It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world

Hi everyone --

I think our family is insane. Here's evidence:

At 9:30, Devin and PJ let us know they were hungry. PJ settled for some leftover pasta of mine (a portion much larger than he could eat), and Devin opted for some hummus and pita chips. However, Devin wanted to know if there was only the one variety of hummus available, because he thought it would be nice to "comparison eat" several types. Are we the only ones who don't have a back-up hummus variety in the fridge at any given moment?

At around 11:30pm, Patty yelled at the children to settle down and go to sleep. Her voice had an edge of true exasperation, because the noise they were making upstairs was preventing Patty and I from concentrating on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I'm not kidding.

Earlier, Connor asked if he could come downstairs for something to eat -- as long as it was something hard, and "NOT more candy." He could not come up with any rational definition of what kind of hard food he was desiring, and apples seemed to just barely have appropriate hardness. Shortly thereafter, Kelly explained that when Connor was asking for something "hard" to eat, he meant chicken.

Kelly then came down to retrieve apples for herself and the other kids. She was fine with being the point person, until we threw in a wrinkle that was, in her opinion, ridiculously unfair. When we suggested that perhaps she could tell the boys that we had both MacIntosh and Granny Smith apples, her answer was, "Well, then just forget it! I'll just get one for myself and they can come get their own."

I'm fairly certain that we've become the poster children for truth stranger than fiction.

Love,
Brian