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I absolutely love the fact that we have Jack in Catholic school. It is the right place for him. His teacher is wonderful and we are part of a terrific community there. It kills me that we’re moving away and that our future is so up in the air right now.

I would love it if we are able to put all of our children through Catholic school. Not that other schools aren’t great at educating children. But only in a Catholic school will there be religion class, discussions about God and lots and lots of prayer.

In case you didn’t know, the season of Lent is upon us. It’s a time of sacrifice, contemplation, prayer and giving. They’ve talked about Lent quite a bit in kindergarten over the last couple of weeks.

Yesterday, Jack brought home a coloring sheet. It’s a page with a tree and the tree has a bunch of flowers on all of it’s branches. Each flower is made up of four hearts. The children were instructed to color in a heart every time they did something nice for someone else during the Lenten season.

Last night, Jack sat with his crayon and his sheet and contemplated what he’d done that deserved a colored-in heart. Apparently bringing the trashcan up from the street without complaining qualified.

Later that evening, as I was saying prayers with Maria, Jack burst into the room and demanded to see my shirt.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I want to see your shirt,” he said.

I had on a sweatshirt over a plain white t-shirt, so I lifted up my sweatshirt and showed him the t-shirt. “It’s just a plain white shirt,” I told him.

“Oh. But it’s lovely,” he said.

“Thank you!!!” I said, flattered despite the fact that it was completely contrived.

“Now I get to color in another heart on my tree!” Jack exclaimed, as he slammed the door behind him.

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Jack’s class recently added a prayer box to their classroom. Children may request prayers for people, pets, anything. The requests are written down and placed in the box. On Fridays, the class reads all of the prayers together.

I guess because it’s Friday, as we were getting into the van to go to school this morning, Jack announced to me that he was going to tell TBTITWW that he had a special prayer to add during prayer time.

“I’m going to tell her I want to pray for someone,” Jack said. “Do you want to know who?”

“Who?” I asked.

“I’m going to tell her I want to pray for Jack Daniels.”

!?!?!?!

“Ummmm… I know!” I said brightly. “Instead, why don’t you say you want to pray for Keegan and his family to have a safe trip, since they’re going on vacation next week?”

“No. I want to pray for Jack Daniels.”

“But honey,” I said, trying hard to dissuade him, “Jack Daniels isn’t alive any more.”

“I know! That’s why I want to pray for him!”

The trip to school was too short. I couldn’t think of any more ways to dissuade him. Panicked, I called Dan and told him that he gets to field that phone call.

I guess it’s a good thing we’re leaving Tennessee. Now we won’t be tempted to take the kids on another tour of the distillery…