1. Building mounted fire hose connections are no substitute for a real hydrant.

2. "Why can't I just make an appointment with the groomer to get my nails done? I can do without the shampoo, blow-dry and stupid pink bows."

3. Nintendo is not easily paw operated.

4. There are no real career opportunities for a dog who has been fixed.

5. Silk plants may look real but when chewed cause extreme flatulence.

6. "If Barbie wasn't meant as a chew toy, why do little girls set up her Dream House within easy reach?"

7. No breakfast in bed.

8. Really cool sneaker companies don't make doggie booties.

9. "Snausages" is not in the dictionary.

10. The average refrigerator door seam is too narrow to be easily opened by a snout.

An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her preacher she had two final requests. First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Wal-Mart.

"Wal-Mart?" the preacher exclaimed. "Why Wal-Mart?"

The woman replied, "Then I'll be sure my family visits me twice a week."

A pregnant woman from Washington, D.C., (whose husband was out of the country) gets in a car accident and is knocked unconscious.

When she wakes up 3 days later she sees that she is no longer pregnant and frantically asks the doctor about her baby.

The doctor replies, "Ma'am you had twins! - a boy and a girl. We couldn't reach your husband and since your brother was the first one here the day they were born we let him name them for you."

The woman thinks to herself, "No, not my brother... he's not very bright!"

She asks the doctor, "Well, what's the girl's name?"

"Denise."

"Wow, that's not a bad name, I like it! What's the boy's name?"

"Denephew."

Friends of ours owned a huge Great Dane named "Bear." He looked menacing but was actually quite harmless. Though Bear has gone on to doggy heaven here are two great stories they often tell.

Bear's playground was a fenced yard about 40 feet square. With a mere 3 foot fence his head easily reached over the top. Standing on his haunches it looked like he could walk over the fence. One of the neighbor boys asked the owner if he could jump the fence. "Shhhhh," she replied. "He can - but don't tell him."

5:30am: Started the day as a hero! When the sound of the newspaper hitting the driveway roused me from my deep slumber, and the impact indicated the paper was much heavier than normal, I realized that no one in the house was yet awake! I roused my master by licking him in the face. He appeared very angry with himself for having overslept, shouting and waving his arms. His ill temper even seemed directed at me a bit, which is silly since it is I who saved him from being fired. Funny thing though: he didn't go into work, but spent the morning leafing through the large newspaper and drinking coffee. He seems to do this once a week, and I don't know why.

7:30am: Invaders! The people who live next door came out into their yard, obviously getting ready to lay siege to our house. Snarling and barking, I let them know in no uncertain terms that I was prepared to tear them limb from limb if they came any closer, and was able to repel the invasion. This is an almost daily occurrence; you'd think they'd learn. My master added his voice to the fray as well, yelling angrily. I am sure the people couldn't hear him, but it was nice of him to lend his support.

*  "Jerry was at his grandmother's yesterday, and she did not bring him to school because Jerry couldn't remember where the school was."

*  "Ronnie would not finish his work last night.  He said his brain was too tired of spelling."

*  "Eric hurt his knee in a karate tournament over the weekend.  He won his age group, but was in too much pain to do his math assignment."

"I have to have a raise," the man said to his boss. "Three companies are after me."

"Is that so?" asked the manager. "What other companies are after you?"

"The electric company, the telephone company, and the gas company."

Realizing at the last minute that it was his father's birthday, a teenage boy rushed to the corner store to grab a card.

He quickly found a son-to-father card but neglected to read it carefully.

Later when his father opened his gifts, he was surprised to read aloud,

"Happy birthday to a wonderful Dad. Now that I'm a father too . . ."

My husband and I took our two-year-old daughter to the home-improvement store.

Madison got tired of walking, so my husband let her ride on his shoulders. As he walked, Madison began pulling his hair. Although he asked her to stop several times, she kept on.

Getting annoyed, he scolded, "Madison! Stop that!"

"But, Daddy," she replied, "I'm just trying to get my gum back."

A father is asked by his friend, "Has your son decided what he wants to be when he grows up?"

"Yes, he wants to be a garbage collector," replied the boy's father.

His friend thought for a moment and responded, "That's a rather strange ambition to have for a career."

