Tonight the hubs had a Bible study at the big university in town. Since I had crazy volunteer-, family-, and job-related stuff all day, I did not make it to the big Wholesale Club for my first of the month trip this morning as I had planned. So I took the four kids to the big Wholesale Club.
I gave a pep talk. I told the two younger ones they would ride in the cart and talked about expectations. I promised a treat if they were all good.
In the end the trip went really well. The icing on the cake was coming home, unloading the van, and not doing it alone. The kids started taking stuff inside. They came back outside and took more stuff inside. This happened a couple more times (it was one of those trips where I realized we were out of just about everything!), and by the time I had the last two items in hand, had locked the van, and was walking inside, I realized how efficiently we had worked. More important, we had worked *together* and without any complaining.
At the end of what had become a very long day, I felt as if through all of the chaos and craziness that surrounds our life here, sometimes we are succeeding at making this family thing work.
