Back to Regularly Scheduled Programming

The springtime chaos has begun. This past weekend my sister held a birthday party for my two nieces and one nephew. Since their birthdays land in March, April and May, she thought she’d save us from having to attend three separate birthday parties. As much as I appreciated her effort to free up my schedule a bit, I don’t think my bank account was prepared for the shock it received on Saturday morning when I rushed out to buy each of their presents. In her defense, she did tell us about this party two months in advance. And one of them already had their birthday, so I really had plenty of time to budget and shop for their gifts. But I’ve always been the one to wait until the last minute to buy presents. So after three stores and an abandoned cart in the toy aisle on Friday night, I had to finally buckle down and buy something…anything really…for the little darlings.


I think my procrastination worked in the long run. I didn’t have enough time to be picky or to overthink the gift buying, so I just bought some crap and passed it off as the best birthday gifts ever! I’m lucky those kids think I’m awesome and are not quite old enough to see through my failed attempts at gift giving. All kidding aside, I was pretty happy with what I got them. I just hope the plastic crap they call toys lasted long enough to make it through a round of play at home.

Sunday the little ones spent a few hours with their dad and Grace visited with a friend. I spent my few hours of kid free luxury grocery shopping, cleaning and washing, drying and folding 27 loads of laundry. How I got so lucky to be afforded a few hours a month of kid free time is beyond me. In my state of bliss on Sunday, I completely forgot that Alex had baseball practice on Monday evening. He is the only one who plays a spring sport and last weeks practice was canceled because of bad weather. On my way home from work, I got my calendar reminder for the 5:30 practice. I had to total of 17 minutes to put dinner on the table for four starving children before running back out the door for practice.

Because I didn’t even think to look at my calendar during my free time on Sunday, I had not one thing prepared for dinner. I quickly scanned the fridge to see what left overs I could throw together but would you believe that there wasn’t a single leftover dinner in there!?! I did however find three frozen slices of pizza from at least six months ago and a box of mozzarella sticks from who knows when. They were less than impressed with this but ate it nonetheless. Throughout the practice, I ignored several text messages from Grace first begging and then demanding I bring home real food for dinner. I too was starving as I forfeited any of the pizza or cheese sticks for my darling children. I contemplated grabbing some fast food or even a deli sandwich from the grocery store, but then remembered how I broke the bank purchasing birthday gifts a few days before.

When I returned home after the two hour practice, I was greeted with stomps and shouts of what a terrible mother I am for not providing McDonalds or at the very least Taco Bell for these precious souls.

I realized my mother of the year votes were quickly dwindling and knew I had to pull a trick out of the hat before I was no longer in the running for my obviously well-deserved award.

We sat down at the dining room table a few minutes later to enjoy our incredibly nutrious meal of popcorn and ice cream. Eva announced that this was indeed the best dinner ever!

Maybe I’ll get that award afterall.