"Well," said the boy's father, "he thinks that garbage collectors only work on Tuesdays!"

At our local crematorium families are given the chance to chose the music CD they would like to enter the service to.

One family asked to enter to "Love Me Tender."

Well, the day of the funeral arrived and the music was started ready for the family to walk into the service.

Unfortunately, the wrong track number was entered into the CD player, and the family found themselves walking in to "Return to Sender."

When my children received the video of Cinderella as a summer gift, they watched it almost nonstop for three days. Since it was warm outside, we kept the windows open.

Our neighbors were having their roof reshingled by three burly men. As I went out to get the mail one afternoon, I heard a roofer singing, "...put it together and what do you get?"

"From the other side of the house came a chorus of two more husky voices: "Bibbidi bobbidi, bibbidi bobbidi, bibbidi, bobbidi boo!"

Checking out of the grocery store, I noticed that the bag boy was eyeing my two adopted children curiously. They often draw scrutiny, since my son's a blond Russian, while my daughter has shiny black Haitian skin.

The boy continued staring as he carried our groceries to the car.

Finally, he asked. "Those your kids?"

"Yes, they are!" I answered proudly.

"They adopted?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"I thought so," he concluded. "I figured you're too old to have kids that small."

I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet, so I decided to test her.

I would point out something and ask what color it was. She would tell me, and always she was correct. But it was fun for me, so I continued.

At last, she headed for the door, saying sagely,

"Grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these yourself!"

A father was at the beach with his children when his four-year-old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore, where a seagull lay dead in the sand.

"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked. 

"He died and went to Heaven," the dad replied.

The boy thought a moment and then said,

"Did God throw him back down?"

Unable to attend the funeral after his Uncle Charlie died, a man who lived far away called his brother and told him, "Do something nice for Uncle Charlie and send me the bill."

Later, he got a bill for $200.00, which he paid. The next month, he got another bill for $200.00, which he also paid, figuring it was some incidental expense.

But, when the bills for $200.00 kept arriving every month, he finally called his brother again to find out what was going on.

"Well," said the other brother, "You said to do something nice for Uncle Charlie. So I rented him a tuxedo."

At one point during a game, the coach said to one of his young players, "Do you understand what cooperation is? What a team is?" The little boy nodded yes.

"Do you understand that what matters is whether we win together as a team?" The little boy nodded yes.

"So," the coach continued, "when a strike is called, or you are out at first, you don't argue or curse or attack the umpire. Do you understand all that?" Again, the boy nodded yes.

"Good," said the coach. "Now go over there and explain it to your mother."

Little Mikey and his family were having Sunday dinner at his grandmother's house. Everyone was seated around the table as the food was being served. When Little Mikey received his plate, he started eating right away.

"Mikey! Please wait until we say our prayer," said his mother.

"I don't need to," the boy replied.

"Of course, you do," his mother insisted through gritted teeth. "We always say a prayer before eating at our house."

"That's at our house," Mikey explained. "But this is Grandma's house and she knows how to cook."

The mother of a large family was explaining why she dresses her children alike, right down to the youngest baby.

"When we had just four children, I dressed them alike so we wouldn't lose any of them."

"Now," she added, looking around at her brood of nine, "I dress them alike so we won't pick up any that don't belong to us."

My mother's friend joined Weight Watchers, and the other day when she was getting ready to go to the weekly meeting her little grandson asked her where she was going. She said she was going to her fat club.

When she got back home her grandson said, "Well Grandma, are you fat yet?"

*Here are some actual answers from contestants who have appeared on the game show Family Feud:*

Name something a blind person might use: a sword

Name a song with moon in the title: blue suede moon

Name a bird with a long neck: a penguin

Name an occupation where you need a torch: a burglar

One Sunday a priest announced he was passing out miniature crosses made of wood.

"Put this cross in the room where your family argues most," he advised. "When you look at it, the cross will remind you that God is watching."

When the parishioners were leaving church, a woman walked up to the priest, shook his hand, and said, "I'll take five."

A boy is about to go on his first date, and is nervous about what to talk about. He asks his father for advice.

The father replies: "My son, there are three subjects that always work. These are food, family, and philosophy."

