This weekend my parents flew out to Wiggens, CO for my mom's cousin's wedding.  That meant that it was me and five younger kids all by ourselves-- and as the only one with a license, I spent the whole weekend driving the kids every which way, as well as cleaning, cooking, doing homework, working, and trying to keep people happy.  

I really want the kids to have fond memories of me when I leave for college in the next year. So on Friday, after driving Adam halfway across town so he could hang out with friends, I took the younger kids and their friends to the grocery store to pick out dessert toppings for our pancake dinner and a movie to watch on a picnic blanket while we ate.  Ohhhh good heavens!  What do I do when Sophie gets upset because I didn't let her buy the fifty million random things she pulled off the shelf nor the movie that the other kids outvoted? All I was trying to do was be a fun, nice big sister.

  Then yesterday Adam went to another party, at the beginning of which his phone died.  Our curfew is 11, but he said he would get a ride so by 11:30 I was willing to forgive him since he couldn't force his ride to leave.  But by the time it was 1, Rachel and I were freaking out, calling every person we knew at the party yet no one answered {to that lady I accidentily mis-dialed, I am SOOO sorry}.  Either he had died in a car accident or I was about to ground him for the next year-- why the HECK could we not get ahold of him?! Desperate, we hopped in the car and hoped we could figure out where this party was at. By some miracle we found it, and when we stormed in we found him watching Pocahantas, apologizing because he "couldn't remember {our} cell phone numbers."  Don't ask me why he didn't think about calling the home phone to let us know he was alive.  {A day later, it's actually kinda funny and I feel slightly bad about how much I chewed him out because he did feel really guilty.}