A plastic prize spider ring? Psh.

Everything I learned this weekend, I learned from a child. And what did I learn? I learned that children are random (more of a confirmation than new knowledge), easily entertained and that SOME do not like ice cream. Gasp. It's true. Shocking, but true.

It all started yesterday, when I picked up the little girl I mentor from her house. My church had organized a day out for all of the mentors and their students at a place that is more or less the middleground between Chuck E Cheese (BTW, I think this is the first time I have ever written that name out and in doing so, it makes me wonder - where did this name come from? Maybe I will Wikipedia it.) and Dave & Busters.

Picture a room full of flashing games that evilly lure children in and spit out what seems like two tickets to every dollar you spend. And then, when you go broke playing the games, you take the hundreds of tickets you won up to the 'prize station' where you begrudgingly find out that all your tickets will earn you is a plastic spider ring that costs half of what it cost you to play one game. I'm not bitter.

Now, the church was kind enough to set up said event so that each child could choose four activities to do for free and eat for free. The eligible free activities included bumper cars, laser tag, go-carts, etc. May I remind you that my little girl is quite shy and timid and six years old - i.e., no chance she's getting on the bumper cars or running around in the dark shooting strangers with a laser beam.

Moral of the story? We played games for three hours straight. I'm broke. Bad news.

On the flip side, she had a BLAST - and I did too. So, it was well, well worth the money. But, as I mentioned: kids are easily entertained. By the end of the day, we had managed to build our own mini empire of 250+ tickets and a couple sets of photo booth pictures. When I pointed out the fabulous prizes she could pick from the prize counter, she didn't seem all too impressed. And then when I tried to feed her tickets into the ticket counter, she freaked.

Oh no. She wanted nothing to do with the prizes - all she wanted was the tickets. She was so proud and it was so stinking adorable. On top of that, she thought it was the absolute coolest that I let her take pictures with my camera. The little things :) She's the best and it was a great day.

That brings us to this morning, when it was my week to teach, guide, inspire play with the four year olds at church. And, oh, were they funny today. Some random happenings? How about ...

... the little girl who brought with her an ice cream scooper with a pig as its handle.

... the little girl who has worn hot pink cowboy boots and bright purple shorts for the past three weeks, AT LEAST. It's winter.

... the little boy whose answer to every question was alligators. What makes you happy? Alligators. What makes you scared? Alligators. This was the same child who 'snapped' at me throughout the morning with his - you guessed it - alligator teeth. And, yes, he was wearing an alligator t-shirt.

... the little boy who sat on my lap at every opportunity and after randomly and sweetly blurting out, "I love my mommy," followed up by saying, "My mommy and daddy are not dead." Well, that's a VERY good thing.

... the little girl who randomly said, "If you never eat food, you will die." Alligator boy then responded to her by adding, "And food comes before candy." Yes. Indeed it does. And it seems as unfortunate as an adult as it does as a child.

I know, I know. Why the focus on dying? I'm willing to bet it's because we were telling the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Oh, the mind of a child.

Aren't kids the best?