“Dad, you’re better than a kangaroo.”

As I mentioned yesterday, we are in Florida, on vacation. Joshua asked us last night, “So where are we going to church tomorrow?”

Oh. um… I thought we’d just go to the beach. However, we are not ones to ignore the requests of our children, especially such a noble request. We went to a contemporary Southern Baptist Church called The Village.

We dropped JD off at the nursery, and the rest of us sat together through a service, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt genuinely encouraged. They had a great gig to celebrate Father’s Day too: free snow cones for everyone, after the service. Not too shabby!

I asked the boys what they thought, as we drove away. The big boys said, “It was great!” Daniel replied, with a scowl, “No me liked it.”

Well, it is important to always be honest…

So we headed to Outback Steakhouse for a Father’s Day lunch. They even had blank cards all set out for the boys to design, so Alan got 4 beautiful cards out of the deal.

The boys are always saying humorous things, which I rarely remember to write down, so I grabbed myself a kids’ menu and a crayon and took notes.

First, there was the ordering debacle. Joshua wanted to order salmon, steak, AND shrimp. Ahem, from the real menu! He settled for splitting a steak and shrimp meal with Caleb and a kids’ chicken finger meal with Daniel. Then he came home, heated up chicken nuggets, and ate half a crate of strawberries. Watching him eat reminds me of someone.

Who does it remind me of?

Oh,yeah! Alan! Back when we were dating, I stared in disbelief at the amount of food he put away. I remember telling my friend Leigh, before Alan and I even went on our first date, “Oh no! Leigh! I could never marry Alan. I could never feed him.”

 

The most adorable thing to me was Joshua’s helpfulness with Daniel today. We were almost done eating, and Daniel had eaten maybe three french fries, and that was it. Joshua said, “Oh, I can handle this. This always works.”

“Hey, Daniel,” Joshua said teasingly, “I’m going to eat your chicken,” as he pulled one of Daniel’s chicken fingers off of Dan’s plate.

Dan giggled, “Okay. I eat them. No, no, no. Here. Give it to me. I eat it.”

Then, he DID! He at the whole entire chicken finger. Astonishing! I guarantee you Daniel would have come home hungry, if it weren’t for Joshua’s little trick.

We are so thankful for Joshua. We were talking at lunch about how JD never gets into the sort of mischief that Caleb and Daniel did. Of course, we realize that that’s also because Joshua is a very protective, ‘helicopter’ brother.

Joshua also likes to tell jokes, and sometimes Daniel’s answers to these riddles are funnier than the real jokes. Joshua asked Daniel, “What’s the opposite of smart?”

Daniel quickly replied, “John David!”

I laughed so hard. Don’t worry. I don’t think his brothers got what I was laughing at. Daniel didn’t even know he’d said something funny.

John David sat next to Alan during lunch and hugged all over him. Caleb sat across from me, drew the sweetest picture for Alan, and made his usual nonchalant, dry comments that make me smile. I wrote down a couple of these, all from Caleb:

“I bet this is your best Father’s Day ever.”

Alan’s eyes looked big. Three of the four boys woke up at 5:45 this morning, thanks to J.D., Alan spent the first HOUR cooking them all breakfast, he sat between two that wiggled all over him through the early church service, and then he sat by J.D. at lunch, so….blessed but tired..

“When I grow up and get married, maybe I will come visit you, like on Father’s Day.”

Alan replied, “Well, Caleb, I certainly hope you WILL come visit, as much as you can. You know, your mom and I both visited our fathers this week of Father’s Day, and we visit them as much as we can.”

(We love you Dad, DaddyO, and Granddaddy!)

Kids do learn by example.

“I know I’m really eating pig because this comes from pigs,” Caleb said, holding up his steak.

“No, Caleb, that actually comes from cows.” (We gave him the obligatory lesson on which food comes from what.)

Caleb replied, “But don’t feed the cows too good, or else vampire bats might suck their blood out.”

*I had no adequate reply to that point, so I just got out my crayon and scribbled his thought down. Vampire bats. Huh.*

Alan made a few last attempts to get J.D. to eat something besides just drinking from his straw cup, which he was a huge fan of. All attempts failed, and JD began trying to feed Alan like an airplane, so we decided to call it quits and go home.

We all sat and waited about 5 extra minutes for Joshua to eat and eat and eat, and then we headed home, after a quick stop by the church for J.D.’s missing sippy cup. I bet I’ve spent $1,000 on sippy cups over the past 9 years.

Now Alan and the three oldest are at the beach, and J.D. and I are supposed to join them once J.D. wakes up. Judging by the sound of the door stopper, boing, boing, boing-ing, J.D. is up. Door stoppers are a great fascination for John David.

Perhaps J.D. and I can make it to the beach before the boys leave. We only need sunscreen, towels, swimsuits, swim diapers, and a few more sips of water….This will only take an hour, right?

***********

We were too late. We had fun with them at the pool, though. We had one heck of a jumping contest.

Happy Father’s Week!

Oh yeah! The kangaroo comment was also Caleb. We were eating at Outback, so Caleb drew a picture of himself with a kangaroo, not so happy, and a picture with Alan, super happy. Yes, lots of warm and fuzzy feelings were felt all around. We hope you all have a good week too.