Teaching Moments

So last week me and the kids stayed the night at my mom and dad's so I could get out of the house a bit and so the kids could have a different place to play. The night that we stayed the night I realized that I forgot the plug in for my laptop. I was hoping to get some work done there while the kids were sleeping. My sister agreed to meet me half way to bring it to me. Austin wanted to come with me and the other two were asleep and he asked where we were going. I told him aunt Krist was going to meet us half way to bring us something. "Half way?" He said. I said, Yep we are going 1/2 way home to meet her and then we are coming back. He said, "Five is 1/2 way." Being astonished I said, yep five is half way to 10 from zero. Then we we were turning to the main road and he said pointing to the speed limit sign, "See Mom, 45." So then we talked about how five was in the middle of the numbers like 45 being between 40 and 50. It was really cute. I was surprised that he caught onto the concept so easily.

So then when we got done talking about that he started playing with my phone and pushing the numbers in order 1-10. Then he decided to go further and he can count to 20 but for some reason has always had a hard time with the number 13 so we talked about that and then he wanted to go beyond the number 20. I explained to him that each time the numbers start over 0-9. With the teens you just put a number 1 in the front of it and once you get to 20, you just put a 2 in front of them. He really liked that because then he could go as far as he wanted to! My phone ran out of spaces to put the numbers :)

Oooohhh, then the next day. I had let Austin and Jeffrey ride their bikes to a park not to far away from my parents house while I drove behind them and then they played there for awhile. Well when we got back they were kind of bored so I called their cousins that live up the road not TOO far away. Well they needed to do some chores before they could come so I told the boys to go put their sandals on to get ready for them to come over. I went back into the house to get them a treat and went back outside to give it to them and they were gone. Sometimes they ride around the block so I waited for a minute. After they didn't show up I got into my car to see if they had ridden their bikes to the park we were just at (they have done that before). I don't really like them to do that because I can't see them very well from my mom's house. I can see the park but I can't really distinguish their little bodies from there. I couldn't find them anywhere. So the next place I looked is at my brother's house where their cousins live that were going to come over. Sure enough, there they were!!!!! The ride there is around 1/4 to 1/2 mile and they live on a busy street. It scared the living daylights out of me. My first reaction was to be so angry that they didn't ask and that they went all by themselves. Then I was sooooooo glad that they were safe. As soon as I drove into the driveway Austin came right outside and said, "Sorry Momma". Trying to compose myself I decided to say, "Put your bikes in the car, we are cleaning up at Grandma's, we are going home, and you can not play outside the rest of the day." They obeyed very well the rest of the day! Needless to say they didn't get to play with their cousins that day. I sat down and talked with them about why that was wrong and dangerous. Then when Dad came home we sat down as a family and talked about it again.

Come to find out while we were talking about it Austin told us there was a man there on the corner (I am sure an angel whether he was human or not) that helped them cross the busy street. They road on the busy street until there was a "turn" to go into the neighborhood and then they rode through the neighborhood the "back" way to their house. It made me feel better that they weren't on the busy street the whole time but thankful that Heavenly Father kept them safe.