tHe ruLes wE cHooSe to bReak!

I have to start this by telling what happened last Friday. Emma and JJ left for school at 8:35am giving them plenty of time to make it by 8:50am when the bell rings. Around 9:20am, I start to get in the shower when I hear voices in my house. Ellie and Elsie were both with me so I was a bit concerned. After being freaked out for 1/2 a second I realized it was kid voices. I thought one of my girlfriends had stopped by, so I waited for a second to hear better and then realized it was MY children. I grabbed my towel and opened the door to the bathroom, and there are JJ and Emma standing in front of me, both crying. I ask what was wrong and they told me that when they got to the cross walk, the crossing guard had left so they couldn't cross the street to go to school.

I am wondering why in the world it took so long to get to school when they left in plenty of time. JJ had decided that they should go through the field by our house. This is a BIG .. HUGE no no at our house. When JJ walks with Emma they are to stick to the sidewalk. Also, when it has just rained, the field is muddy. They are not suppose to play in the mud before they go to school. Well, JJ thought that the short cut was the way to go so he told Emma she had to too. (I going to have to talk to her about peer pressure.) There is a stream in this field that has to be crossed in order to get to school. The water level is up because of spring run off. They get to the bridge and Emma is to scared to cross. JJ threatens her with her life if she doesn't cross. "Moms going to kill us" kind of stuff, so Emma is terrified to say the least. She takes off running home and JJ is trying his best to restrain her because he knows if she steps foot in the house he will be in big trouble. They decide to go around the pond. This made it so they were late getting to the cross walk. My kids then decided the best thing to do would be to come home.

This all took them 45 minutes to do. Needless to say they both stayed home from school that day because it was short day and after I had yelled at them it was to late to take them. Did I say yell? I meant "explained" things to them ;). JJ became Cinderella and had to do everything his evil step mother expected "all day long". To top it off he was grounded for life. Emma just had to play with Ellie all day.

I often wonder why some rules are okay to break while others must be obeyed. Going through the field was okay in JJ's mind, but crossing the cross walk without the Crossing Guard was not okay. What blows my mind about that is when JJ walks to church and has to cross that same street without a crossing guard. Go figure.

Today while I was getting Emma's hair ready for school she was chatting with me like she always does. Out of the blue she must have had a flashback of last Friday when she said "Mom I decided that the field should be called the long cut." I got a good chuckle out of that. Wisdom of a six year old.

JJ will be happy to know that he is officially not grounded when he gets home from school today. I will be happy that I am no longer the warden. I just hope that he has learned his lesson.