Saturday Projects

Growing up we always had Saturday projects. My parents would wake us long before we would have liked with some kind of home improvement task in mind. I'll never forget being sung to by my dad (in an awful voice, I might add) or my mom's favorite get-the-kids-out-of-bed technique: blaring her favorite music, which usually consisted of Bette Midler or Celine Dion or Kenny Rogers (all of which I can appreciate much more now then I did then!) It used to drive me crazy, and I could never understand why my parents wanted to torture me before 9 am each and every Saturday. Now that I'm a parent, I totally get it! Saturday morning is a time to GET THINGS DONE. Things that you never have the time or mental concentration to accomplish during the week, because of the distractions of lifes commitments and managing a family. But on Saturday mornings, everyone is home, there is little going on, and it's the perfect time to accomplish a task like going through 8 years worth of files full of cable bills and birthday cards. So after the task of organizing was complete, the shredding began! I'm so glad we have a few years before we will be playing the role of awful parents torturing their teenagers. That doesn't mean that we haven't faced resistance from the troops on our projects! This morning Alex and I had the following conversation:
Alex: "Hi mommy, what are you doing?"
Me: "I'm going to work on a project. Want to help?"
Alex: "No thanks. I'm going to play in my room. But have a great time!"
Those are direct quotes. I can only imagine the resistance I will face in a few years.