The things they say and do

Strider's shenanigans:

Me:  Man, this bathroom fan is still broken.  I keep forgetting to have Dad fix it.
Strider:  I can fix it!
Me: Really??
Strider:  Yeah, I think I can!
[He goes and gets a ladder and some tools and his brothers gather round to help.]
Me:  I'm so impressed, Strider!  I never saw you want to fix stuff like this before.
Strider:  It's all because of "Prison Break" (which we recently let him start watching on Netflix).  Now I like to try and figure out all kinds of stuff like this.

(I have also found all of the boys with ladders and various things around the house, trying to figure out which of them will fit through our vents.  We definitely did not anticipate this when we let Strider watch that show.  Rookie mistake.)

Colsen's criticism:

Pete:  .... So just as a branch needs to stay connected to the trunk or vine, so we need to stay connected to God.  If the branch gets disconnected from the trunk, it can't live or do anything. Jesus says we need to abide in Him.
Colsen:  I don't think that's a very good analogy, Dad.  I get what you're saying, but remember how the Coombs gave us a branch of their tree and we put it in water and it ended up growing into a new tree?  So the branch was ok when it was separated from the tree.

Milo's moments:

Me: Let's talk about what we can thank God for today.
Miles, whipping off his shirt:  I can thank God for these MUSCLES!


Miles:  Guess what -- I have President Obama's germs!
Strider:  What are you talking about?
Miles:  I've shooken Andrew's hand and Andrew has shooken President Obama's hand, so I have his germs!

Recently Miles brought my phone to me and had the voice recorder on. “Say, ‘This is Mom, not Miles,’” he told me.  I was too busy thinking how surprised I was that he could figure out how to use a voice recorder on my phone (I can’t) to connect it with the fact that I kept hearing kids slamming doors and locking them upstairs.  It’s now dawned on me that he was trying to outwit his older siblings and gain entry into those locked rooms -- and that I just had my identity stolen by a 6-year-old.

Rayna's round-up:

Meanwhile, Rayna has been our game creator lately.  She recently came up with her own version of our favorite, "the bowl game" and got her younger brothers and dad to play.  She told everyone to write "your favorite food, a planet, and an animal" on little pieces of paper which she then put in the bowl.  Then everyone had to take turns drawing the papers and acting them out for the others to guess.  I hear that acting out the planets was particularly challenging.

She's also gotten a hair-cut lately -- actually she got about half of her hair cut off!

Before:

After:

She looks so cute!