Kids always win

Hello, again-

We’re often reminded that kids always win:

-- We try to teach the boys some Bible stories and talk about the Bible when we have a chance. It backfired on us recently when Annette found Chris and Mark in the yard launching rocks at each other. She yelled, “What are you doing? Quit it!” They yelled, “It’s okay, Mommy! We’re David and Goliath!”
-- Our city boys drove their little bikes into the kitchen the other day and parked them bumper-to-bumper in front of the fridge. They all looked up and told us, “We’re playing traffic jam!”
-- We try to teach the boys to always stick together. It works most of the time, but we got in the car a few days before the 8-hour drive to Mombasa and found the stereo/GPS/backup camera didn’t work. We figured out pretty quickly that the coins in the console were missing, so probably had been put in the CD player and shorted out the whole system. I interrogated the boys for a while and finally realized they had taken my point: each one refused to roll over on his brothers. So, we have a “lesson from Mommy and Daddy” learned, as demonstrated by $400 worth of new car stereo.
-- We got out of our tent on Sunday morning at Masai Mara. I thought the kids would be impressed with the fact that a variety of wildlife had, as promised by the camp staff and as evidenced by noise throughout the night and the odor, obviously been directly outside of our tent during the night. I said, “It smells like we had some big animals outside our tent last night.” Chris replied, “All I smell is animal poop.”
-- We’re always harassing the boys about washing their hands after using the toilet. Chris came out of the restroom at a hotel we stayed in and told us he had washed his hands. Mark, Jr., who is taller, had just come out of the same restroom and said he couldn’t reach the faucet. Annette asked where Chris washed his hands, to which he replied, “In the baby sink by the toilet.” Chris had encountered his first bidet.
-- We’ve gotten to like a new dish called “bounty rice,” which is made of all sorts of fresh vegetables and such. The boys, who love bouncy castles at fairs, insist on calling the dish “bouncy rice.” I’ve enjoyed watching the battle between them and Annette:
Boys: Mommy, can we have bouncy rice?
Annette: It’s bounty rice!
Boys: How high does it bounce?
Annette: It doesn’t bounce! It’s rice!
Boys: Okay. Will the bounty rice bounce off my plate?

Enjoy the photos,
Mark & co.