll get left behind. Ok, now you will understand why I was in such a hurry. I was invited by a friend to Opryland. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to get there. I love riding rides. We had just arrived in the parking lot and like always, I jumped out of the van and started walking as fast as I could to get to the park. I soon realized that I was alone. I looked back for my friend and she was still at the van with her family. Apparently they park their car before they get out. Ha! I kept looking at them yelling for them to hurry up as I kept moving forward. They were also yelling something back at me but I was too far away to hear. By the time I heard, “Kelly…STOP!” It was too late. Right as I turned around….SMACK! I ran straight into a handicap parking sign. Right into the metal part, but only one part of my face. I got a really bad black eye. Yes…I got made fun of for the rest of the day and a few days after that. I still rode all the rides. 

Matt and the Church – We rode bikes a lot. We rode around the block of our house, to the store to get candy, even to our friends house to play. We were fortunate to live in a town where we could ride our bikes and be gone all day. As long as we were home by dark, we could go anywhere. We also had a church with a huge parking lot across the street from our house. That parking lot was our playground. We played chase, hide and seek, and other made up games. Matt had just gotten a new bike with gears. He wasn’t sure how to change his gear so he rode around all day learning the gears on the bike. He had to stop a few times because he’d make the chain fall off but eventually he got it. He was so proud of himself. He had gained enough courage to ride his bike and look down to see his gears change. I guess he too forgot that there was a huge brick church in the parking lot. A tire doesn’t make much noise when it hits brick, but a little boy sure can let out a scream when his head hits the brick. When his tire hit the church it slug him over his handlebars and he scraped his forehead on the brick. Sam yelled, “How do you miss a huge brick church, it doesn’t move?” Sam laughed, Matt cried and I got mad at Sam for laughing at Matt. 

Side note: Sam ran into the stump about a week after he laughed at Matt for running into the church. Karma! Maybe, who knows! 

Daddy and the Skateboard – I’d love to tell you the story about my Daddy and the skateboard but I can’t just yet. Remember, I told you in an Instagram story that I might be on a podcast soon. Well….I am happy to announce that I will be on a podcast called Thoughtful Moments. It will be released on September 26th. If you want to hear about Daddy and the skateboard…tune in September 26th.

I love my family. We have made some great memories together and I’m thankful that we are just as close or closer today. 

I have two brothers. Sam is the oldest and Matt is the youngest. That leaves me as the middle child. The favorite! I’m kidding, Daddy didn’t have favorites, or at least he didn’t show it. And some people think since I was the only girl, I was spoiled rotten. Ha-ha! We were all spoiled. We always had more than we needed. But I was more on the rotten side of things. I was the one that got us in more trouble than my brothers. Growing up with brothers wasn’t so bad though. We had a lot of fun and mostly they loved playing jokes on me. I was easy to scare and they always knew they could make me mad in the end. And for some reason, they thought that was funny. So here is one time a prank wasn’t so funny in the end. 

We lived in an older two-story home. Our house was white with black shutters. A big front porch with a swing. The floors and stairs were hardwood. My brothers and I had rooms on the second floor and the rest of the house was on the first floor. Just a little background on our house. It’s important to know about our stairs. 

It was a warm sunny afternoon. Who am I kidding. I don’t remember what the day was like. It was many moons ago, but I do remember this story like it was yesterday. I was home alone with Matt and that meant I was responsible for him. I was around eleven years old. He is four years younger, and for those of you that aren’t good at math; that would have made him seven. I was downstairs in the kitchen getting something to eat. I wasn’t exactly sure if Matt was ok, I was only sure that he was upstairs. All of a sudden, I hear, clank…clank…clank…bang…bang…splat! I have heard these noises many times before. Remember me telling you that we had hardwood stairs. We would slide, roll toys, balls and throw stuff down the stairs all the time. I didn’t think anything until I heard, “Owwwww, my leg, ahhhhhh!” Matt was screaming! I panicked, I just realized that Matt fell down the stairs. I took off running through the kitchen, to living room, around the corner and saw him lying there at the bottom of the stairs holding his leg! I knew I was in big trouble now. I just let my brother fall down the stairs and break his leg. I get down on the floor and start asking what’s wrong, as he is still screaming that his leg hurts. I ask him to let me see! I am panicked! I am so upset that he’s hurt! He finally rolls over and starts laughing. Then he says, “I was just kidding, I threw toys down the stairs to make you think I fell down them.” “Are you kidding me!” I asked him. He only starts laughing harder. I got on top of him and starting hitting him so hard and yelled, “That’s not funny, don’t you ever do that to me again!” I was so mad. I almost started crying. He finally realized that his joke wasn’t a joke after all. 

I am not sure if beating him up made him realize what he did wasn’t a joke or me crying, but he never played another joke like that on me. 

Thanks Matt! I’m glad I can finally laugh at your joke.