Oh, the things they say...

We constantly have "blog moments" out on the road, and I wish I had time to document all of them. There were two that happened this Sunday that I just couldn't pass up though. As I've shared before, the kids say things or sometimes hear things in a different way since their first language isn't English...it keeps us laughing.

Let me set the stage for the first story. We always have concerts at 2 churches on Sundays, which means meals from 2 different churches. We usually eat a late lunch and then an early dinner. This past Sunday, our morning church served ziti and ravioli, which everyone enjoyed. Then we get to our evening church and they are serving spaghetti (also good, just a lot of pasta for one afternoon). Without any complaining, the kids take their spaghetti and start eating.

About 10 minutes into the meal, Wilber comes up to me and one of our chaperones looking very concerned. Holding out his plate of about half-eaten spaghetti, he looks up with an almost tearful voice and simply says, "The end?"

We lost it! Normally he would have had to eat a little more, but because of that priceless comment, he didn't have to eat another bite!


The second blog worthy moment came later that night after the service. Now keep in mind that the kids had done 4 services that day, so they were tired. Plus, we had lost an hour of sleep the night before thanks to the time change. The youth group invited the kids to hang out with them in the gym while our guys tore down the sound. It was pretty chaotic, but everything was going well...until Suzan took Matia's ball. She should have known who she was messing with. He had no choice in his tired state, and he did the only thing he knew to do...he hauled off and hit her! After a thorough examination, we knew Suzan was going to be fine, so I called Matia over to have a talk. This was our conversation:

me: "Matia, you know we don't hit, especially girls!"
(I'm really getting through to him)

Matia, feeling awful for what he had done: "What about boys?"

me: "No Matia, we don't hit ANYONE, but ESPECIALLY girls"
(because emphasizing it will help him understand and feel a little bit of remorse)

Matia: "They are NOT special!"

Like I said, it had been a long day! (Good thing his head was down, because I was laughing by that point.)

Give the poor tooth fairy a break!

It seems like I've been reading a lot of posts about the "Tooth Fairy" lately. I guess a lot of my friends have kids at that age, and the question has been raised, "what is the going rate for a tooth?" Well, the "Tooth Fairy" doesn't visit us out here on the road. We just move around too much and the poor fairy would go broke trying to pay market value for 13 children, all of whom are of "tooth-shedding" age. Not to mention that some lose teeth in their host homes, while I personally pull others. The fairy just can't handle the pressure of keeping up with that.

The question that has not been raised is, "what do you do with all the lost teeth?" Now I know there are some that may put them in a special box, or maybe in a scrapbook, but the thought of saving and keeping up with 13 kids' teeth is just plain gross (to put it bluntly), and I can just imagine little teeth falling out of the kids' suitcases in random places if they kept them.

Now I can't take credit for this brilliant idea. Our kids from India taught us about this tradition of what to do with lost teeth during our first year on the road, and I think the idea has spread to several other countries by now! It is an outdoor ceremony of sorts, and the key is to gather everyone around and make a big deal about it. If the tooth was lost from the upper jaw, then the "tooth loser" throws the tooth up on something (a stranger's roof, a tree, or in our case a church...). If the tooth was from the bottom jaw, then it's thrown under something. It's fun, it's quick, it's easy and it saves the child from having to face the traumatic question of "what do I do with all these nasty teeth?" when they go off to college. After all, we do call them "lost" teeth!

While we use this as an alternative to the "Tooth Fairy," I'm sure all of you could figure out a way to incorporate it with the fairy if you wanted! So anyways, if you should someday find yourself on a roof and you find a little tooth, you'll know either the Children of the World choir was there, or this great idea caught on!!

Disney Frenzy

Our team was very blessed by churches and host families that worked it out for us to spend 2 days at Disneyworld. We hit the Magic Kingdom for a full day, and then did Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom and Epcot on the second day. We had a blast!! All the kids rode anything and everything. We started off slow on "It's a Small World" and ended up doing Space Mountain twice...and that was just the Magic Kingdom. At the end of the day, we all watched a million bucks literally go up in flames (give or take). The "Wishes" fireworks show was amazing. As it ended, we were staring at Cinderella's castle when Catherine looked over and said, "I just want to be a princess...if I could just have one wish, I would be a princess." It was pretty stinkin' cute!

Day 2 brought even more thrilling rides like the Tower of Terror and Everest Expedition. If you've never been on that one, I'd say it's the best ride at Disney! Anyways, we can't thank everyone enough who helped make this such an amazing time for us!