Today's lesson...

So, Natali's been full of great quotes lately, if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook. If not, you can see them on the  margin of the blog. But today, we also got a lesson in gratitude. She had VBS last week, and gratitude was actually the theme for Tuesday. This made it a very timely lesson. She also learned that it's ok to talk to people who are different (well, this I've been encouraging all along, but it was another chance to learn).

We got to see a free screening of Phineas and Ferb. We've never actually seen the TV show before, but I still thought it would be fun. She enjoyed herself (and loved the part where the "girl saved the world" - which isn't really what happened, but that's her perception) and as we walked out, she was chattering with the boy ahead of us. The boy had to turn around to talk to her, and he saw the boy behind us, a kid who was probably about five or six, in a motorized wheelchair (which actually looked pretty cool). He asked his mom why the boy had to ride it, and his mom shushed him and pulled him away. I'm sure she didn't want to pry or seem rude, but I had heard that for most people, they perceive it as less rude if someone asks them directly. So when Natali then asked me, I told her to go ahead and ask him. Then she decided to play shy, so I told her he was just a little boy even if his chair was big, so then she asked him. The little boy played shy then, so his dad encouraged him to answer, and when he didn't, told Natali, "His legs don't work the same as everyone else's, so he uses that to walk." Then the other two boys decided to jump in and explain that he can walk, but he has special things he uses, and it's faster if they let him use the chair, but their dad says they almost can't anymore, because he keeps growing out of it, and so on. 

Then we got stickers on the way out. Natali was really good about saying thank you – until she saw that people coming out of a different theater were getting drawstring bags, and she started crying because she wanted one. This was a perfect chance to remind her of gratitude. I asked her if she liked the stickers. Of course she did. So we talked a few minutes about the fact that if you get something nice and someone else gets something nice, it's ok even if they're different nice things. By the time we got home, she had forgotten all about the bag.

I was also really proud of her this morning, when we stopped at the bank and the teller and I were chatting about how kids will have a completely different perception of money than we did since I almost never use cash or checks, it's all direct deposit and transfers. Then I said that she does like putting money in the piggy banks, and she told the teller she had three. "Three?" "Yes. I get five and Kjirsten gets four and God gets one." So that was kind of fun that she's getting the idea of splitting the money and giving some to charity too!

I hope life is treating you all well!