Things always work out…
If you keep telling yourself that, it really does happen. Sometimes having multiple children in multiple activities causes scheduling conflicts. It happens. I often repeat the above phrase to help me get through the things that I cannot control, but can manage with a little finesse.
Moms possess finesse. It is in their job description. It is obtained by on the job training. It is sink or swim in most cases and you have to be a quick study.
In today’s instance, the scheduling conflict was between Scouts and Orchestra. Kyle missed an entire week of school due to a virus. I mean an entire five days of school. He came home from school last Friday and got sick. He was sick all weekend and Monday we got to the doctor’s office and saw the Nurse Practitioner. He was still not better on Wednesday when we went back to the doctor’s office and sat the doctor. He was out of school through Friday when he was finally feeling better, but he was out of school that entire time. Unfortunately in that time he missed a weekend competition because he was sick. He had to do an alternative assignment to make up for the missed performance grade.
As a result of this, he needed to make the next competition because it really is easier for him to show up and perform than do the alternative assignments. Performance grades are not just about showing up and playing. They are important for the group as a whole. He is a part of the whole orchestra, not just an individual player. We did not know when the next competition was officially because he had been out of school, but we knew it was coming up soon. He just was not at school when they sent home the information about the competition.
Thus the scheduling conflict….
The competition was the big Galveston Isle Festival held at a school near Galveston. It is not actually held on Galveston Island. The school that hosted it this year was actually in Pasadena, Texas. That is roughly an hour and twenty minute drive from here without traffic. Their stage time today was at 3:00pm sharp assuming there were no delays in the competition.
The conflict came with the fact that the Scouts that are going on High Adventure to Philmont Scout Ranch this summer are doing a shake down hike the same night clear out at Lake Sommerville – the opposite direction from Pasadena. They were meeting at the church building at 5:30pm and leaving from there to go to the lake and State Park to camp. It is roughly an hour and half drive from the church to where they were going to camp.
Keeping the mantra that things do work out…I mapped the school where the competition would be held to where they would be camping at. It would be a 2 hour and 45 minute drive more or less. The problem is that I would be making that drive at the start of rush hour traffic and I would be heading straight into the traffic. This is making the assumption that we would not pull away from the school area before 4:00pm. It was a safe assumption. That leaves me with a 3 to 4 hour drive ahead of us depending on how bad the traffic is.
In theory if it only took me 3 hours to get back across town and to the lake, I could make it right as the other group of scouts was arriving. I knew, however, that they would not be leaving the church building at 5:30pm because people are always late and it takes time to load the gear into the cars, etc. I estimated that they would not leave the church before 6:00pm. That would give me 3.5 hours to get back across town and to the lake.
The arrangements that I made with Ben, however, is that I would head back across town and we would meet somewhere on highway 290 and exchange children. He had Lance with him and I would trade him Kyle for Lance. This would save me from having to go all the way to the Lake and back the 1.5 hours back to the house.
So that is what we did…
Kyle and I left the high school in Pasadena just before 4:00pm. I stopped at Wendy’s to get something to eat because I had not eaten since breakfast. We left the area just after 4:00pm. We took Beltway 8 back toward town and around town back to Highway 290. Upon exiting Beltway 8 onto Highway 290, I felt prompted to call Ben and ask where he was at because we had crawled along the Beltway and Highway 290 was at a complete stand still. I knew that once I got to an exit I could get off of 290 and work my way back up to the church, but I was going to be sitting on 290 for quite some time from the looks of it. The call revealed that they had not even left the church building yet. I asked if he wanted me to come to the church because I could get off and head that way. He said “stick to the plan, just keep driving. I will call you when we leave.”
So I kept driving…and driving…and then the traffic let up and we were zipping down the road and I had this prompting to just stop. It helped that I needed to go to the bathroom and up ahead was the bathroom mecca of Texas…
I am grateful that Freebirds has a nice Hybrid Burrito that is sized just right for my growing boy. Do not let the size of that chips and queso tray fool you, he put down a few of those as well. He was starving when we walked into Freebirds. He was stuffed when we left.
Like I said, everything works out. Today was a crazy day, but it worked out. Kyle made it to the competition he needed to be at. I actually got to see the orchestra perform at this competition. That was pretty fun. I would not have seen this without the mix-up. Kyle also made it to the Scout Shake Down Hike for Philmont. I got to walk around a Buc-ee’s and just have a little fun browsing the not-every-day life things there. I even got to have dinner with my dear sweet Lance. Everything worked out the way that it was supposed to work out today.
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