I'm a proud parent

As it turns out in this case, it's not because of my honor roll kids. It's because I had a shining parenting moment. These are rare enough for me that they must be documented.

I called home to see if I could pick anything up on my way home from church (Husbands everywhere, take note of that. It's a little something I learned from my friend Paul Sabino). Ava informed me of a serious crime.

Cameron and Beck snuck into the van (in the garage) and started eating her chocolate. She told me that mommy was waiting for me to come home to deal with it.

I showed up and called Cameron and Beck into our bedroom. I asked them some questions to draw out what happened. As it turns out, Beck had tempted Cameron and he went along. By the end of our conversation it became clear that there was lying and stealing- which meant there must be punishment and restitution.

We always spank our kids for disobedience, so that wasn't too stellar. But it was the restitution that provided the best teaching moment...

Me: "Now you guys have to give those chocolates back to Ava."
Beck [perplexed]: "But how am I going to get it out of my throat?"
Me: "What do you think, Cameron?"
Cameron: "Well, I can just buy her some- I have lots of money. I don't need my money anyway."
Me: "You're going to have to work to earn money to pay her back. You guys will be pulling weeds this afternoon and I'll pay you enough to repay her for the chocolate you ate."
[You'll recall our ghetto yard that's singlehandedly destroyed the real estate market around here (click here)...there are plenty of weeds to pull. To my defense, my Granola wife wouldn't let me put chemicals on the lawn, thus our weeds.]

So I had a parenting victory, without any help from Leatha (to put it mildly- she has the edge on me when it comes to training our kids).

And I even read the Bible to them tonight.

Dang. It's been a good day.