I apologize for the long drought. Needless to say the kids have said more crazy things than I can possibly remember in the past weeks. I'll try to give an accurate picture of how the kids are coming along.

BEN

Ben has been loving summer. Usually the book worm, he has been too busy lately spending all of his time outside to read very many books. He gets up most days and makes his younger siblings breakfast and gets them going for the day. He's also picked up helping me mow the lawn and rollerblading. While he seems to be growing up faster than his due, he still gets emotional some times but it NEVER coincides when he's tired. This is coincidentally when he says the craziest things as well. Tonight, for example, he was very upset so I informed him that if I heard him yell or cry one more time he was going to miss all the fun tomorrow. The next time I passed his room he called me in. "Dad, your my favorite Dad in the whole world and tonight you broke my heart." Half of me wanted to cry the other half wanted to laugh. I can't wait until teenage angst kicks in. He said something really funny the other day when he wasn't upset but I'll have to write about it when I can remember.

KALLIE

Kallie has been extremely upset over the fact that Ben constantly has a friend around to play with and she doesn't. It's really just chance that Ben's best friend is constantly available to play and her friends aren't, but she feels it's very unfair. Part of it is also the fact that Ben enjoys a lot of independence that she can't have yet. Over the last week I've found a telephone hidden in her bed with her with Nini's number last dialed. I have no idea if she's really been making phone calls at night but I wouldn't put it past her. She offers to wash the dishes almost every night even though she can't even turn on the sink without a bar stool and asks me to sing her the "Mother" song every night.

ANDREW

The kid is still nuts. His latest thing is to repeat back to me line for line every thing that I say to him when he's in trouble. It usually goes like this:

"Andrew I'm mad at you."
"I'm mad at YOU!"
"You're in trouble."
"YOU'RE in TROUBLE!"
"I'm going to give you a time out if you're going to talk to me that way!"
"YOU go to TIME OUT!"
"I'm going to spank you!"
"NO!"

At which point he finally gets it through his head that I'm not playing a word game with him. Tonight in Walmart we had a cart with some seat welded on the front of it. He was sitting on the top and then hopping down to the bottom of the section while yelling, "OH! You let me fall!" He thought it was great fun. I eventually said, "If you get hurt I'm just gonna say you had it coming." "Really? You think I do?"
Later on he was being uncooperative and I lifted him up by his arm. I told him if he made me carry him by his arm too much I was going to stretch it out. He thought about that for a minute and then said, "If my arm is longer, when I raise my hand it will be highest." Such an optimist.