I would love to tell you all that "grace" abounds at my house. As much as that is what I would like to be true the reality is that we often operate in a "who's to blame" mode. There are multiple reasons for this ranging from wanting to teach our kids to demonstrate responsibility to wanting to know who has to clean up the mess. Everyone becomes a police officer pulling out their gun in the process of interrogating the others in an effort to get to the bottom of things.
Recently, Mark and I came home from an evening out and the kids were sitting in front of the TV. Mark walked into the bedroom and I went to get some ice and a drink out of the refrigerator. I opened the door to the freezer to discover this...
"What happened?" quickly the kids told me that they had discussed it and come to the conclusion that the friend S had over must have left a Diet Dr Pepper in the freezer and it exploded. This is such a great tactic, "blame someone who doesn't live here". With all the friends and young adults that frequent our home it is always plausible to avoid blame by suggesting the blame belongs on someone from the "outside". Well, this was enough explanation for me, but the REAL judge was yet to enter the room.
30 minutes or so later Mark came in and sat down on the couch. Slowly one of the kids mentioned the exploded can of soda and S quickly jumped in with his belief that it was his friend. Mark sat for a minute and said, "It was my Diet Dr Pepper, I put it in the freezer yesterday and forgot about it". Immediately the kids jumped on the opportunity to feed him every line they've ever heard escape his lips...
"You need to be responsible for what you do"
"Forgetting is not an excuse"
"How can we avoid this in the future"
He was a great sport about the whole thing and there was much laughter.
Below are some pictures they took during their discovery of the explosion.
This is my personal favorite. S removed the aluminum and ate the frozen soda like a popsicle.
