Sunday, March 21, 2010

The KEY to getting home from church

Patience.
Communication.
Family Cooperation
A keen mind
(food storage in the car)
and
a quick wit.

A little back story.  I go to church an hour and a half early each week, to attend early morning meetings.  We therefore drive two cars to church on Sunday.  After church, we juggle any post-church meetings, who's going home with who and first one in their PJ pants wins.

Here's the story:
AFTER church today, I was coordinating some details for a baptism.
Teenage boy asks me for the car keys.
He needs them to get something out of the car.
I give them to him, then go to play the piano for the baptism.
My memory cuts out.
After baptism, clean-up and locking the church, Dub hi-jacks the small car and leaves me to drive the Ark.  "Who wants to drive home with Dad?" he yells cheerily in the parking lot.
Rooney and Teenage boy hop in, and they're homeward bound.
I'm still wondering how I got hi-jacked out of driving the zippy little sedan home, as I'm staring up at our cargo plane.
I climb in the driver's seat and start fishing through my bag for keys.
Nothing.
I dump contents of ridiculously over-full bag onto floor of Ark.
In my head I'm wondering about the potential this dump could have yielded if we were still in Sunday diaper bag phase.  A moment of recognizing the good.
Still no keys.
Memory kicks in.
"Hah!  I gave my keys to Teenage boy!" I remember.
"Dang."
Back into the church to make the call.
I think I called Dub's cell phone 27 times and left two messages.
The Bishop stopped by to wonder why we were sitting casually in the parking lot in our portable cattle stall working on Personal Progress requirements.
He called Dub's phone and left a few more messages.
Then we waited, and I explained to the kids that if we went into survival mode, we had half a bottle of vitamin water, two apples and one mint for the four of us.  It was going to be okay.  We would probably make it.
We let enough time elapse for Dub to reach home (but hopefully not enough time for the PJ pants transformation) before we let ourselves into the church to call again.
SUCCESS!! He answered.
"Ask Teenage boy what's in his pocket" I said.
"Teenage Boy! What's in your pocket?!" I heard him yell.
"WHAT?!" TB replied.
"Mom's KEYS!" Dub said a little louder.
"No they're NOT!... I gave them to Sweet Mesquite!" he yelled back.

"Sweet Mesquite?!" I mutter in the phone...
She's the Personal Progress Enthusiast I mentioned earlier, who is sitting shotgun in the ark.
"Dang."
I go back to the Ark and ask Mesquite "What's in your purse?" and play that whole game again, after which she catches on and says "I gave them to Rooney!"
(Are you getting tired of this yet?  Because I was kind of feeling woozy at this point myself)
This time all four of us get out of the van and go in to the church to look for they keys.  Because IF indeed Rooney did have them, the four of us agree that they could be ANYWHERE.
As we're making our way down the dark hallway, the kitchen phone starts to ring.
"MY KEYS!" I yell, and start running towards the sound.
Sure enough, it's Dub on the other line, and the keys have been located.
Turns out Sweet Mesquite did not actually give them to Rooney.
She put them on the piano.
Rooney, seeing the keys, thinks to herself that somebody might need them, so she picks them up and quietly slipped them into Dub's suit pocket while he was having a conversation with someone.
So Dub got to drive an extra 60 minutes to and from church this afternoon.
And we had a spirited conversation about keys at bedtime.

10 comments:

Smilin' sunshine said...

another beautiful sabbath!

LL said...

your day of rest sounds a lot like mine!
:)

ellen said...

I think everyone should get a set of keys and hopefully this won't happen again.

Becky said...

My brain hurts after reading this.

Aaron H. said...

Another test passed with flying colors by the UR.

Jo Jo said...

At least they weren't found local after waiting all that time! Nothing like holding all the keys!

The Mormon Monk said...

Sweet! This is very funny...in retrospect. Now here's my question: Did you keep the spirit in "spirited"? Because I wouldn't have been able to, Sabbath or no Sabbath...

BTW, David misses Abby. He asks for her all the time. He's a little confused because Gabe has a friend named Abby--and I think he's wondering why your daughter isn't showing up.

mckell.b.p.55 said...

What a goose chase! :) We've days like that before... Don't you love living 30 minutes away from church?

Marilyn said...

With all of these odd names, I am SO CONFUSED!!! But it is quite the funny story.

shirlgirl said...

Might be wise to carry an extra set of keys in your huge pocketbook so this doesn't happen again. Your family certainly makes your life very interesting. If that happened to me, I'd be out of luck as well because my second set is at home!! At least it wasn't raining out and the day was fairly nice--cool but nice. Would love to have been a fly on the wall for your spirited conversation at bedtime. Must have been funny!