On the Topic of Kissing

At least once a month, often more often, my family has the Mormon missionaries over for dinner. They rotate into our area and out again so their names are always changing, but there are always two 19 year old young men that need to eat. They spend all day teaching people about Jesus Christ. If they have to return home to prepare a meal, eat and clean the dishes, it really cuts into the time they could be out teaching about the Savior. So, as a congregation, we feed them dinner often. It's actually a great chance to get to know them and have more gospel discussions in our home. The kids have always loved it too. In fact, they really, really love it. Over time they have developed great friendships with several of the elders that have stayed for longer than normal periods of time before their transfers came. Elder Peterson, Elder Smith and Elder Tamir (from Mongolia who played with them non-stop) are the most recent in my memory, though there have been some fun elders pass through the four walls of our home. We currently have Elder Perkins and Elder Rothman here. About two months ago, the kids wanted to have "fancy dinner" with them. That means that we cleaned up the party table and used a table cloth instead of the regular kitchen table. Maddie made the seating assignments. She was on the end next to Elder Perkins, then Elder Rothman next to Perkins. Across from them were Brian, Ben and me with Jacob in a booster seat to the side. After we were almost done with our dinners and Maddie was getting slower and slower at eating I noticed her body slipping down farther and farther in her chair. When her head finally disappeared, I peeked my head under the table to see what she was doing. What I saw made me giggle a little bit. Maddie slid down into a ball on her chair and perched her little body like a cat facing Elder Perkins. Then she sneakily kissed his knee cap before I could stop her and went back to a cat position again. I gently grabbed her so she didn't whack her head on the table and pulled her out to the side. I explained that we can't kiss the elders. They can't kiss anybody for two years except their mothers and no one can kiss them but their mothers. It's a rule. We were all laughing about it and she just burst into tears. She was pretty upset and probably a little bit embarrassed. I asked her why she kissed his knee and she simply replied, "cause that's what you do to be nice to someone you like." What a sweetheart. Today for Memorial Day we hosted our Semi-Annual Rogue Ward BBQ at the park. We had signed up to feed the elders again, so invited them to the BBQ. Though there was no kissing to speak of, we did have to watch Maddie. She followed Elder Perkins around. A lot and wanted to sit by him to eat her lunch. So innocent and cute today. Possible terror as a teenager.