We've invited a large sum of people over for a gathering of sorts this weekend, and after I extended all of the invites, and received yes from 100% of invitees, the thought popped into my head that we were going to need more than our four dining chairs to seat everyone. I started counting other options (couch, piano bench, camping chairs, etc.) and still came up short. I finally bought some folding chairs from Wal-mart, which were not as expensive as I had thought they were. However, I thought the whole musical chair dilemma would be solved if only I had a set of barstools. So all day today, I have been fretting over barstools. I have let my kids cry and whine and beg for attention while I search for barstools online. At one point today, I thought, "We cannot possibly have company over without barstools." (Yes, I was full of all sorts of logical ideas today, that being the most logical of them all.)
When all of my options turned up dead-ends, I admitted defeat. And then I thought about Nicole upstairs watching a movie, and how she had asked me to watch it with her (but I was really busy doing incredibly important things, like calling Target to see if they had any barstools in stock). And I thought about little Grantigrew who was so ornery (what else is new?), but who would have benefited from a good tickle, or a game with the Crazy 8's cards that he threw all over the floor hours earlier. At the end of my self-evaluation, I concluded that I failed in the mommy department today. I could have had so much fun playing with the kids, and instead I was short on patience and mentally obsessed with something that won't even matter three days from now.
Kids never do stupid things like this. They always have their priorities straight. Just the other night, Nicole prayed, "Please bless that Grant will fall asleep in my bed, and that he will stay sleeping in my room the whole night and be here when I wake up in the morning." (She prayed for this because Grant usually falls asleep during the before-bed-movie, but I move him to his own bed.) Nicole frequently asks if Scott can sleep in there, too. She thinks the boys will protect her from the bad guys/ghosts/monsters (she's seen too many PG-13 movies). But more than that, I think she's lonely, and that she misses the good old days when we lived in a two bedroom apartment, and all three kids shared one 9x11 foot space. Cozy.
Anyway, I was just thinking how kids don't care about fancy barstools to impress their friends, or designer bedding to sleep in. They care about the most important thing in life:
Relationships with their favorite people. I swear Nicole would trade all of the barstools in the world for a fun day with her family. And when that day was gone, she'd trade this whole house for another day just like it.
It's nice to know someone who's got it all figured out.
