The Perfect Day, Part l: The Evening Before

Yes, the P word. I don't use it often, but this weekend I had the most perfect day, plus an extra perfect evening.

Friday afternoon, I FINALLY managed to round all of my children and the 22 boxes of Girl Scout cookies which needed to be shipped to three different addresses in the car at the same time en route to the post office.

As much as I appreciate the US postal workers, I absolutely despise trips to the post office above all other errands, and I'm not sure why. Imagine my relief at having accomplished the task, and my utter exhaustion, due in large measure to the mental endurance it took for me to finally buck up and do it.

Clearly, we would need to order pizza for dinner.

(To my defense, there were other contributing factors towards my mental and physical exhaustion, though the post office was certainly the last straw.)

So there we were in the parking lot discussing (arguing) over what varieties we might choose. Max suddenly woke screaming from his unplanned snooze, whilst the Princess loudly asserted her hunger, and The Actress bemoaned her fate, of having to eat pizza, which she DOESN'T EVEN LIKE (as of that discussion).

Sound perfect yet?

Well, the Lord was watching out for me. In a perfect twist of fate, he managed to prompt one of our FAVORITE people to rush to the post office to send off a birthday gift she would no longer be delivering in person.

My darling (wild) children rolled down the window and began to politely call(aggressively holler) for her attention. Fortuneately, after tossing my bags of returns and other treasures of the car aside, she was able to squeeze into the front seat for a little visit.

As a mother of six, she tolerated the harmony of whines, screams, sobs, complaints, and tantrums amazingly well. When the decibel level surpassed our ability to converse anymore, she opened the door to leave. The Artist suddenly piped up, "Can you follow us to our house?"

"Why?" I asked, not meaning so much "why would you like her to come" but more, "why would she want to come."

"So she could eat dinner with us."

"Well, I suppose if she likes Pizza Hut Pizza Mias and canned fruit for dinner, she would be welcome to come."

"Let me go home and talk to Brother Peterson to see if he has anything he needs to do tonight. You just may get a call from us," our friend told The Artist as she slipped out of the car.

And sure enough, we arrived home from Pizza Hut to find a message on our answering machine from Brother (President) Peterson. Just as we were about to call him, he called again to report that not only would they like to come, but they would like to offer to stay with the kids whilst Mr. Bloomers and I had a night on the town.

I called Mr. Bloomers to give him the fabulous news, and he responded with, "Would you like to pick me up at the train station so we could leave sooner?" Didn't take much convincing there.

So after a lovely dinner with even lovelier company, Mr. Bloomers and I reluctantly left (abandoned with glee) our most precious children in the care of their adopted grandparents.

And we went downtown. Like cool people do on Friday night. (Even though we probably are not so cool anymore.)

We found our way towards a "chocolate lounge" (otherwise known as "heaven on earth") where we indulged in a rich chocolate fondue celebration with marshmallows, cookies, pretzels, bananas, apples, and strawberries. We shared our feelings about some heavy events of the week, and thoroughly enjoyed each moment together. It was divine.

We returned to discover that ALL of our children were in bed (though not all quite asleep) and visited a bit longer with these fabulous friends who had offered such sweet service.

And we all slept well through the night.