~ (weird) kid things ~

• 16 hours in the van with the kids and the puppy getting back to TX from TN...The first hour was touch and go, Lydia was mad at everything and disagreeing with every positive sentiment being shared. The other 15 hours felt miraculous. Good road trip. 

• When someone does Lydia's hair and she likes it, she says, "What a great saloner!"  Salon as a verb.  You're welcome.

• We got to see a huge black bear in the Smoky Mountains. It ran across the road in front of us. It was the highlight of Isaac's 12 year life. Lydia said, "If that thing came near me I would scream out my blood."  (Screaming bloody murder is something entirely different.) 

• In the homeschooling curriculum we use they have a "tin whistle" unit.  I believe that falls under "fine arts" - which, let us be honest, is a total misnomer.  Also, tin whistle is a new way of saying recorder and we all know that the recorder was added to fourth grade curriculum back in 1981 as a way of driving families apart. Giving it a new name changes nothing. I digress. So, Isaac, Hope, and Noah love their tin whistles. Lucky us, right? The other day they came to tell me that they would be going for a walk and practicing. Being utterly selfish I only heard "Tin whistles will be played away from your ears, Tara" and I said, "Great idea - GO!" The three of them walked in a line, playing tin whistles as they went all around the neighborhood. When people stopped them to ask why they were not in school they said, "We don't go to school." I assume the police will be here any minute.

• Lydia and Phoebe had a real argument about what names they "call" for their future children. They both want Julianna.  Lydia got ticked when Phoebe insisted she'd be taking Julianna first and told Phoebe, "You need to name your daughter Dolphiny because you love dolphins."

• At the doctor's office the doctor asked Lydia, "Do you read?" Lydia said, "Yeah, I read. I read, like, the letters of the alphabet, you know? I read ABCDEFG and the rest of them too." 

• All five "little kids" - which just doesn't work anymore as a descriptor but is what we call them - are getting all caught up on exams and immunizations. We are perpetually behind on all that well child stuff. Some of my favorite moments are watching how people react to their funny innocence. Isaac's jaw dropped to the floor when he was asked about depression, drugs, gangs, and sex. The shock on his face when those questions were posed was really kind of precious. "What do you mean a gang?" he said.  Turns out he is in the 'vocab gang'.  Initiation is 5 quality adjectives, 3 strong verbs, and the use of both in grammatically correct sentences. 

• The church that is allowing us to use their house is a historic and large institution in this town. We have been blessed twice with the use of their 3 bedroom brick rambler and have loved staying here. We remove all their fancy decor on day one and box it up until the kids are buckled in and headed to the airport. They came by to do a bit of an inventory on the house, see if anything needed fixing or upgrading.  Isaac was the only child home with Troy. In true Isaac fashion he schmoozed the two visitors including getting their names down and telling them how nice it was to meet them and they chatted about their common love of Tennessee. Troy said he went in for a hug at the time of the introductions, which seemed to surprise them a bit. Should this church decide to support the work of Heartline Ministries we will know it was due to our good will ambassador. 

• "Do you think Sea World will still be going when I have kids?" -Noah 

• "I hate covers. You wanna know why?"  (uh. OK.) "They give me a tummy ache." -Lydia

• We went to Gatlinburg one night on our TN trip. We planned to walk around and see the Christmas lights. We ended up having pizza while we were there. The two youngest girls are big on having bowel movements in public restrooms. It's their thing or something. So, I took Lydia to the bathroom as per usual. The music was blaring in the bathroom and Rod Stewart was singing Hot Legs (circa 1977) at a high volume. The stall was locked so we waited by the sink. Lydia started dancing crazy to Hot Legs and mocking a hard rock head-banger. An older woman exited the stall to see  Lydia dancing and said, "Do you know Rod Stewart little girl?" Lydia said, "NO, but I.am.dancing!" The old lady started dancing with her in the tiny bathroom sink area. Lydia and a 70 year old stranger dancing to Hot Legs in Gatlinburg. That's not weird.

• We started working on the 7th Annual Christmas Extravaganza. We all think that family tradition is more fun in Haiti than it is stateside.