“DUCKS!! Hey you, take a picture of the ducks!”

— Sullivan, to one of the photographers during a photoshoot at a public park for Abe & Nina’s wedding

“The mama butterflies will come and bring their babies to stick them into my ear to eat pollen so they can turn into a flower with wings so they can fly!”

— Sullivan’s interpretation of earwax

Sports bars excepted, no eatery ought to have televisions in it.

I daresay all Christians must at least consider singleness for the sake of God’s kingdom (Matthew 19:10-12).

One element of the culture during my year at the Honor Academy I could’ve done without: archive.nytimes.com/schott.bl…

“No, Sullivan, we’re not going to feed Éa a mouse.”

— Scott, context forgotten

I can’t take a nap, Dad. I’m allergic to naps.

— Sullivan

Meet “Muffler,” a robot Sullivan painted on our living room wall (with Mommy’s permission).

Hear, hear!: “I judge all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity” (John Wesley via @JohnPiper).

“I need to bring the flashlight outside… because there are some dark spots.”

— Sullivan, getting ready to go to Spring Creek Park during daylight hours

Annihilation, not eternal conscious torment (AKA hell), is the alternative to eternal life that Scripture describes: reknew.org/2008/01/a…

Some days I wish I’d abandoned all pretense of a desire for “practicality” in a career and just studied Theology.

Scott: What did you say? I’m sure it was something very important and full of insight.
Carla: I think I just ate some soapy paint-water.

Among personality tests (e.g., Myers-Briggs, DiSC), I find the Enneagram the most useful. Take a quick test at www.truity.com/test/enne…

“Do it, queue it, (shoo it,) or screw it” makes for a good schema of impulse management.

Sullivan (sheet music in hand): Mama, can you read this?
Carla: No, honey, it’s music. It’s not words.
Sullivan: Oh, well, can you sing it?
Carla: No, it’s piano music.
Sullivan: Well, WE have pirnano!
Carla: But I don’t know how to play the piano.
Sullivan: I know how to play the pirnano: You just press the keys! That’s how you do it!

“I feel the sound of the solar panels inject’ning light into our house.”

— Sullivan, out of the blue

Hey, no meta-chuckles.

— Scott to Carla

“And if her fingernails freeze, they will explode and float all over in the wind of the cold morning.”

— Sullivan, after Carla told him we were pulling over while driving so that she could cover Éa’s fingers because they were cold

“Yo! Ho ho! And a bottle of yo!”

— Sullivan, missing ITLAPD by four months and some liquor—also baffling his parents as to when he found time to read Robert Louis Stevenson.

Sullivan: I’m a postman.
Scott: Well, hello, Mr. Postman!
Sullivan: Daddy, I’m just pretending.
Scott: Well, hello, Mr. Pretend Postman. What are you doing?
Sullivan: I’m delivering mail.
Scott: Well, what are you delivering, Mr. Pretend Postman?
Sullivan: I’m just pretending to deliver.
Scott: Well, what are you pretending to deliver, Mr. Pretend Postman?
Sullivan: I’m delivering a television.
Scott: Oh! To whom are you pretending to deliver a pretend television, Mr. Pretend Postman?
Sullivan: Dadda, I have to tell you something: It’s not a pretend television. It’s real television.

Daddy, I want to decorate the whole, whole, whole EARTH. 🎉

— Sullivan, after walking through downtown State College on New Year’s Eve with me

“He who hurries his footsteps errs.”

— Solomon (Proverbs 19:2b), in a maxim I need and love to hear almost every day, as somewhere along the way I internalized the exhausting idea that there’s always something I must be doing and that I’m certainly not getting to it fast enough

If the labels on her Christmas gifts were any indication, my daughter is gonna have serious trouble with folks over age 50 misspelling her name.

Having a deer stare me in the eyes as I took aim at him on opening day of rifle season here in Pennsylvania brought me to a new appreciation of the solemnity of killing for food. Watching him take his last breath because of violent action I took against him makes me sympathize with the literalist Biblical view that eating meat is a temporary provision only (see Genesis 9:1-4, Isaiah 65:25).

I kid not in saying that I considered vegetarianism that week.

In the end, I decided to continue my carnivorous ways, but with it in mind that I feast on the product of my own violence (in the case of my venison) or that of an agricultural mercenary (in the case of the rest of the beef, pork, poultry, and fish I eat). As Bill Johnson coincidentally tweeted on the same day I shot my deer, “A non-hunting meat-eater: someone who pays another to do their killing.”

And I want my children, if they are meat-eaters, to understand the same, so I plan to take them hunting once they’re of age. A taste of...