Lovely Wife and I aren't very religious. Depending on the state of the world I wax from agnostic to part-time believer. She's much the same but trends toward the believer side. As a result we're not the most regular churchgoers. You might say that we're not churchgoers at all but then people might look at you funny and wonder why you were talking to your monitor so I advise against it.

As far as religion goes we'd like our kids to make up their own minds. That requires a bit of exposure to religion that, as previously noted, we're not the best at providing. To get them that exposure the two older ones go to a religious preschool. This has a couple of side benefits as this particular preschool is both eminently affordable as well as being the best school, hands down, in our area. In addition to the normal preschool stuff learning letters and numbers, playing, learning to get along with other kids and celebrating September 8 birthdays on September 11 (I'm not bitter, why do you ask?) they also attend a mini service once a week and do other little religious things. One of those little things is a "prayer angel". A prayer angel is a little white stuffed bear and a prayer journal that the little guys take home on a rotating weekly basis. The kid gets to pray with the angel and after a week the kid and parent can write down how they pray, what they pray, etc in the journal to share with the class.

We don't pray. I shouldn't say we never pray. We just don't pray in the traditional sense. We pray in the profane sense that is a no-no according to one of the big 10 rules. We don't do it often, generally only at especially painful mishaps or unusually offensive drivers, and never around the kids. This prayer angel was a problem for us. Bear brought it home yesterday and we were at a loss what to do with it. Fortunately for us Bear is a bit better at this than we are.

We had the prayer angel on the desk all night and since that's in our bedroom we forgot about it when we put the kids to bed. Bear woke up and remembered it and hollered until we brought it to him and he slept with it all night. That's not really what it's for but we figured "what the hell, might as well get some use out of it". (That's one of those not-quite-a-traditional-prayer-things I was trying to explain above.)

This morning he greeted Lovely Wife with a hug and instructions. "Mama, write in the book that I prayed for the soldiers. I like soldiers, they are heroes."

Do I have great kids or what?