The boy picks up his date and they go to a soda shoppe. Ice-cream sundaes in front of them, they stare at each other for a long time, as the boy's nervousness builds.

I was trying to get my seventh-grade history class to understand how the Indians must have felt when they first encountered the Spanish explorers.

"How would you feel," I asked, "if someone showed up on your doorstep who looked very different, spoke a strange language and wore unusual clothes? Wouldn't you be a bit scared?"

"Nah," one boy answered, "I'd just figure it was my sister's date."

My Dad and I were talking the other night about love and marriage.

He told me that he knew as early as their wedding what marriage to my Mom would be like. It seems the minister asked my Mom, "Do you take this man to be your husband." And she said, "I do."

Then the minister asked my Dad, "Do you take this woman to be your wife," and my Mom said, "He does."

All eyes were on the radiant bride as her father escorted her down the aisle.

They reached the altar and the waiting groom; the bride kissed her father and placed something in his hand.

The guests in the front pews responded with ripples of laughter.

Even the priest smiled broadly.

As her father gave her away in marriage, the bride gave him back his credit card.

Many years ago, a grandfather bought a hobby horse by mail order as a birthday present for his granddaughter.

The toy arrived in 189 pieces. The instructions said that it could be put together in an hour.

However it took the man two days to assemble the toy.

Finally, when it was all put together, he wrote a check, cut it into 189 pieces and mailed it off to the company.

"Thanks for the harmonica you gave me for Christmas," Little Johnny said to his Uncle Rodney, the first time he saw him after the holidays. "It's the best Christmas present I ever got."

"That's great," said his Uncle Rodney. "Do you know how to play it?"

"Oh, I don't play it," Little Johnny said.

"My mom gives me a dollar a day not to play it during the day and my dad gives me five dollars a week not to play it at night."

While talking with my semi-deaf uncle one evening, I noticed that his "hearing aid" was actually an earphone from a transistor radio. The wire had been cut and was sticking out of his shirt.

"How does that help your hearing?" I asked.

"Don't help my hearing none," he replied. "Makes people talk louder."

One day a young boy ran crying to his mother and rubbing his behind.

His mother said, "Bobby, why are you crying?"

"Because daddy hit his thumb with the hammer!" little Bobby wailed.

"Why, that's not something to cry over," his mother told him. "That should make you laugh."

Bobby rubbed his behind and said tearfully, "I DID laugh!"

Phil goes to Europe and leaves his favorite dog with his brother James. While in Europe, Phil calls James to check on his dog and asks, "So James, how's my favorite dog doing?" 

James very tersely replies, "Your dog is dead" "

What?" says Phil, "You can't just tell someone their favorite dog is dead without a warning, you have to ease them into it."

A boy was assigned a paper on childbirth and asked his parents, "How was I born?"

"Well, Honey..." said the slightly prudish parent, "the stork brought you to us."

"Oh," said the boy. "Well, how did you and daddy get born?" he asked.

"Oh, the stork brought us too."

"Well how were grandpa and grandma born?" he persisted.

"Well darling, the stork brought them too!" said the parent, by now starting to squirm a little in the Lazy Boy recliner.

Several days later, the boy handed in his paper to the teacher who read with confusion the opening sentence:

"This report has been very difficult to write because there hasn't been a natural childbirth in my family for three generations."

Sometimes being a mother is a dish best served cold after 29 years.

"Everyone has feelings, except for snakes and principals."
- Donna Maria G, age 9

"Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and the world laughs at you."
- Rob P, age 8

"If life gives you nothing but lemons, make up a better shopping list for it."
- Steven B, age 8

"Moses came down with the Ten Amendments, which were God's Bill of Wrongs."
- Susie F., age 7

"Doctors automatically know what's wrong with you. They have a sick sense."
- Beau M., age 10

This is rather lengthy but funny.

*Laws Pertaining to Dessert*

For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert.

But of the unclean plate, the laws are these: If you have eaten most of your meat, and two bites of your peas with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or in total six peas, eaten where I can see, and you have also eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert. But if you eat a lesser number of peas, and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert; and if you eat the peas, yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert, no, not even a small portion thereof.

"All I Need to Know about Life I Learned From a Snowman.... "

--It's okay if you're a little bottom heavy.

