own it

Mary was up sick most of the night, and finally ended up throwing up this morning.  Molly joined in the fun as well.  Sam stayed home feeling "queasy" and I am not feeling so hot myself.

Naturally, we are all home today, ALL of us. 

I got out the pillows, blankets and movies, and we just hunkered down...until I remembered that I am bringing dinner to a friend tonight, and I had to get to the store.  I couldn't leave anyone home really, so I loaded all of my little ducklings into the car, prayed for a miracle of not breaking anything, screaming tantrums, begging for everything in sight, puking in the isles, or full blown chaos, and we went on our way.

The Lord can be merciful, and we actually were in and out of the store smoothly and quickly.  I loaded all of my kids on the cart, to try to prevent spreading germs, or losing anyone.  Mary obediently walked right next to me, looking very green in the gills.  Poor kid.

As we walked around the isles, numerous people stopped and commented on my cart FULL of kids.  We became quite the show.

As we walked outside, there was a huge group of teeneage boys with their cell phones out taking pictures and completely gawking at this...

No, not the old lady's bum....the car

 I know nothing at all about cars, but this must have been an amazing one, because aside from the boys surrounding it and drooling, employees were coming out of the store to stare and admire the car as well.  Grown men were "sneaking" pictures of it with their phones, and literally just staring in wonder.

I was parked close to this car, and I had to walk right through the big crowd of teenage boys.  So, I gripped my cart full of children and plowed on through the lanky awkward, smelly teenage testosterone filled human beings saying, "they are selling kids on isle 5, get them while their hot."

Right behind me was a man in his 50's.  He was dressed incredibly well, he smelled amazingly good, his hair was perfectly trimmed, he walked as if he was gliding on water, and he ever so smoothly pulled his keychain out of his pocket and pushed his button to unlock "the car."  Every head in the parking lot turned to stare at him.  He pushed the button again, and I swear it was for dramatic effect. Pretty sure his button worked the first time.

Then William screamed, "Mom!  That car is so small, is it from Mario Cart?"  In return Sam poked him to be quiet.  William thought Luke poked him, so he smacked Luke, which resulted in a long, loud, and extremely high pitched scream from Luke.  As if written in a script itself, right at that moment Mary started dry heaving, and I was frantically throwing stuff out of grocery bags, yelling "hang on Mary, try to hold it in," so Mary could have a bag to barf in. 

All of the heads turned from the fancy man with his fancy car, to me and my cart full of children.

I could see the wheels turning in the minds of these teenage boys as they looked back and forth from this fancy man and his fancy car, to me and my cart full of children.  I could see their thoughts playing out right in front of me.

"Fancy car, fancy life, cart full of kids and Pathfinder.  Back to fancy car, fancy life, and then cart full of kids and Pathfinder.

I chuckled a little, put the kids in the car, sauntered over to the still gawking crowd watching this man put his bag of groceries in his trunk that was the size of  my foot, and proudly declared,
"I wouldn't change my life for the world." 

I got every reaction in the book, from nods of agreement, to laughter, to completely blank looks, to shaking of heads.

In Ben's words..."If you choose to do something, own it."  And I did.