At the time I did wonder when Sarah had been eating vanilla ice cream in the car.

It was Wednesday afternoon.  I had just found out that Sarah did in fact have basketball practice at 6:00 that evening which meant she needed to change her clothes immediately if we were going to get to the allergist's office in time to get Peter's allergy shots before we had to be at church for Faith Formation class.

I raised my voice to a level somewhere in between panicked yelling and angry screaming so that the kids would know that I really meant it when I said, "Get in the car now!  Move it!  We are going to be late if we don't MOVE IT!"  Because, apparently if I'm not loud, either the kids don't hear me or they don't believe me.

The kids finally got in the car, I started backing out of the garage and right in the middle of my "I really wish you kids would do what I ask the first time I ask it" lecture when Peter screamed, "It's a BIRD!"

Peter and Sarah both started screaming and right as I was about to scream at them for screaming in the car, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw A BIRD flying around in the back of our car.

I threw the car in park while rolling down the windows, screamed at the kids to "Get out!  Get out!" and ran around to the back of the car to open the hatch.  The whole time I was doing this, I could hear the dull thumping noises of the scared bird flying into the hatch window.

She finally found an open window and made her way out of the car.  I ushered the kids back into the car and we began to make our way to the allergist's office.

Right in the middle of my pondering the expression "bird brain", I suddenly realized the watery white substance I had wiped off the center console with my fingers was probably not melted vanilla ice cream as I had originally suspected.

Thank goodness for the large bottle of hand sanitizer I keep in the car.