Pride comes before the...

Before the what? Before the fall.

To be honest I've been in a slump. I had a few bad experiences in the last few weeks where I was trapped in a need-to-discipline predicament. Out in public, people watching, my kids disrupting, you know, the bad kind of trapped. It made me stop trying new things with the kids and just sticking with the familiar: places I knew they'd all stay happy. Places where I could bring their snacks and various forms of bribery and all would be well. The problem is that then I get cabin fever and use the time when Sean is home to go to all other places. These are the places where they are all happy 99% of the time. My fool-proof places:

Target

Costco

Sams

Sonic

Church...this one is questionable given Joy's issue

Friends houses

Family's houses

and that's about it

So I got a wild hair. Yesterday I wanted to get out during the break in thunderstorms and thought, "Sure, we can do this...we can all go return the necklace I bought last weekend...I can keep them all happy and obedient and it will be fine...at Charming Charlie's. If you've been there you're holding your breath. It's like Sam Moon but with more stuff ON THE FLOOR within reach. God love me I was hurting for entertainment wasn't I?

At the risk of making you choke on your food I'll cut right to it--it worked. They behaved, I returned, I loaded them all back up in the car and announced that since they had done well we'd get to have ice cream at home. It was a sweet car ride home. All were aiming to please and I was, well, proud of myself. Look at me. Look at my kids behaving.

I am totally rockin' this thing.

Then today I went to Target. I mean, if I can do Charming Charlie's I can do Target. They love Target. There are the lights and the vacuums and all sorts of things to look at. Have I mentioned before that we go to Target to look at the vacuums? Ty and Charlie love the vacuum aisle. Seriously you'd think I used my vacuum often as much as they love it. Maybe that's why they do-they don't see if very often.

Anyway.

We were sashaying, (I have no idea how to spell that or if it's even a word...) around feeling proud when I decided to go spend one of Joy's birthday gifts, (a gift card,) on a new toy for her.

Target on a Saturday in the toy department.

I can SO handle this.

Right about the time we were turning to leave the Kai Lan section, I heard something. It sounded like a hail storm. Do you know what it was?

A brand new package of Mini Sweet Tarts hitting the floor. The big package that you can only but at Target. It holds approx. 452 pieces. Charlie was holding the bag upside down with a look of, "Aw man that did not go the way I wanted it to," on her face. The sweet tart things are great for the kids. Go buy some if you haven't tried them. They are mess-free and you can give them like four and it takes a whole shopping trip to chew them. I bought the new package because we were anticipating an afternoon of errands. I guess Charlie had other plans and wanted to go ahead and open them and I was so focused on finding a new toy for Joy that I missed her clawing into it. I was embarrassed and frustrated that I was now going to spend the next 2 hours picking up all of the little pieces. It might have taken even longer than that.

I bent down to start picking them up and showing Ty and Charlie how to put them back in the bag when four little sets of legs caught my eye and I looked up. Four school-aged kids bending down to help me. Their dad was directing them to help me, (he was helping too,) so that the mess could get cleaned up quickly and I've never been so grateful. I said "Thank you" to the kids and the man as many times as I could and then watched them walk away. Then I told their mom how well they responded and how grateful I was when I saw them walking around the store after I regained my composure.

My Super Mom flag just got knocked down to the Regular Mom level.