Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Today I cracked the whip and the girls and I worked really hard to get the house cleaned up. I had a couple of little incentives to keep them motivated.

One of these was a little package of chocolates that had been sitting on Hal's dresser since Mother's Day. This is what the women got for a little gift from our ward. They also gave Hal one of the extra bags of chocolate later in the Bishop's office. Since he's not fond of chocolate, I was pretty sure he knew I'd end up being the one to eat them.

What he didn't know (or maybe he did) was that I had actually helped myself to another package (or possibly two) of the extra chocolates. They were being stored on top of his dresser until he took them over to the Relief Society president to distribute to some of the sisters in the ward that didn't make it to church that day. I had forgotten about the leftover chocolates until today when I was dusting off his dresser.

To my disappointment, there was only one chocolate left. Someone - and I have a pretty good idea who it was, and it wasn't Hal - had opened the package and eaten one of MY chocolates! How dare they do such a thing!

I marched downstairs to express my indignation.

Morgan took the news in stride saying, "I thought you said they weren't that good anyway."

"Well, the first batch had flavors that weren't my favorite." I said. (One was maple flavored and I'm not very fond of maple. Of course I did eat it anyway. I couldn't let a perfectly good chocolate go to waste just because I didn't love the flavor.)

"What do you mean, FIRST batch?", she asked. "I thought you only had one batch?"

"Well, I might have swiped some more." I sheepishly answered.

"SWIPED!" Austin chimed in, "Does that mean you STOLE them?"

Oh great, I thought. Nice example I am. And especially after all the talks we've had about not taking things that don't belong to us. I knew I needed to say something to make sure he knew stealing is not a good thing to do.

"Well," I said carefully, "It made me feel really bad on the inside."

Austin looked at me for a while with a puzzled look on his face. Then he finally said, "But did it make you feel pretty happy on the outside?"


(While typing this I remembered that there was still that last chocolate left on Hal's dresser. So I went upstairs and, with great anticipation, I took a little taste and - wouldn't you know it....maple flavored. So see, I really did get punished after all.)