Martinez Family Journal

It was Father's Day morning. I asked the children what they liked most about their Daddy and they had to think some on that one. I remarked that one of the best daddy traits he has, in my opinion, is his patience. John virtually never yells. I said "I love how Daddy pretty much never yells."  Just like in the previous blog message, I never would have predicted Matthew's response: "Then why do you do it?" and he had a point. If I admired this trait – patience, then why don't I display it more? A fine question and a very innocent one coming from the pondering and curious mind of a five year old. So we talked about people's different patience levels, and that I try not to yell, but that God isn't through with me yet :-)

When Jennifer Gonzales approached me to consider being the camp nurse for the camp that Alex and Drew will go to, I was intrigued. I kept thinking about it, for all the good things, a week in gorgeous CO, white water rafting (maybe for the nurse!), free camp fee for Drew and I might even get paid for my duties. Sure sounded like a nice change of pace for my life here in the desert. I thought I better mention it to Drew and see how he felt about me tagging along before I got too serious about it. So I told him I was considering being the camp nurse. Now so far in his life, Drew has only seen me take care of dementia patients as far as my nursing career goes.

I would never have guessed his response. I thought he might be put off by my tagging along, since he has reached a very self conscious age. He said without hesitation "Mom, these kids don't have dementia, and you don't know how to treat actual injuries."  Well, I couldn't blame him, this is his perspective, he doesn't realize I remember from nursing school how to treat actual injuries. We talked about this :-)

Mary

Matt and Drew have a neat book on squirrels from Jeanne, a discard from the Phoenix library long ago. Matty brought it to me tonight for reading at bedtime. We read it last week, so it is fresh in his mind. It is full of actual photographs of a gray and a red squirrel backyard squirrel, who are not friends at all, more like enemies. The red squirrel is usually mad at the gray one and the gray one just goes about his business and ignores the red one most of the time. But the red is often annoyed, bossy, smaller and irritable. Anyhow, Matty remarked to me "Mom, you know what?  I think the red squirrel is not a Christian squirrel." I asked why he thought this, and he replied that "Well, the red squirrel is so mean and angry all the time, and the gray one is not, so he is probably a Christian squirrel."  What a neat thing to hear, he is still thinking about Christianity on summer vacation, but probably not too surprising, for he just finished VBS today. His preK teacher will love to hear he is thinking about the Christianity of squirrels on summer vacation, I will have to giver her a call.....Mary