The Things He Says

This morning I took the boys grocery shopping with me.  I very rarely...almost never... take all three of them with me.  I usually wait to go when Denver can be home with them; however, Denver is out of town at a Worship Conference.  If we wanted to eat while he was gone then we all had to go together.

Before we left I told them that if they were really good while I was doing my shopping that we would eat at the McDonald's there in Walmart before we took Ben to school.  We did our shopping and all three of them were pretty good.  Of course Eli wanted out of the cart, Caleb wanted in the cart, and Ben wanted everything he saw...but all an all it was a good trip.

At McDonald's we ordered, found seats, got a million little cups of ketchup (which still didn't turn out being enough), each picked out our own kind of pop and settled down to pray for our food.  As the boys started eating I noticed that there was a television behind me that was giving updates on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  I asked Ben to switch seats with me so that I could see the television.  After we traded spots, he asked me why I wanted to watch the television.  I told him that there had a been an earthquake in Japan.  He knows what an earthquake is because he's heard about the one in Haiti.  Then I told him a little bit about the tsunami.  He didn't understand that as well and wondered if the people were going to surf on the big waves.

Anyway, if you remember back to a previous post, Big Boy Decisions - Hard for Ben and Mommy, Ben agreed that we wouldn't get a new cat so that we could instead use the money for Denver to go to Haiti again. 

So today a few minutes after telling Ben about Japan's earthquake he looks at me and says, "Is Daddy going to Japan to help those people with their earthquake too?"

"No, Daddy isn't going to Japan.  He's still just going to Haiti."  I replied.

Ben smacks his hand to his forehead in relief and says, "I hope the boys and girls in Japan get their schools and homes fixed, but I'm glad Daddy's not going cause then we could NEVER get another cat!"

Oh my Ben.  How I love you.

When I told Denver on the phone later this afternoon, his response was "ahh...the priorities of a little boy."

Ben didn't mention anything else about the earthquake the rest of the day.  But tonight when we went to bed he prayed for the people in Japan.  And he didn't once mention a cat.  It made me a proud mama.  It's hard for all of us to think of those outside our own little world sometimes...sometimes it takes a six-year-old to remind me.