Quotable Kelsey

Many of you know who Kelsey is- Dee and Wilckly's middle child. She's four years old and at that learning stage when every fact demands a question, every question demands an answer and every answer demands an explanation followed by another question.

The questions are unending, which naturally becomes a bother after too long. But there are those gold-nugget questions that entertain us enough to make up for all the rest. Such as...

On our second day here in Haiti, we had our first official meeting to attempt to organize our thoughts, needs, goals and priorities. As Dee, Wilckly, Shaina and I sat down under the light of our brightest generator-powered light bulb, Kelsey turned to her dad and said, "Daddy, why are you having this meeting?"

His answer was billiant: "So you can exist."

It seems as though Kelsey's quotability comes from her dad's side of the family.

It's true, though. Without those meetings we are totally at a loss. We can't even eat without having a meeting to find out where the food will come from, who will cook it, where it will be cooked, when it will be cooked and what supplies are needed to cook it. It sounds complicated, but it's also necessary.

That's what life is like here. We are team in every way, and we have to be. If we weren't on the same page you would come here to find four people working harder than anyone else in the world who also happen to be getting absolutely nothing done. Granted, it's difficult to get the four of us to sit down at the same time, but we make it work.

Of course, we can't seem to have many of those sit-downs without our resident entertainer. And Kelsey tends to declare her curiosity with questions on every issue-

"Why are you giving them food?"
"Why did their house fall?"
"Why do they need a job?"
"Why is Daddy talking to that man for all day?"
"Why do mosquitoes reproduce?"

That last one was the result of one of my rants about my hatred for mosquitoes. I'm still getting the hang of having a four-year-old around. It's taking longer than it should.

In any case, we're all learning a lot about what it takes to work as a team and answer all of Kelsey's questions simultaneously. And let's be honest, when she expresses one her cute little four-year-old bits of wisdom, we can't help but melt.

I mean, what would you do if a four-year-old walked out toward the beach and upon reaching the water looked up at you and said, "This ocean is too big"?