Aires Buenos

I've always been one to wait till after Thanksgiving to pull out the Christmas CDs but my will is weak this year. For one, it's been almost 10 years since UBC stopped producing the Miami Christmas Pageant. By this time of year in high school, I would have long been in Sunday afternoon rehearsals learning choreography for one scene or another, and learning the choral parts for my role as angel among the multitude. I miss it so much, that I nearly teared up the first time I wore Bath & Body Works' Frozen Daquiri flavored lipgloss, because it tasted so much like the Mary Kay goo we wore year after year.

But the Miami Christmas Pageant is no longer. Much like the raisins on Noemie's Sunday School artwork this morning. I didn't notice Toby was helping himself to her craft project while I was circling the church grounds, searching for the other two kids who had escaped me yet again. "It's like herding cats," a friend of mine observed. "Danny working again?" people ask sympathetically, as they see me taking another lap with Toby. Diaper-bag, over-sized Bible, over-sized purse, sheets of Bible story coloring pages, random envelopes, and the occasional abandoned children's shoe perched precariously over every available appendage... if my skin looked good and my hair was perfectly glossed and meticulously curled as I paraded around, I might feel a little more dignified, but my 29th year has not been as kind as my 18th was, and I fear that my aging complexion is starting to cramp my signature stylish frazzle. Mary Kay is beckoning.

I'm reviewing the meal plans I've laid out for the next week and noticed that tomorrow evening I wrote in "Sushi?" as if I'm pleading for a break. Amusingly, this comes on the heels of an email I just received from a self-help guru who recommends giving my inner child a name so that I can negotiate more firmly with her when she requests to, say, have cheesecake for breakfast, or asks for sushi when I've already gone over my dining-out budget. (In fairness, our dining-out budget barely covers the cost of a once-a-month, nice dinner for two, provided we order water and have our dessert at home). But seeing as that my inner child and I hang out so often (right now she's telling me to ignore the laundry and the piles of dirty dishes I spotted on my way to grab a spoonful of Nutella, postponing lunch another 10 minutes)... maybe I should give her a name. Ooooh. Maybe I'll call her Skipper. That's what I wanted to change my name to when I was in elementary school. "Hush, Skipper! I'm a responsible adult! My lusterless skin tone is living proof!"

"It's dying proof, really."

Wait, was that my inner Mary Kay consultant??? These pregnancy hormones are doing a number on me.

The small but very real and passionate part of my personality that loves organization and craves micromanagement stumbled across this most amazing resource recently: cozi.com. It allows me to schedule anything and everything, color coded by family member, as specific as to the quarter hour, and then print out itineraries that detail every waking hour of every day for eternity, or email them to Danny. Next on the itinerary? Choir practice in 15 minutes. Dominic in mid-nap, Noemie fighting her nap by reciting Veggietales dialogue, Toby calling for lunch from his crib... yeah, no choir practice for me today. And looking back I see that I forgot to do our homeschool lesson on Friday, where we were supposed to talk about native Americans and make a project using all those leaves I collected from our South Carolina vacation. Come to think of it, I don't remember wiping down the oven door or dusting the bedrooms yesterday either. Fortunately, my love for organization and micromanagement is mostly theoretical. This allows me to get to the end of my itinerary without feeling like my homemaking endeavors are an abject failure. Hello, my name is Skipper.

Danny working hard on the mission field:

constructing the buildings at the Bible College and leading a youth group Bible Study

Happy Thanksgiving! It's time for my next impossible project. You can find me under that stack of stock home-plans looking for my dream home. Given our budget, I will be building it myself. Wait a minute... what are all these kids for? Homeschool lesson!