When I left work yesterday, my plan for the evening sounded like this:
- Pick up the girls from Gran’s.
- An early bath time.
- A little fall decorating (since we have done NONE at our house).
- Homework and prep for day two as “Leader of the Week” for Ella.
- Boil some chicken and make homemade chicken salad for dinner and lunches this week.
- Make pom-poms for Ella’s Halloween costume.
- Fold a few loads of laundry.
- Read until bedtime.
I should probably mention that Josh had an away game tonight, so the plan was centered around his absence in our home.
Traffic wasn’t too bad today and I got to my mom’s about twenty minutes ahead of schedule. This bodes well for the evening’s plans, right? Ella is so excited to tell me all about her first day as the leader, but seems a little melancholy I finally learn that she doesn’t think she carried enough pictures for her “About Me” poster and she really needs more. Really. Plans change.
- Run in my mom’s house and have Ella look through my on-line albums and pick out photos.
- Download images.
- Upload images to Walmart’s website and pray they are open after 6 o’clock. They are.
- Drive back to Chelsea (where I just came from) to pick up said pictures.
- Run to McDonald’s for thirty minutes to eat a quick happy meal and take a spin on the slide.
- Take some cute pictures of the girls while eating/playing for a mid-week blog post.
- Do as much of the first list as we have time for depending on what time we get home.
What actually happened:
Ella and Sophie were arguing when I got to Gran’s about some trick that they wanted to show me. Sophie bailed at the last minute, so Ella was mad about that. They yelled at each other a few times and, let’s face it, I yelled back at them. I was already starting to unravel at this point. I finally get the images uploaded and receive a confirmation email from WM, throw the cranky girls in the car and head back to Chelsea. As we’re looking for a parking spot, someone comes down the aisle the wrong way and then acts like I’m in the wrong place. Deep breaths. We make it to the photo department with all family members intact and no smart mouths to be heard. Of course, there isn’t an associate in sight and we finally manage to pick up our prepaid images ten minutes later. Apparently I downloaded a too-small file and they aren’t the best looking prints ever. Oh well, Ella doesn’t seem to notice and I can’t deal with that process again. We head to Mickey D’s. I wait in line for almost ten minutes to order. I overhear another customer complaining that she’s been waiting on her sandwich for FIFTEEN MINUTES and they tell her it’s “still cooking”. That would explain the texture of the meat I suppose. We finally order, get our food and sit down when Ella discovers that her order is wrong. I take it back and wait again while they find some bacon and re-make her sandwich. During this time, Sophie is waving at total strangers and Ella is devouring all of our fries. Ella eats quickly and heads to the playground while SK whines about having to finish her meal. She is so worried about Ella playing that she slips and knocks herself silly on the table and has a COMPLETE AND TOTAL MELTDOWN in the middle of the restaurant. All eyes on me. Wonderful. I finally get her to eat dinner, make everyone happy in the PlayPlace and this momma is happily reading a few pages of her book while the girls make a few new friends. There are three other families eating dinner and, of course, my children are the loudest. We have to take a potty break, which requires two girls to put shoes on and then all three of us to trek to the bathroom and hope the cleaning crew doesn’t trash the remainder of our meals. Sophie doesn’t even go while we’re in there?!?! She says “I don’t got any.” We might have been back in the play area for ten more minutes when the declaration heard round the world occurs. Ella calls to Sophie to meet her at the blue slide and Sophie, who is three stories up and peering at us all out the window, declares “I can’t, I’m pooping!” Every eye in the place slides to me as I crawl through the obstacle course to extricate my daughter who’s “finished”. Just so you know, SK is potty trained and wearing big girl panties. Cringe.
