The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men Often Go Awry

I drug the boy to the Holy Week service at church last night. He's going through confirmation class which requires attendance at Sunday afternoon classes. Unfortunately, his travel ball games have conflicted with these classes for several weeks ("Mom, the guys are counting on me"), so I volunteered him to help with last night's service as a kind of "make up" offering. We first had to go through negotiations on what he would wear. I asked for khaki pants and a polo shirt with his topsiders. He countered back with shorts, t-shirt and tennis shoes. I gave up on the long pants, insisted on picking the t-shirt, and decided the tennis shoes were no big deal. We were good to go.

His job was to light the candles and serve the bread for Communion. I felt ok about this because there didn't seem like much that could go wrong. I was relieved he wasn't serving the grape juice because that opened up some scary possibilities. After each prayer, he was to extinguish a candle with that thing that lights and extinguishes candles. So after the first prayer, he rambles over and tries to stick it down into the candle jar. It won't fit. He tries again. Still won't fit. He looks around and grins. I begin to squirm in my seat. The assistant pastor is mouthing something to him. He can't understand her, so he keeps saying "What?" Finally she yells "Just blow it out!" He shrugs his shoulders, laughs a little, and blows it out. Crisis averted.

Next he is to help pass the bread around at the Communion table. This should be seamless because it's pretty self-explanatory...or one would think. When the first group arrives at the table, he joins in and takes Communion and then passes the bread. Perfect. The second time, he does the same thing. I'm wondering if they told him that he only needs to take it once. Third time...he takes it again and passes the bread. This goes on 7 times. 7 times he takes Communion. He dips his bread in the grape juice like he is eating chips and dip. By the 5th time, I had tears rolling down my face, Such a goof ball. After the service is over, he asks me "How did I do mom? Did you see that me blow out the candles? Oh, you don't need to get me anything to eat...I'm full." Yep. Too much bread and grape juice. How many people can actually say they filled up on the Communion meal? That's my boy.



Little sister had a 2 hour softball practice. She dreaded it all day and then called me on the way home to discuss how well she did. Her best friend/quasi-sister was spending the night with us as she does most weekends, so I had planned on putting them in front of a movie and getting some writing done. Dad and boy were into some baseball game, so the potential for quiet time was there. But the girls had other plans. They are considering going to summer camp for a week this summer, and tonight was the night they felt the need to discuss the pros and cons with me...Ok. The pros were: bunk beds, archery, campfires and riflery. The cons were : mom might die while I'm gone, the dog might die while I'm gone, rifles can be dangerous. These were the worries that needed to be discussed and debated for 2 hours. At the end of the discussion, no decisions were made, except that we would discuss it more today.

Today is a day off for everyone. Dad is working from home. Boy has a 2 hour baseball practice that he doesn't know about yet. Little sister and best friend have coerced me into taking them to the opening day of the new Hannah Montanna movie. There will also need to be some plans made about an Easter egg hunt which is tricky because even though everyone now knows there is no Easter Bunny, it has been decided that we will still pretend that we believe.



So on with the day. I will scribble down the terrific writing ideas that came to me in the middle of the night and hope that they still seem as interesting on Monday morning. And I will try to remember that even though I thought I wanted to write this morning, there will come a day when I will look back and wish that I needed to go see Hannah Montanna and hide Easter eggs...


So until next week, when the focus will be off of the kids and back onto the shallow, material things that we girls see in magazines this time of year...