So Easily Amused

These are Blakeley's favorite toys.

Oh, to be a kid again...

The following is an excerpt from the Ensign article, "The Power of Laughter" by Gary K. Palmer, Teaching Professor of Recreation Management and Youth Leadership, Brigham Young University from September 2007.  We recently read this article during FHE.  (I'm also happy to report that we had FHE this week so that's four weeks in a row.  Woo hoo!  Here we come Guinness Book of World Records!)

"Becoming More Childlike...

On average, children laugh 400 times a day, while adults laugh about 15 times. Why the gap? Did we lose something? Have we forgotten the way we used to be? Why is it that children seem to cope with life’s oddities better than adults? Perhaps it’s because they do not fully understand. But I think it’s simpler than that—they laugh. As we grow older, we get far too serious. Watch children play. They don’t need expensive toys to entertain them. Everything is fun. They are spontaneous. Only when we become adults do we start to get boring. Do we need to cultivate a different attitude? Humor is in the way we see things, the way we think. It’s an attitude, not an event. Perhaps the key lies in becoming more childlike. 

Years ago I saw through my kitchen window a grown man playing with his children in a sandpile at a small neighborhood park. He was right down there on his hands and knees in the sand, building an imaginary town with streets, cars, trucks, trees, houses, stores, and schools. I could see the father pushing a wooden block bulldozer through the sand, pretending to build a road. He even made the sound effects of the bulldozer engine. I remember thinking, “Now there is an example of a great dad who knows how to play with his children.” He was in plain view to every passing car. Was he embarrassed or ruffled? Not at all. He seemed oblivious to the people passing by. Does this mean we should play in the sandpile with our children? Absolutely. Laugh more, play more, swing out of familiar places, be more the way you were when you were a child."

You hear that everybody?  Sounds good to me.