Now that the kids are back in school, I finally have a moment to catch up on the blog. We had a pretty quiet Christmas outside of one very squeaky night. Yes, I meant to write squeaky and no things were NOT squeaky clean!
You see it all started with our traditional trip to view Christmas lights. Each year we like to go to Starbucks, get our favorite Christmas drinks (I like the peppermint white mocha myself), and drive around our subdivision looking at all of the beautiful Christmas lights. We told the kids to get ready to go and soon my son walked into the kitchen with his travel backpack. At the time it seemed perfectly normal. He said that he wanted to bring the backpack because he had packed some toys for the car. OK, I'll admit it- I thought to myself "what a great thing for him to do- taking responsibility for himself". Oh, yes, pride does come before a fall.
We situated my son in the car and my daughter came running with her backpack. Also filled with "toys". The kids were whispering and laughing with each other quite a bit. You would have thought that at this point my mom radar would have been alerted but it wasn't. I thought that there were just really excited to look at Christmas lights (do you know any kids THAT excited to drive around on a sight-seeing trip???) Hey don't be too hard on me, our kids do seem to get along pretty well so all of the chumminess wasn't too out of the ordinary (really). We drove to Starbucks and were in the process of ordering our drinks when it happened.
My husband was speaking to the kind teenager manning the drive thru speaker when suddenly I heard this strange squeak. Um, wait a minute, it wasn't a strange sounding squeak- it was a rather familiar sounding squeak. And then I heard it again! This time is was a little more like a squeal. Suddenly it dawned on me and I turned around to ask with incredulity "DO YOU HAVE THE GUINEA PIGS IN THE CAR????" I'm not quite sure what the teenager in the drive thru thought hearing that statement in the middle of our order but to be honest, I didn't really care. My petrified daughter responded "yes". That is right, all of the whispering, laughing, sharing of secrets was due to the secret each child held in their own backpacks- a guinea pig.
My thoughts ran wild: what if they get out? is there a small hole they can get through? would they drop onto the road and get run over? how are we supposed to explain another dead guinea pig? Now I know these things wouldn't really happen but I never expected that my children would take the guinea pigs for a ride to happen either. We talked about how this was not the wisest decision and the possible (OK, not likely but possible) consequences. We removed the guinea pig from my 5 year old son's lap and put them both together in my daughter's bag; we returned them home; we then went on our traditional viewing of Christmas lights- without the guinea pigs.
I think sometimes we hide things in our bags too. My kids never thought through any of the consequences of bringing the guinea pigs into a car in just backpacks. They were not trying to do something wrong, but they weren't making wise decisions either. Sometimes I do unwise things myself (like sharing my opinions when it really isn't necessary, watching something on TV that wasn't the best choice for me to spend my time thinking about, or just being short with my family not thinking about how it would affect their feelings). When I get tired, I don't want to think about making the wisest choices, but that is what God wants. It is time for me to think about the unintended consequences of my actions and make the wise choice. How about you?
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