Growing

I wanted to mention a couple of things.
First, the other day when we were reading The Sunken Treasure, the book the children and I were reading when I took that picture a couple of days ago, we had our first... indication of a squabble, I guess.
I mean, the children will "hey!" each other sometimes, but this was in interesting thing because it was my first real challenge to be fair and to keep everyone happy. I didn't have a child versus baby sort of thinking going on, but a child and child thing.
Maddie wanted to do the flashlight in the book. And she didn't want to give it up to Trevelyn. Not after only a minute, but at all. We did our best to be fair, and let her have as long a turn as she liked. But she still "Hey!'d us.
Interesting.

Another thing that I wanted to mention is that Trev has decided (for himself) that aliens do exist. Whenever he asks me a question about ghosts, or death, or aliens, sometimes I give him my opinion (depending if he's asking) and sometimes I just say "some people believe yes, and some folks believe no. It's one of those things that everyone has to decided for themselves." That's never the end of it, but then we go from there.
So I'd not be surprised if we venture into serious exploration of space over the next while.

The last thing I wanted to mention has to do with another sign of Maddie growing up.
Yesterday while at the lake I hiked back to the truck to get the trailmix for the children. It wasn't very far. On my walk back I got to enjoy the quietness of the world sans children and running chasing barking dog, and it was so heavenly! I stopped and took a couple of pictures, and just really enjoyed the time and quiet to think and ponder the day.
Later, when we were all walking back to the car Trev was a ways up ahead, Daddy and Annabelle were quite a ways back, and Maddie and I were walking up the trail hand-in-hand, enjoying the quiet.
At first when going up the hill she was saying "Goodness Gracious!", which made me smile. Then when we were on the trail better, and after the quiet had settled in, she started quietly reviewing her day. "Uhn candy drop it."
"Yes, I remember that. You dropped your candy into that rotted log, and the ants came for it."
She also made one or two other comments.
I found it interesting that she chose to speculate on her day the same way that I had done an hour or two before, when offered the quiet and peace of our surroundings.