Friday, January 29, 2010

*Homemade Creeks and Strange Punishments*

Sometimes I have flashbacks to certain childhood memories at random points in my day. Today I had two different lovely flashbacks to life as it was in the Pate house, so I figured why not share them? What else is there to do at 10:49am on a Friday?

Prayer Punishment: Zach-(Age 11) Molly- (Age 9) Abby-(Age 9) Pug-(Age 7)
We used to eat at Way Out Willies every single week on kids eat free night. One night in particular all the kids got to the table and began to fight and argue. The bickering lasted a few minutes until mom had enough and said: "That's it! We need the Lord to help us fight this spiritual battle!" So all the kids started screaming "NOO!!! DON'T PRAY!!!!" Now...don't think that we were prayer hating children, because we were not. But we are the type of family that prays at home, but doesn't make a big display of ourselves in public places because if we did end up acting bad it would give the Lord a bad name, haha. So after the kids begged for dad not to pray he said: "Well, the more you bicker, the longer and louder the prayers are going to be!!!" And Molly dramatically replied "You are using the Lord!! You are using the Lord!!!!" And in response my mom said "I know God will understand!" Dad threatening us with a longer and louder prayer worked. We behaved for the rest of the night.

Building the Creek: Zach- (Age 9) Molly-(Age 7) Abby- (Age 7) Pug- (Age 5)
During the pate kids homeschooling days we had to be really creative to pass the time considering recess was sometimes an all day thing. On one particular day we were all stuck out back having to come up with something to do. Not that my mom would just stick us outside, she did it so we would become "creative". So my older brother Zach decided it would be a good idea to build a creek. We had nothing but grass and rocks in our backyard but we were going to use our new found "creative" skills to make a creek happen. I mean, every house needs a creek and we sure didn't have one. Why not build one? We all grabbed a shovel and started to dig smack dab in the middle of the green grass. We dug and dug and dug until there was an enormous hole in the backyard. We decided that it would look legit if we grabbed some big rocks and lined the new hole with them. Once that was done, it was up to the hose to do the rest. We made our way through the bugs and dirt to the hose that had spider webs all over it, and drug it to the creek. We turned on the hose and let water flow into the hole for about an hour strait. We were highly disappointed when the water went down through the ground and didn't even begin to fill the hole. We had plans to get fish for our creek to have something to play with during the day. But all the hose did was make an enormous mud pit in the middle of the yard. I can still hear my dad's lawn mower suddenly stopping and him screaming "KIDS!!!!!!!! Come get these rocks!!!" for many years after.


Haha...wow...I love memories.

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