“How was your day?”

“What did you learn?”

“Did you have fun at practice?”

“Oh man, can you hold it for 5 more minutes?”

Don’t get me wrong; I love having intentional conversations with my kids in the car on most days. I’m all about the meaningful discussions that pop up every now and then.  I mean, my kids and I have talked about some deep stuff regarding the ways of life during front seat to back seat dialogue: “Mommy, do you think they have toilet paper in Heaven?” – Josh, age 3.  And let’s not forget about the impromptu “Hey, how do the mommies get the babies INSIDE their tummies” question from Abby, age 5.

Seriously, though, we have had some incredible moments on some of our treks to the Denver metro area from our little suburb, 40 miles south.

One day I remember, I had one thing after another that popped up, keeping me from getting anything on my LAUNDRY list (pun intended) of things I absolutely had to get done by the end of that day.  My husband, normally home to share the load (laundry pun still intended), had an unexpected meeting come up, leaving it up to me to somehow get everyone where they needed to be, 30 miles apart from each other, with 40 minutes to get there.  The kids had had a rough, long day at school, and they were as grumpy as I was.  I was trying to figure out how I was going to get it all done without killing someone  with a smile on my face. I stopped, took a deep breath in the laundry room (where, by the looks of it, you would think we never go), and it came to me:

Instead of trying to force that deep dialogue, or more likely, screaming my head off about another spill in the back seat and taking my stress out on my favorite people, I turned on some music and just started singing.

Really loud.  There may have been dancing too.

It was such a special moment with my kids that I’ll probably remember forever, and it happened during one of the most routine, somewhat dull activities of the week.