The Best Laid Plans...

I like to plan-I am a planner. Sunday nights I like to sit down and plan out my week. I like to plan for things way ahead of time (for instance, much of my Christmas shopping is underway already).

Today I had beautiful, well laid out plans featuring one mom, three cherubic children, and a loving family gathering together with daddy once he got home for a nice dinner and family home evening. Here were my plans:

Get up at 6:30 to read my scriptures and start to get myself ready for the day before the boys got up.

Take Nathan to school and head straight to the first grocery store just to grab some quick deals.

Drop Jack off for his first day of Preschool! (After of course taking pictures and all that.)

Me and Dallen take a trip to the other grocery store and finish off this week's grocery trip.

Come home and make M & M cookies for Jack as a surprise for his first day of preschool.

At 10:25 my VTers were going to come and then that was going to morph into a YW presidency meeting right at my house where of course we would all sit around making lovely plans for our dear YW.

12:00-Pick up Jack from Preschool. Come home and eat lunch together while he told me all about his day. Then we would surprise him with the warm cookies.

Nap-Mondays are always our best day for naps-the one day I can count on both Jack and Dal really sleeping.

3:35 (after Nathan got picked up from school) Swimming lessons for J and N

Dinner of potato soup (despite the hot weather) because Nathan prayed last night that we could have it.

FHE-already planned a theme we feel is important to teach our kids. And of course everyone would sit nicely, pay attention, learn and feel loved.


Then reality hit:

1:30 a.m. Light flips on in the bathroom and before I know what is going on Josh jumps out of bed to respond. Nathan is up and from what I can tell, he has thrown up. Good news-I was wrong. He has pink eye and his eyes were glued shut. Still, this means he is going to need to stay home from school.

6:30-Alarm goes off and I hit snooze once, knowing we don't have to be out of bed early since Nathan isn't going to school.

6:40-Alarm goes off again and I stir. Nathan and Jack are already awake and in the backyard (what?!) and I can hear Dal yelling.

I ignore Dal and let the boy play outside so I can get my scripture reading in at least.

Feed everyone breakfast, call school and neighbor about Nathan not going, shower and get dressed, get Jack dressed for preschool.

Jack gets undressed and into his Spiderman costume instead.

Get Jack dressed again and, after some nice pictures, drop him off at preschool. No grocery trip since I can't take Nathan to the store really.

Come home to make cookies. Since I can't do M & M because I can't go to the store, I decide to try a nice peanut butter cookie and I am going to mix chunks of Reese's PB cups in. While I am not paying attention to my mixing, the Reese's get pulverized and become part of the cookie dough instead of chunks, thus changing the consistency and frankly, ruining the cookies.

VTers show up. Nathan is supposed to take Dal upstairs and play quietly. Dal is having none of that. He wants to be with me. And Nathan is having none of that. He wants Dal with him. So much for quiet.

Meeting starts-things are sort of random and chaotic thanks to my kids and whatnot. In the middle I have to leave to go pick up Jack. Teacher says preschool was sort of chaotic. Kids got hurt, didn't sit still, etc. Jack had fun though.

Come home and meeting is still going on so I tell the boys to play for a few minutes while I finish up. Instead they start whining and crying and yelling because they are hungry and tired.

Feed Jack lunch but more in the hurried and chaotic way than the nice sit down and eat together and talk about our day way that I was hoping for. And he doesn't like the weird cookies.

Put kids to bed. Unfortunately though, my nap day is not going to happen because Nathan is home and keeps coming out of quiet time to tell me things.

We will go to swimming lessons-but Nathan won't be able to swim.

No potato soup for dinner because I can't go to the store to buy potatoes.

Wonder what FHE will be like? :)

Ah, and as we all know, THIS is life. THIS is reality. And that is fine. I still love my life.