You really never know how things will turn out, no matter how much planning you do. This weekend was a real example of that.
My daughter arrived on Friday, later than she'd hoped, with the two little grand-imps. Her delay was due to having to stop at a mechanic when some warning lights appeared on her cars. After some antifreeze in the radiator, she was good to go, and she made the trip without incident.
We had great plans for the two days together. Saturday we would be ready right after breakfast to shop with the little ones for a gift for their Daddy. Then we'd come home for lunch and bake and decorated some cut out cookies together .
Things didn't go quite the way we'd hoped. First of all, we lazed around too long in the morning, getting out around ten-thirty. We'd gone approximately two miles, when the warning lights showed up on the dash again. I suggested we swing over to our friend and mechanic's shop to see if he could hook the computer up and locate the problem. We were lucky to find Terry there, and the computer reading was 'coolant system.' He suggested we leave the car and he'd get it fixed by the end of the day. That required driving back to our house, unloading kids and car seats into my van, and driving back to Terry's place, which is what we did.
We then drove over to Anderson for the stop at the bank and shopping. By that time, the girls were telling us that they were starving, so we had a bite of lunch before moving on to the store for the gifts. We'd added a few other stops along the way, in order that we both might finish up our nagging little chores. By the time we got home, it was close to dinner time. So...no cookies.
We'd hoped to go to church on Sunday together. But one of the children had gone to bed the night before with a 'really bad headache' and coughing. I'd gotten up that morning with a deep, dry cough that sounded like a vicious dog's bark. We stayed home. We probably could have baked our cookies, but the little ones were happily perched in front of some Christmas cartoons, and my daughter and Mike and I sat around the table making menus for our holiday week. We made a slight change in one pre-planned item, which caused a bit of 'difficulty' for another member of the family who would be the contributor. That, of course, upset me, as the hostess.
I always thought that when you were invited for a dinner at someone else's house, you ate what was offered without complaint. Maybe things are different these days. I guess the bottom line is, no matter how you try, you can't please everyone.
Anyway, plans are made. Plans get messed up. As the mother of five, I learned early to be flexible enough to go with the flow. It seems that nothing ever goes as planned....
