Crazy Meyer Fam-Blam

I hail from one of the nuttiest families ever! It's true. But I am not ashamed like some people are of their crazy families, not one bit. Oh sure, sometimes I shake my head or roll my eyes at some of their odd behaviorisms, but I accept them for who they are just the same, (and I have my own quirks as well so I can't really talk). I realized just how cuckoo my family really is after a couple of semesters at college of talking about family lives with other people. After hearing about my roommates', friends', and FHE group members' home lives, I've really come to appreciate just how much more exciting my family is than their's XD (and I don't mean that in a negative way. I'm sure they've got entirely happy and enjoyable home lives). It's just that, back at my home we've got "Hilarity Hour" (as my Mom calls it), we play pranks on each other, we've got crazy dogs, we quote movies and comedians and stuff to liven things up, we sing loudly and dance while blindfolded, we make movies, we have boxing matches, and we try to imitate Irish dancing, just to name a few things.

First off, I'll quickly explain what Hilarity Hour is. It's that time of day when all of us reach the height of our hyperness and just go absolutely nuts. It typically does not last toooo long which is why my mom dubbed it Hilarity Hour. Sometimes, there is more than one Hilarity Hour in one day, depending on different circumstances such as how tired we are or how much sugar we've consumed. The time of day varies although it's usually in the late afternoon or evening after we're all home from school and Dad is home from work, when we're all really tired and about to crash.

A picture taken during Hilarity Hour. Apparently it was
"really bad" on this particular night.

DAD (aka Brad)

The root of our family's weirdness. The salsa-loving, pancake-making guy who loves his Vita-mix and Apple supplies. He constantly does goofy things, sometimes trying to embarrass us (like his "speed walk" or his "butt dance". Oh dear). Everybody who has ever met him loves him though, there's something wrong with you if you don't. He makes life fun. I fancy myself more like him than my mom personality-wise, though I have traits from both of them. I did not inherit his general outgoingness unfortunately. He is not afraid to just be himself in front of people (which is a big loveable goofball). His laugh is totally contagious too (he has several, but his full on outburst laugh is the most contagious). You should see him when he's taken his sleeping pills though (or maybe you shouldn't), one of the funniest things you'll ever witness.

MOM (aka Stefani)

The more mellow of the five of us, I'd say, but definitely not out of the ring of silliness. I'd say she plays the straight man of our comedy team (like Abbott in Abbott and Costello). She's silly, but not always in the entirely cooky way like Dad is. She fun and outgoing, but in a different way than Dad (I didn't inherit outgoingness from her either. Hmm...). The scrapbook-loving, bright-color wearing tiki head (explained below). She's kind of the butt of a lot of our jokes because she's so lovably dorky sometimes (I DO NOT mean that in a bad way!) She's also got a very contagious laugh (probably more-so than Dad's). She spends a lot of the time on the sidelines, laughing at our stupidity and cracking comments at our dispense. I don't think I've ever really seen her hyper. She's usually the one that's there laughing along with us and it's great. (Something I'd like to just say that has nothing to do with our craziness, she's very cuddly. I love giving her hugs ^_^)

ME (aka Kelsi)

And there's me. Another one of the more mellow ones of the bunch. Although, I'd classify myself just a step above my mother just because I've got a little bit of my dad in me. The Disney-loving, movie-making artist who loves British TV shows. Our family's movie sense of humor stems a lot from me, I am the movie quote queen. Whenever someone wants to remember a quote the usually ask me first. I am not typically as nutty as my dad or my siblings, but get me hyper enough and I can be. I sometimes serve my mom's role of sitting on the sidelines and cracking sarcastic comments. I'd probably classify myself the most sarcastic of the bunch (which is the majority of my sense of humor). I'm usually the first to feel bad for a snide, but joking comment I've made and I always make up for it by hugging the one I've just made the joke about. Dad has pointed this out and always laughs every time I give him a hug after I've insulted him.

SISTER (aka Afton)

What can I say about this one? She takes after my dad in the cuckoo category. Put her and him together during Hilarity Hour and well... hilarity ensues. Our sassy, dramatic, fun-loving shopaholic. She has mine and Dad's sense of humors rolled together. She's also very sarcastic and is more blunt in her sarcasm than I am. She's a big movie quoter as well. I usually go to her if I can't remember a quote or a character's name or whatever. But she is such a screwball! She's great at pulling funny faces, imitating people, and becoming a different character. She can also be a little slow and naive (sometimes it seems like she's playing dumb... maybe she is, maybe she isn't, who knows), which is where a lot of our laughs come from. She says the funniest things sometimes, also she opens her mouth really wide when she laughs, making it all the more funny. She reaches her wildest and weirdest point right before she crashes and sleeps.

BROTHER (aka Brady)

When you first meet this kid, you probably wouldn't realize what a riot he is. Most of the time, he's very mellow and laid back, just a very go with the flow type of a person. But when he gets hyper... boy does he get hyper. Our video game-playing, T-shirt wearing basketball player. He refers to himself as a monkey. This is quite accurate actually. One of the key traits to his humor is his broad imagination. He comes up with the most bizarre scenarios, characters, recipes, costumes, phrases, words, etc. I remember his stuffed monkey named Redd (he made sure we knew it was spelled with 2 D's). Or his weird recipes like Tortilla Surprise (tortilla with cheese, pieces of bread, and ketchup on it). Or his character, $teve (some sort of salesman whose job was to make lots of money by selling random stuff. He made $1000 every 8 seconds). One day he said about milk: "I just had to have one more cup of salvation." Of course, he gets crazy too. Like Afton and Dad, bouncing off the walls and stuff.

