Patience NOW!!

The girls had sleepovers Tuesday night. Amanda went to a friend's house and Megan's friend came to our house.

Can I just say, I'm too old for this!? It's exhausting trying to be a fun mom ... with kids around, that is.

Now staying up late is A-Okay with me, as long as you sleep in the next morning! What is the deal with kids waking up early when they don't have to?! It's Easter break, people! SLEEP IN!!

Alright, so we take Megan's friend home the next afternoon and on the way back to our car, Megan stubs her toe. She's brave about it, but I can tell she's hurting.

Me: Are you okay?

Meg: Uh ... yeah.

Me: Would a Vanilla Bean Frappuccino help? (Because a Coffee Frappuccino would certainly help Mommy!)

Meg: Yeah!

There was a Starbucks not 3 minutes from her friend's house, so within 3.5 minutes, we had ordered our drinks and were waiting behind ONE car in the drive-thru.

About 3 minutes into our wait ...

Meg: Hurry UP, PEOPLE!!

Me: Megan, this is an opportunity to show patience.

Meg: I don't WANT to show patience, I just want my Frappuccino!

Me: I know. It won't be much longer.

Okay, I was wrong. 3 more minutes pass, and now I'm trying to figure out how many people are ordering drinks in that car ahead of me (the car with a sticker on its back window advertising their home church. This, by the way, is why I don't have any kind of church sticker or fish emblem on my car, because someday I might be the one holding up the Starbucks line, and I don't think that is a very good witness. ;)

I kid you not, 3 more minutes pass. Can you even believe this?! For ONE car. And those Christians were just sitting there laughing it up while we waited, and waited, and WAITED PATIENTLY!!!

Then I saw it ... EIGHT drinks were passed through the Starbucks' window and into their car! Yep, I counted, because that's the Christian thing to do. Isn't there a drive-thru drink limit? You know, like the express check-out lanes at grocery stores? Well there should be.

By the time I pull up to the window it had been 10 minutes, and the poor Starbucks employee was obviously frazzled. She handed me my drinks and said that they were free because the wait had been so long. I assured her that she didn't have to do that, but she insisted.

So I thanked her and pulled out into traffic only to hear Megan gasp 5 seconds later. I look back to see half of her Frappuccino dumped in her lap. ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING ME?! We wait 5 HOURS for these FREE drinks only to dump them out?!?! Whose lame idea was it to get these dumb drinks in the first place????

Yeah. Good times. Good - Christian - Teachable Moment - Times.

I pulled over and, thankfully, had a container of Wet Wipes in the glove compartment (which never holds gloves, btw), that I almost emptied in my attempt to clean up the sticky frozen mess.

The best part? The entire time I'm cleaning, all I hear ringing in my head over and over, (kinda' like that Brady Bunch episode where the boys break Carol's vase ... Mom always said, "Don't play ball in the house." Mom always said, "Don't play ball in the house.") was:

"This is an opportunity to show patience!"

"This is an opportunity to show patience!!"

"THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW PATIENCE!!!!"

Patience is so overrated.