--Hold your ground, even when the heat is on.

--Wearing white is always appropriate.

--Winter is the best of the four seasons.

A mother was telling her little girl what her own childhood was like.

She said, "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods."

The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this in.

At last she said, "I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

A newscaster interrupted scheduled programming to announce the outcome of a political election.

"More on candidates at 10 P.M.," he said.

My ten-year-old granddaughter Ashley looked at me in disbelief.

"I didn't know they could call politicians 'morons' on national television!" she remarked.

1. The tennis shoes you must replace today will go on sale next week.

2. Leak proof thermoses will.

3. The chance of a piece of bread falling with the grape jelly side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

4. The garbage truck will be two doors past your house when the argument over whose day it is to take out the trash ends.

5. The shirt your child must wear today will be the only one that needs to be washed or mended.

When Diane found out she was pregnant, she told the good news to anyone who would listen.

Her 4-year-old son overheard some of his parents' private conversations.

One day, when Diane and her 4-year-old were shopping, a woman asked the little boy if he was excited about the new baby.

"Yes!" the 4-year-old said, "and I know what we are going to name it, too. If it's a girl we're going to call her Christina, and if it's another boy we're going to call it quits!!"

After an overnight flight to meet my father at his latest military assignment, my mother wearily arrived at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany with my eight siblings and me - all under age 11. Collecting our many suitcases, the ten of us entered the cramped customs area.

A young customs official watched our entourage in disbelief, "Ma'am," he said, "do all these children and this luggage belong to you?"

A few years ago, I decided to visit my brother who was stationed in Germany. I assumed that most Germans would speak English. But I found that many people spoke only their native tongue - including the ticket inspector on the train.

He punched my ticket, then chatted cordially for a bit, making gestures like a windmill. I simply nodded from time to time to show him that I was interested.

When he had gone, an American woman in the compartment leaned forward and asked if I spoke German.

"No," I confessed.

"Then that explains," she said, "why you didn't bat an eyelid when he told you that you were on the wrong train."

After a lady's car had leaked motor oil on her cement driveway, she bought a large bag of cat litter to soak it up.

It worked so well, that she went back to the convenience store to get another bag to finish the job.

Remembering her, the clerk remarked, "Lady, if that were my cat, I'd put him outside!"

I sent that "Ancestry" site some information on my family tree and they sent me back a packet of seeds and suggested that I just start over.

I was scheduled to fly from North Carolina to Germany, where my husband was stationed in the military.

As I checked in at the airport, the ticket agent asked me some standard security questions.

"Has anyone given you any packages that you didn't pack yourself?" he asked.

While on maternity leave, a woman from our office brought in her new bundle of joy.

She also had her seven-year-old son with her.

Everyone gathered around the baby, and the little boy asked, "Mommy, can I have some money to buy a soda?"

"What do you say?" she asked.

Respectfully, the boy replied, "You're thin and beautiful."

The woman reached in her purse and gave her son the money.

Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents.

At bedtime, the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers when the youngest one began praying at the top of his lungs, "I PRAY FOR A NEW BICYCLE. I PRAY FOR A NEW NINTENDO. I PRAY FOR A NEW PVR..."

His older brother leaned over and nudged the younger brother and said, "Why are you shouting your prayers? God isn't deaf."

To which the little brother replied, "No, but Grandma is!"

An irritated father complained to his golf buddy.

"When I was a kid, my parents sent me to my room without supper if I misbehaved. But my son has his own color TV, telephone, computer, every computer game and CD player in his room!"

"So how do you handle it?" his friend asked.

"I send him to MY room!"

A man took his son fishing one day. After a few hours in the boat with not much to do, the son started asking his father some questions.

"How does the boat float?" he asked.

The man thought about the question for a moment, then said, "I don't really know, son."

"Well, how do fish breath underwater?"

It was in the early 1960's and spray deodorant, new to the market, was being advertised on television about six times a day. I was still living at home with my parents saving money for college. One afternoon after a hard day of construction and before dinner I took a nice hot shower.

After drying off I spotted a new spray can on the bathroom shelf.

The label read "SafeGuard" and I was so surprised that my mom had bought some of that new deodorant so I sprayed a liberal amount under each arm.