The Darndest Things

So, before I continue with the next of the monster posts from our holiday week, I have to pause to record some recent kid quotes.  Sometimes the things the girls say stop my heart in wonder for a second or two.  Other times, they make me laugh.  Nearly every day, I notice things about them that I want to freeze and keep forever.  I am very aware that as time goes by, I am losing the babies and then, little girls we are raising as they become older and older and older.  C.S. Lewis observed that because the passage of time bothers us, we must be meant for eternity.  I imagine that on the other side of this life, in eternity, I will be able to hold each of my girls at every age and remember all of the precious little things that I have already forgotten down here.
Below, a few moments I'd like to remember from the last week or so:

By Chris:
*A few of the kids were sitting with Daddy at the kitchen table playing a game when a fire broke out at a house on the street behind ours.  The large smoke plumes billowed over the trees.  The kids watched for a while and once the excitement settled down a bit (no one was injured in the fire), Grace said wistfully, "I wish I could have been there when the fire started.  Then I could have rushed into the fire and saved someone.  You want me to go to heaven, right Dad?"

*We have a really neat manger set handed down by Alice's parents.  We always hide baby Jesus during advent, finally placing him in his crib late on Christmas Eve.  The next day, Ella was examining baby Jesus.  Since this is an older nativity set, there are a few nicks and dings on the figures including the small blot of dried glue on the back of baby Jesus' head.  Ella asked me, "Daddy, what's this on his head?"  I said, "Oh, it's just some old dried glue.  Someone must have glued him to his crib once so he'd stay put."  Ella looked at baby Jesus with an understanding expression and said, "Yeah, it was Mary.  She did it."

By Alice:
*On school days, I always read to the girls from our children's bible at breakfast.  This particular version has questions following every section so it lends itself well to teaching the bible as history.  A recent lesson was about the presentation of Jesus in the temple and one of the questions was "how do you think Anna and Simeon recognized baby Jesus as the Messiah?"  Good question.  None of the girls offered an answer so I turned to Mia and she said, "He did this" and flashed what looked like a peace sign to me.  I couldn't help it--I laughed.  Mia was not happy.  And who knows, she could be right.  I've wondered about that before and the book didn't give the answer but something let Simeon know that he could finally die in peace.

*Grace didn't want to make a list for Santa because she wanted him to surprise her.  Sophie put off her list-making and finally wanted to do it Christmas Day.  We never got around to it and I'm kind of sorry.  I wonder if she would have listed the things she's opened or the things her sisters opened or something completely different.

*And finally--Grace's New Year's resolutions:
#1 Watch more TV
#2  Play on Mom's IPOD Touch
#3  Eat more fast food

Oh--and she wants me to start calling her Margaret.