Food...

With all the kids home for summer, I knew it was bound to happen. It wasn't a matter of if, just when and when happened this morning....the kids officially ate us out of house and home. Our cupboards, bare and the fridge, empty. My husband announced that the only snack in the house was a glass of ice water. He was right.

Normally, all of this public critiquing of domestic necessities, my area, would have offended me. I'm usually sensitive about my job and serious in making sure everything around here runs smoothly. But, it is softball season and the family knows that things typically get a little crazy when mom is coaching. I have a lot of balls in the air and once in a while one does fall. This morning, it was food. A biggie for the people who live here.

There was actually a small riot in the kitchen this morning when the boys discovered the empty kitchen. Buck located a couple tortillas and some cheese in an unopened crisper. As he was preparing his cheese crisps, his younger brother started crying. I tried to interest him in a dill pickle, but he wanted the cheese crisp. After some negotiating, he settled on half a cheese crisp and a pickle. He didn't eat pickles before today.

Our oldest daughter, Audra, shipped off early this morning, before the riot, for a week of church camp. I'm thinking that she planned this at just the right time. She's a smart girl. She said she wanted to go because her best friend, Lauren, was going. I think food had something to do with it. They will feed her at camp.

Seeing the desperation on the faces of my three remaining kids this morning, I knew that I could not put off the grocery store one more day. It's been weeks since I've gone and it's one of those jobs I dread - the shopping, the loading, the unloading, the putting away. It's huge. With Audra, my babysitter, away at camp, I needed to bring the younger three with me. So, we all took off for the store. They were eager to help and anxious for food. 

I'm not sure why, but pushing the shopping cart is a big deal to our kids. So is riding on the end and the sides. We've put an end to the sides as it makes it really difficult to turn, but one on the end is usually manageable. Steering the cart is the preferred position and it's a very big deal to our youngest, who absolutely loves to push. Feeling gracious as we entered the store, I let the little one push. We made it into the store and everything was fine until we made our first right turn. Luckily our kids play sports and when a few boxes fell from the shelves that he bumped into with the cart, most were caught before they hit the ground. As we maneuvered through the beauty isle, there was a worker hunkered down stocking a bottom shelf.  At this point, Sierra was riding on the end of the cart as Colton drove. The lady working in the isle was clearly taking up at least half the isle, which left us a narrow passage. She never looked up, despite my loud verbal concerns about the tight fit. So, with Sierra now riding on the end of the cart, Colton managed to shimmy the cart right past. She obviously had no idea how close she came to physical injury and it appeared that she did not care.

After a few more close calls, I decided to drive and pick up the pace. We managed to hit the food section and the kids were ecstatic. It wasn't long before we started to lose things off all sides of our overstuffed cart and after we ran over the hot dog buns twice, we decided to add a second cart. This is the first time I've done this. Typically, when my cart gets too full, I leave and come back another day. With all my little helpers, the addition of the second cart made sense. We finished up, hit the check out line and as we made it home, my husband walked in the back door and shouted, "We have food. Everybody eat!"

And so we did.