Where are Grandma and Grandpa Walker?

Elisabeth told my mom the other day that her Grandma and Grandpa Walker were dead. (They are not!) When my mom asked her why she thought they were dead, she said because we don't go to Utah anymore to visit them and they don't come to visit us anymore. We told her they were still alive, but she wouldn't believe us. I guess her evidence convinced her otherwise. So, I was talking to her the other day while I was folding laundry and I asked her why she thought her grandparents were dead, when she had talked to them on the phone and sang Happy Birthday to Grandma Walker not too long ago. She looked at me and said, "Yeah, how does that work?" I asked her, "how does what work?" She answered, "The phone. How does it call heaven?" What a stubborn child. I told her the only way to call heaven was through prayer, but she wasn't buying into it. I also pointed out that she writes them an email letter almost every week, but she doesn't see that actually go anywhere either. So, we kind of gave up and let her think they were dead, since she wasn't going to believe anything else until she saw them again apparently.

I wrote Mel and Illene a note telling them of their demise in Elisabeth's mind, and they called yesterday and talked with the kids. Elisabeth did ask them if they were still alive, but she said she couldn't hear what they answered because her sisters were being too loud. She is talking like they are alive, though, so maybe it helped. The problem is that now Benjamin thinks they live in the phone. When they were talking to him, he kept taking the phone away from his ear and looking at it - turning it round and round trying to find them. He asked where they were, in the phone? Then later after they hung up, he brought the phone to me and said, "they won't talk to me." He pushed the button and sat there saying, "Hello, hello" to the dial tone. Then he said, "they won't talk to me." He was so sad.

They are very blessed to live near grandparents that they can see all the time, but I guess we need to work on seeing Alan's parents more often.