who's child are you, anyway

This afternoon, I kicked my 3 oldest daughters out of the house to go to the store. This is for several good purposes: They've been cooped up most of the week because it's been raining and we've begun our cold snap. Wound up, giggly teens can be hilarious or volatile... and you never know which will emerge. I needed a few things for our family GENERAL CONFERENCE PARTY and I'm too tired to get my rear together and get to the store. They needed to buy presents for their dear friends birthday. The two little ones needed to go outside in the worst way for exactly reason #1, but can't go out by themselves (rules rules) so I decided to go out and sit on the bench and read my latest book adventure (The Ten-Cow Wives Club), while the 2 littles burned off some energy. I snuggle down in my fleecy jacket, open my ear-marked page and settled in to get in a few chapters. No more than 5 minutes go by, when a little girl on the playground begins howling in pain and running towards her mother. I look up and realize she is coming from the direction from my two littles. Is it possible that they'd had something to do with her howling? I watch for a moment, and then decided..Nah, we've only been out 5 minutes. Nothing drastic can happen that quickly. um. I was wrong. Not that the girl didn't have it coming, but the entire life span of both my children I've told them that if they have a problem with another child, and it cannot be resolved that they are to come tell me first before they react in kind. It is practically our family motto. Not to sound like we're all that, because we're just a normal family---but there isn't a week go by that someone doesn't tell me how much they love how sweet my kids are to everyone on the playground. So why is it, that the first time I'm outside with them in quite some time (usually their big sisters want to take them out to play)... they choose this??! What the heck were they thinking???! Dain Bramage. I made them apologize, and marched them back into the house, made them take showers, put on their pj's and gave them heated up leftovers for dinner and put them to bed. Now I can read my book in peace. Sheesh.