We Are the Red Olympic Ring

This has been the sort of week when I'm feeling like my family is that red Olympic ring. You know, the one in the Sochi opening ceremonies that didn't open. The one that is already on a clever t-shirt available for purchase online.

But our ring fail has taken the form of an epic church meltdown, a corresponding mom meltdown for the ages, and Jack repeatedly doing his potty business...not in the potty.

We are that stuck little snowflake. The one that couldn't get with the program and do what was expected in rehearsal. The one that didn't blossom or join in with the rest of the rings while all the nations of the world watched.

It's not for lack of trying, that's for darn sure. Dutch and I dug in our heels and suffered through a most heinous of sacrament meetings (child behavior-wise), to no avail. Three of the four children behaved like stampeding wildebeests with Jack turning the crowded post-sacrament meeting church hallway into his personal theatrical stage on which he delivered a loud, nonverbal soliloquy along the lines of "Get me hence, ASAP, yo" while kicking me.

Jeff helped me manhandle him to the car, along with Truman, before returning to teach Gospel Doctrine. We hastened hence.

With Jack home and happily dismantling a vacuum, I turned on the Olympic coverage and wanted to jump inside the TV when I saw a Coca-Cola commercial of a cozy little cabin snowed-in, high in the mountain tops. It's the one with a Coke machine just outside the cabin door (bonus!), with prints in the snow from gentle woodland creatures who like to make use of soda vending machines wherever they are available.

I want to go to there.

I want a cabin so remote, so inaccessible, so snowy, and so secluded. I definitely want the Coke machine and the woodland creatures.

Mostly, I want no more situations ever like the one at church on Sunday. Or the less public (still grueling) ones at home throughout the rest of the weekend.

I want to live in that wintry place where no one will come and expect us to behave like regular people. We can simply remain our complicated little tightly-wound snowflake selves.

I want to retreat to this quiet imaginary alpine cottage where the guys and I can make sensory snow angels and mugs of hot cocoa with whipped cream tops. I want to watch the snow fall silently outside and fall asleep before the fireplace hearth. I want to glimpse forest animals frequenting the soda machine.

Is it too much to ask?