Our Functional (?) Dysfunctional Family

So, as a family with five children, we stay pretty busy with various activities from day to day. Wednesday is absolutely the worst day of the week for us. We have jazz band, Activity Days, Desert Ridge Games, Honors Jazz Band, Chad & Aaron's basketball practice and Bethany's basketball practice. When I first found out that Bethany had basketball practice at nearly the same time as Chad's band rehearsal and the boys' basketball practice (both way across town), I nearly cried. I can only be so many places at one time over all. Sam would like to help, but he has absolutely no time and is pretty convinced anyway that I sign the children up for too many activities. What?!!! Anyway, I got Sam to reluctantly agree to take Bethany to and from her weekly practice while I get the boys (with a little help from the Boyacks) to their Wednesday activities. It worked out for the first couple of weeks but I suppose it was inevitable that eventually we would encounter a glitch. So, last night, Aaron was bogged down with homework assignments and decided to skip basketball practice. Sam, being the best homework helper ever, returned from dropping Bethany at her practice and promptly became focused on helping Aaron. I, in the meantime had taken Chad to his basketball practice. On the way, he decided to kill some time playing a few games and talking to Aunt Emily on my cell phone. (Did I mention that the practice is way across town?) Well, by the time we got to practice, the cell phone battery was dead. I was annoyed but no big deal, right? So, practice went by and I took Chad home to discover my mother at my house. What a pleasant surprise! Only it wasn't a pleasant surprise. Bethany's coach had been trying to contact us for 45 minutes wondering if we were ever coming to pick up our daughter. Sam was intensely helping Aaron and totally forgot to get her and Coach Leslie could not get ahold of either of us on the phone and finally gave up and called Grandma. Oh, the utter humiliation. Sorry Mom! Sorry Coach Leslie! We will so be bringing cookies to Bethany's next practice. :( So, the boys and I were talking about the whole mess this morning on the way to school and decided that everyone in our family is slightly dysfunctional. Sam gets too focused and becomes absent minded, I am overscheduled and often either forget to show up at or am late to scheduled appointments, Chad cannot seem to remember to put away a single book or article of clothing, Aaron somehow completely forgets to eat breakfast some days and the girls - well, they are little but it would be nice if they could keep their toys in some semblance of order. The whole conversation was bringing me down but Chad was fairly philosophical about the situation. He says that we may be dysfunctional separately, but that we pretty much work together as a whole. Well, I might have thought so until last night....