The Best Laid Plans

I'm back from NY. I flew home Saturday night and it was an uneventful flight. I even landed about 15 minutes early AND my bag (the one I checked) was one of the first one out AND my husband pulled up at our designated spot within a short time. So, one would think all was well in my world. I guess it was. Until Sunday.

Tradition in our house is that I make homemade cinnamon rolls for most of the major holidays and the first day of school. Usually I make them the night before and refrigerate them, pulling them out before church to come to room temperature and then rise. But I was tired so I got up early Sunday morning.

Now, let me preface this by saying...before I left for NY, KNOWING I was going to be gone the whole week before Easter, so I made sure that the kids' Easter Baskets were put together. I also made sure that they not only had something nice to wear, in most cases new, but that they were for the most part hanging in their closets. I also called home not just Friday but also Saturday asking that the girls all be showered on Saturday evening so that we wouldn't have a mad rush Sunday morning trying to get 6 people showered (4 of those 'girls' with long hair needing to be dried). When I got home Saturday night, I found 2 of my 3 girls had done as I requested.

So, I got up. Made coffee. Made cinnamon rolls and cream cheese frosting. It was about 730am when I was finished. I knew that we had the choice of going to 9am or 1030am services. I thought surely my family would arise and we could get the show on the road but they were firmly entrenched in their beds. My husband finally got up at 8 and we debated briefly the pros and cons of each service and decided that getting to the 9am service was the way to go. That meant 4 of us had 1 hour to shower and get all 6 of us to church. So my middle daughter who failed to shower went first and I had to remind her 3 times during her 20 minute shower that OTHERS had to shower too. She asked me to find the top I wanted her to wear and I started looking where I thought it was, on the drying rack downstairs, but was unable to find it. So, I'm starting to get a little torqued. My youngest had eaten her breakfast and asked me what I wanted her to wear and I went to pull it out of her closet, since I KNEW I had hung it up, the skirt and jacket, before I left. It was GONE. Seriously. I couldn't find it anywhere and would have questioned that maybe I DIDN'T put it where I thought I did except that the matching shirt and socks WERE exactly where I had put those, on the shelf in her closet. So, thinking she wore it during the week, I looked in the hamper. I couldn't find it anywhere.

About this time, my son (14) arrives upstairs and wants to know...does he HAVE to wear what I had purchased for him? Which was nothing more than a pair of khaki cargo pants and a blue henley shirt. Now, in his defense, he could have been really snotty which he wasn't ( yes, I consider lack of bad behavior a positive). But in MY defense, do you think he could have brought up the issue he had with what I had purchased for him 2 weeks ago when he tried it on (yes he tried it on)? Then, I happened to mention to my oldest daughter that I didn't want to see her cami hanging down beneath the hem of her sweater to which she replied in the snotty Imateenvoice, "you don't expect me to TUCK IT IN????" God NO, I replied, I do NOT expect you to tuck it in. *eye roll*.

OK, so where are we...My oldest doesn't want to wear what I purchased for him, my next oldest doesn't want to tuck in her cami, my middle daughter can't find her shirt (which was located under a hanging rack that had collapsed and no one bothered to pick up all the clean items that were on it, but rather left them all laying on the floor), and my youngest's outfit was completely missing. And the inevitable question would be...why did I bother?

As it turns out, my son chose a long sleeved rugby shirt that worked fine, I turned a blind eye to the presence of the cami below the hem of her sweater, I found the third child's top and the youngest...well, apparently she had decided last week, while I was in NY, to place her outfit in a "safe" place...that being under the pillow on her bottom bunk (she sleeps on the top), so was actually dressed correctly for church.

We made it to church without my yelling. Which I consider the second miracle of the day.