Just when I thought my children were geniuses, a couple of dough balls knocked on the door...

OK, for the record, I've never thought Eddie and Chas were actual, bona fide geniuses. But sometimes I allow myself to think that they are very, very smart. And then something like tonight happens, and I have to reevaluate.

It began, innocently enough, with dinner out at Chevy's. Chevy's is one of those places that gives more than crayons to keep the kids from getting bored and screaming loudly enough to disturb other patrons. It also gives pre-flattened, pre-cooked tortillas to amuse them. Yes, dough balls. Last time we were there, the boys were utterly bereft to have left the dough balls behind. So I said they could bring 'em home. Which would be fine, except that on the way home, the dough balls fell to the floor of the car several times, gathering enough dirt and God-knows-what to turn gritty and a bit gray. The dough balls were endlessly amusing to the boys who stuck them on the windows and giggled. Then someone got the idea to let the dough balls drive. Steph put them on the steering wheel and we had a laugh riot when they were unable to make a proper right turn to get us home. This put us on a dead end street next to a field. I said the dough balls wanted to go home to find their families and Steph "threw" them out the window.

Now, we played this little charade to see if we could get rid of the dough balls without having to listen to excessive crying. We could not. So shortly after we got home, the boys heard a knock at the door, opened it and found their dough balls sitting on the porch, waiting to be let in. (I would have said they were shivering in the cold, but that woulda been ridiculous.)

I don't know if Eddie and Chas think they've witnesses a Christmas Miracle or what, but they seem to truly believe that the dough balls knocked on the door. They had to call their Auntie and two cousins to relate this amazing story -- which they could barely tell because they were laughing so hard.

Perhaps the worst of it is that, after being told that Mommy could make them more dough in the morning, they were perfectly willing to let us throw their miraculous door-knocking dough balls away because they were, by this point, truly disgusting.