A Long Story About A Simple Morning

I just have to take a minute to sit down and remind myself that every outing is not always an adventure. I took all the kids to Wal-Mart for groceries this morning. Nikki got in the car and said, "I'm thirsty." Fine, we head to the water fountain when we get in the store (but you know she really wanted me to buy her a drink). Then we passed a display of animal cookies and Nikki said, "I'm hungry." Oh great, I forgot snacktime before we left. Sorry, we'll eat when we get home, but of course that didn't help her mood. She earned herself an extra chore today. But I accomplished all the shopping even with a baby crying and trying to wiggle himself out of the buckles in the cart and a whining 6-year-old and an 8-year-old who would lose track of time reading every package she passed in the aisles. Whew! Then we got to the car and Nikki noticed that we had a flat tire. Okay, maybe I won't make her do that extra chore. Thanks for the good eyes, Nikki. I load all of the groceries and all of the kids in the car with the instructions that they could eat a banana and feed one to Ryan, too. I broke out the spare tire and jack and was so grateful to be prepared. I was also praying that I could either get the tire off myself or that someone would stop and offer some help. It took a minute for me to figure out which side of the jack went up and which one was supposed to be on the ground. I was beginning to think that I must look like I really had things under control because no one was stopping. Finally, this nice man stopped and started lowering the jack back down. Wait, I said, that's going down. He says, in broken English, yeah you have to have the tires down to get the lug nuts loose. Oh, good thing he stopped. When he got the spare tire on, that was flat, too, but he said I could probably make it to the nearest gas station. So, I thanked and him and jumped in the car and said a prayer with the girls that we could make it home, which was closer than any gas station. On the way out of the parking lot I saw that Wal-Mart has a tire center and stopped in there. It would have taken them another 45 minutes to an hour to fix the tire, and I had ice cream, milk, cheese, butter, the whole nine yards, and 3 hungry kids including a sleepy baby. So I asked them to just fill the tire up so I could get home. You're not supposed to put air into a doughnut spare tire, but they did it and said we would probably make it. More prayers. So then I look in the back seat and thought that on top of it all Ryan had thrown up. No, the girls said that was just from them feeding him bananas. Gross!

Now we're home, groceries are put away, lunch has been eaten, the baby is sleeping, Nate is bringing home a new tire because I don't have time today and probably wouldn't make it to the shop anyway, and I feel like I'm starting to breathe again. The kids were so good, and I didn't really get upset about it, and I'm really glad everything got taken care of so smoothly without a huge emotional breakdown or car breakdown on the side of the road.