So, yesterday was what I like to call a character building experience. Basically, the whole day was an "opportunity" to practice the finer aspects of my character like patience and calmness. In other words, it was one of those days. Sigh. It started out well enough. Even though I have a sick baby, I decided to salvage the day, head to town, and run some errands. The plan was to snatch Micah out of bed after she woke from her morning nap, run up to the local Mexican place for a quick lunch, then drive to Corinth for shopping at Walgreen's, phone perusing at AT&T, a little gift card spending at Kirkland's, and grocery buying at Kroger. By my calculations, we would be able to do all of those things and make it back home just in time for Micah to take her afternoon nap.

What I didn't account for was the faceplant Micah did on the sidewalk between the AT&T store and Kirklands, the bloody mouth that followed, and the emergency trip to the dentist to make sure that her teeth weren't going to fall out of her head. Before you get too worried, I'll go ahead and tell you that everything's fine. She probably just scraped her gums (ouch!) on the concrete, hence all the blood, but her teeth were fine.

Since Dennis met us at the dentist's office, we decided to make the Kroger run a family trip. We loaded up the cart, got all our coupons ready, checked out and headed to the car to load the groceries in Polly's (that's the Honda's name) trunk. Except I couldn't find my keys. A sinking feeling washed over me, and I peered through the back window. There they were. Right next to Micah's carseat. Anyone else ever been there?

Thankfully, we had both cars there, so Dennis loaded the groceries into his vehicle, drove the 30 minutes home to Iuka, put away the refrigerated groceries, retrieved the spare keys, and drove 30 minutes back to Corinth, during which time, Micah and I slowly wandered up and down the aisles of Kroger again.

She was exhausted by the time we made it home, as was I. What day, y'all. Are there any remaining doubts that God's trying to teach me how to take things in stride? It's times like this that I would like to throw my hands up in the air and shout, "Lesson learned, God!" But I know that won't work. It won't be over til it's over.

Yesterday was a day full of mishaps, but we all survived, and I think I did a pretty good job of keeping calm and moving on. Wonder what God's gonna throw at me next.

Until next time, grace and peace.