Fourteen Steps

On a Sunday morning - a typical-for-our-family-of-ten - Sunday morning a few months ago when I had finally made it downstairs to the kitchen, in the hearing of my precious offspring I made a comment something like, "Well, I guess I could write a book about how to get ready for church in fourteen easy steps."

Not all of our kids are developmentally astute enough to pick up on subtle sarcasm, but the few who are just kind of stared and chuckled nervously. It must have been apparent that the sarcasm was borne out of fairly intense frustration.

Our daughter who is never at a loss for words, but often lacking interpersonal tact, asked, "What are the fourteen steps?"

Our daughter clearly inherited her gift of gab from her mother who was glad to oblige her, and the rest of the family now held captive in the kitchen, with a tirade of epic proportion that went a little something like this:

Step 1 - get out of bed forty minutes early to tell the girls to be quiet until 8:00

Step 2 - turn on the shower

Step 3 - answer the knock on the bedroom door from youngest daughter who is tattling on the other sisters for not staying in their beds

Step 4 - walk youngest daughter back the bedroom, stop in the hallway to take laundry to son's room

Step 5 - get in and quickly out of the shower to respond to the argument in the girls' bedroom

Step 6 - get girls up and moving (in the right direction) and knock on the boys' bedroom doors in a feeble attempt to rouse them (somehow the ruckus from their sisters' room doesn't phase them)

Step 7 - return to the bathroom for a towel for my dripping wet hair, trailed by one son who needs to use our bathroom since a sister is "hogging" the hallway bathroom

Step 8 - resume combing hair, glance at son's outfit as he leaves the bathroom, escort him to his room to find some clothes that are clean and without rips and holes

Step 9 - another son appears at the bedroom door to ask if he can open another box of cereal for breakfast

Step 10 - on the way back to my bathroom, remind daughter that she needs to wear a sweater with "that" dress, engage in a five minute knock-down-drag-out fight about said sweater which concludes with daughter slamming the bedroom door and yelling that she "is not going to church at all then" as I continue on my way to the bathroom

Step 11 - get dressed (except for shoes - and maybe jewelry if I'm lucky) enough to walk down the hall to the kids' bathroom in order to break up a quarrel-bordering-on-fist-fight over toothpaste between two of the boys

Step 12 - back to my room to plug in the flat iron and put on some make-up and hold a conversation about where one might be able to locate her missing Bible with the daughter who has followed me

Step 13 - send daughter on her way, find and put on shoes, stop to turn off lights in two of the kids' bedrooms and the water faucet in the bathroom

Step 14 - walk downstairs where my family waits for me to FINALLY be ready for church.