Benjamin's Imagination

You've heard of Medusa, who turned people to stone? Benjamin kept running away from his sisters, who he called "Me-goose-a's" because, he said, they turned people into stone statues of geese. Makayla really got into the game. She chased him around with lots of giggles.

Oh no! Someone looked into the eyes of Megoosa!

Tonight was Benjamin's turn to teach the lesson for Family Home Evening. He said beforehand that he had it all figured out and didn't need any help. I was very curious to see what he would present to us.

Benjamin started by asking Samuel to read a scripture about salt, specifically D&C 101:39-40: "When men are called unto mine everlasting gospel, and covenant with an everlasting covenant, they are accounted as the salt of the earth and the savor of men." He talked a little about how we are the salt of the earth. Then he segued by saying salt is a crystal, like diamonds. Before baptism we are like an uncut diamond. After we get baptized we start getting refined until we look like a beautifully cut diamond.

Microscopic view of salt crystals

An uncut diamond next to a cut diamond

Wow. He is very creative. Plus, he came up with the analogy all by himself.

Rachel's singing

All my children have loved to sing made-up songs when they were little. Rachel has kept it up longer than the others. The whole first day of our camping trip for her 6th birthday, she sang a tuneless song that repeated these phrases (in no particular order), "Camping, we're going camping, I love camping, camping for my birthday, camping is fun ..."

The next day Dominic took the kids fishing. She happily sang, "Going fishing, fishing for my birthday, going to catch a fish, camping and fishing ..."

Camping can be hot

This last weekend we went camping for Rachel's birthday. While we broke camp, we realized Makayla was missing. After a quick search Dominic found her in the van.

"What are you doing in the van?" he asked.

"Well, you see, it's like this," said Makayla. "The sun is hot and the van is colder."

Where is the logic in that?

Today is Rachel's birthday! It was also Cub Scout Pack meeting, in which Benjamin received his Bear (yay!). They planned to have a group of Native American dancers come and perform. The music was loud, of course. Rachel kept covering her ears and complaining. Eventually she told me, "I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm sleepy." 

I wanted to stay until the end. So, trying to encourage her to want to stay I said, "Rachel, this dancing and drumming is part of your heritage." 

She looked confused and said, "How will that solve my problems?" 

Good point.

Cats can't howl past 9 pm

Samuel's class learned about odd laws from around the country. They each got to choose one to write a story about how that law came about. Samuel chose a Columbus, GA law, which states that cats are not allowed to howl past 9 o'clock pm.

"One day in Columbus, Georgia, a group of reble cats got the idea of howling at 10:00 p.m. Every night it sounded like a nuke was going to hit. Everyone complained. One day the mayor got sick of it and because of the noise; went crazy. The next mayor made a law that cats can't howl after 9:00 p.m. 2 years later the cat rebelion made peace with the humans but kept the law as a cymbal of peace."

I kept his spelling and punctuation. He also drew a picture with a cat and a human shaking their paw and hand, respectively.

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

One of the toilets got clogged. Yuck. I was in the middle of making dinner when the kids told me about it. I wasn't about to fix it right then, so the girls took it upon themselves to put up warning signs. Elisa put up the expected sign: "Out of order." Later on, when I finally had a chance to fix the problem, I saw that Rachel had also put up a sign that was supposed to read: "Who did it? Rachel did it! Meow!" But Rachel is in kindergarten and sounded out the words she didn't know. Plus, she still mixes up her b's and d's. Her sign actually read: "ho bib it? Rachel bib it! meow!" Have I mentioned that Rachel thinks of herself as a cat?

He has a healthy self-esteem

Samuel came home very excited. "Mom, I saw someone at school wearing a really cool shirt today! It said, 'They told me I could be anything, so I became a NINJA!' "

"Fun!" I said. "I once saw a shirt that said, 'They told me I could be anything, so I became AWESOME!' "

He was not that impressed. "Eh," he said, "I'm already awesome."