Near perfect morning

Usually I wake up at 5 a.m. or earlier and run or bike or go teach a class.  This morning I set the alarm for much earlier.  4:35 a.m. so I could get an extra long run in before waking up the children from their early morning seminary class.  When the alarm went off I had a thought:

I decided to make an awesome breakfast for my children instead of going to run.  I knew from times past that when I take the time to have breakfast waiting for them that they seem to have a much better morning all around.

I started out by making a quad batch of waffles and then Ham & Cheese Omelette roll.  Why I decided to make so much I really don't know.  However now we will have left over waffle mix for a couple days.  I managed to get a load of dishes into the dishwasher and part of the kitchen cleaned.

When 5:30 a.m. hit I woke Jared up first and put a load of laundry in to be washed.  Jared popped right out of bed and proceeded to the shower without complaint.  At 5:40 a.m. when I was walking up the stairs to get Brenden up I heard Alyssa's alarm go off so she was up.  I then woke up Brenden and told him that I made a nice breakfast and if he got up nice he would get to enjoy it.   (note:  Usually Brenden is the hardest to wake up and is the most grumpy person in the entire world).

I knocked on the outside of the bathroom door to signal Jared's shower was over.  Jared shut off the water right away instead of ignoring me like usual.  I came back downstairs to set the breakfast bar for breakfast and poured ice water for everyone.

I heard Brenden get in the shower and soon after that saw Jared arrive in the kitchen.  At 6 a.m. everyone, including Scott was dressed and sitting at the bar for breakfast.  They all proceeded to eat breakfast and seemed thrilled there was good food.  I read scriptures to them and we talked about what we had read.  At 6:10 everyone was done eating and I proceeded to get ready for my run.

At 6:20 a.m. I took the 3 older children to seminary and dropped them off right on time at 6:29 a.m.  I went on a 4.13 mile run that was awesome.  At 7:15 a.m. I returned to the seminary building with my sweaty, smelly body to pick the children up and take them to high school.  No one complained how bad I smelled, instead Jared just opened a window and stuck his head out.  They were all at school by 7:30 a.m.

Not one complaint, harsh word, mean thing, or teasing went on this morning.  It was a near perfect morning.

Soon after I dropped them off I returned home to see Scott (my youngest) practicing his clarinet.  The sound was beautiful.

I showered and dressed for work.  Scott already had his lunch made and was packing his drink into his backpack.

I have wished for a morning like this for a very long time.  The peace that was in our home this morning was amazing.  I'm blogging about this because it may never happen again so I want to remember how amazing this morning was forever.