THE DOGS (aka Chase, Macy, and Troy)

Macy (left), Troy (middle), Chase (right)

Chase has since passed on, but I'm mentioning him anyways. These guys are a big contributing factor to our humor and hilarity. They are so full of energy (well at least Troy and Chase). When they squirm around on their backs like they've got an itch, or when they're so proud of themselves when they catch a squirrel, or whatever. TONS of funny stories from our house come from these guys. Like when Macy caught a mole and dropped it on Brady's lap while me and him were watching TV, then Dad chased us around the house with it, making me lock Afton out of the pantry where I was hiding. Or how about the many times they've gotten sprayed by a skunk? Just the silly expressions they give (like Troy's super cute "I want something" face. When he rests his head on your knee and looks up with his biggest puppy eyes ever). Or when Troy has way too much energy (or Chase when he was alive) and we need to burn some off, we have someone upstairs in the parents room and someone downstairs i the family room and we have him run as fast as possible between the two points. Funniest thing ever! Macy is funny too, she's just not very hyper. She tries to get on the fun of the other dogs, but she doesn't know how and ends up ruining it. It's really funny to watch. These dogs are hilarious!


Haha, inside jokes are one of our families' specialties. Here's a list of some of my favorites:

TIKI HEAD

For the full story on the tiki head, read my mom's post here, I'll just go over it briefly. Several years ago, I was asked what our family's crest would be and I said 4 monkeys and a tiki head. The monkeys were my dad and the kids and the tiki head was my mom because the four of us were always goofing off and Mom was always more serious. So whenever we come across a tiki head, Mom always has to pose by it. Whenever we feel like my mom is being a party-pooper (or anybody for that matter) we shout "TIKI HEAD!" at them.

SHARE OUR BOUNTY

My personal favorite. One night, Dad brought Panda Express home for dinner. Brady was at his friend, Esteban's house and so my mom called him to come home for dinner. She also said to invite Esteban to come over to have some as well. Afton, overhearing, was upset saying she didn't want to share our food with him. Dad berated her, saying that we should learn to "share our bounty" with others. We all laughed at Dad's choice of words. Mom then asked Dad to bless the food, jokingly asking him to ask the Lord to help us to share our bounty with others. So Dad started praying. It started out fine with the normal "we thank thee for this day" and so on. But then he said, "please bless that we will share our bounty". That did it. We all started laughing, but Dad tried to continue. But he couldn't, we kept laughing. Finally, after several minutes, we gave up and tried to start over. No good. We stopped again and Afton suggested that she prayed, but she couldn't do it either. Eventually, Dad tried again, but still couldn't do it. Finally, we agreed that we would just persevere through it no matter who laughed. (Probably at least good 10 minutes had passed by this point). So Dad started praying, very slowly through his laughter, trying to ignore everyone else's giggles. Brady and Esteban came in somewhere in the middle and saw us sniggering over our plates. Brady said later that he thought we were crying because one of the dogs had died or something. Finally we got through the prayer and ate, sharing our bounty with Esteban.

WILHEMINA HOACOX/ SEAL

We used to play a game when I was younger where my mom would pay us a certain amount of money if we could guess who was singing on the radio. She would sometimes gives us hints like the first letter(s) of their name or something like that to help us. We usually wouldn't guess it right, but there is one occasion that we did. Mom gave us the hint that the singer's same started with an S and Afton randomly yelled out "Seal!". So out of the blue, guessing a random word, she got $5. Whenever guessing again, we would always guess Seal, just in case.
Another time, my mom said the singer's initials were WH and that it was a female. I had no idea so I made up a random goofy name: "Wilhemina Hoacox!". From then on, Whitney Houston has been known as Whilemina Hoacox to us.

WOW DAD

Afton will get embarrassed or weirded out by my dad's antics sometimes. So she'll usually just say "wow Dad" dryly as she rolls her eyes or something. She says it kind of nasally which Dad noticed one day and started laughing at it. He started imitating her in an exaggerated nasally voice, laughing all the while. Then everybody started imitating her in the same exaggerated nasally voice. We all still do imitate her now after she says it, but mostly Dad.

THE POINT

I'm not even sure how this one got started. All I know is that whenever we have a family photo shoot we have to do The Point. This is when we point off to a random point in the distance with someone with an awed/dazed look on our face. (I think Brady and/or Dad might have started this).

OR... FIREWORKS

There's a looooooooong story behind this one (which you can read about on my mom's blog here), but I'll just briefly go over the joke bit here. One day Macy and Chase got lost. We found Chase before Macy and we were worried sick for her. Eventually I found her and all was well. Of course we were talking about the dramatic event later on that day and how timid Macy is. Somebody wondered how scared Macy would be of something like thunder. Everyone agreed and someone added "or fireworks". Each of us repeated the statement in agreement one by one. Then the silliness of it struck us and we started laughing. We then all started repeating the phrase over and over in different voices and different tones.


So yes, my family is weird. Do I care? Nope. Not a bit.

How many Meyers does it take to change a lightbulb?

This video never fails to make me laugh. I mean who DOES stuff like this? Our family, that's who.