mischief

our dear friends paul and kristie are moving to our neighborhood, provided they sell their condo. (if you know of anyone looking to buy an awesome vintage condo on the north side, let me know.) anyways, they put an offer in on a house and had their inspection today. we watched their kids while they were at the inspection. they arrived at our house at nine and played fabulously for three hours. it is always nice when you have play dates where your kids play without incident.

and then... there was incident.

things had been eerily quiet for a few seconds and i could just tell they were up to no good. i went into our front living room where they were playing to discover the three of them hiding under my console table. they looked guilty. all three of them tried to play it cool. but they are little and they haven't had much experience in mischief making yet.

i asked what they were doing and they all just smiled and laughed (dead give away). e, who is usually pretty truthful, blurted out. "i was coloring on the wall." i looked around and discovered a few blue lines on the wall and a piece of chalk on the floor beneath the artwork. cayden, about to burst with guilt blurted out, "makenna colored too." a few moments of silence passed and then, "and so did i". apparently these two little ones have a passion for honesty, too:)

i sent cayden and makenna to sit on the stairs and sent e to bathroom (where punishment takes place in our household). first, i went into the bathroom to take care of e and then i had a chat with cayden and makenna. they were all very receptive to our chat. they all knew that coloring on the wall was wrong, they were receptive to the idea that being a leader for what is right is more important than going along with the group. we talked about Jesus and how much he desires for us to obey and we talked about forgiveness for the times when we've missed the mark. i told them that i was proud of them for telling the truth, but disappointed in their choice to do something that they knew was naughty. all three accepted responsibility and said they were sorry and thus, reconciliation was complete.

i then handed each of them a sponge. being little, i didn't have high hopes for them to actually clean the mess, but i knew they needed to help. the four of us went to the living room and started scrubbing. when it looked like the mess was cleaned up i began to collect the sponges. cayden stopped me and said, "but what about the playroom?". the playroom????

i turned the corner to discover that on every wall of the playroom were chalk drawings. BIG chalk drawings! needless to say, the sponges were not collected. i think they might have had a little bit too much fun cleaning up the mess. moments before paul and kristie returned, i went to get scott. i felt like i needed to hammer home the message that wall drawings were naughty and that this wasn't a game. (if you look at the picture you can tell e is way too excited with this activity.)

after they left, e divulged that the whole plan had been her idea. all in all, there was really no major harm done (we're planning on painting the walls anyway), but the truths that they gained were valuable. i think all three of them walked away having learned a few lessons. hopefully, the lessons stick and if not, i hope they stick with chalk as their medium.