Tip #8 - Begin with the end in mind

I fell upon one of those I'm-a-perfect-mom-raising-gloriously-perfect-children blogs.  She published this calendar of all the great things you can do with preschool children to teach them the alphabet.  I printed off A-D and decided to give perfect-mom-ness a try.  For A week we drew the letter A, watched ants, ate apples, made alligators from clothes pins, made felt apple necklaces, and I made apple dumplings.  (Try the recipe on allrecipes.com - the one with the whole can of Mt. Dew - caffeine bakes off right?)  For B week I made banana pudding.  C week I made chocolate chip cookies.  (Three C's, I must be a genius.)  For D week we bought doughnuts.  I'm sure you can see where this is going.  Instead of a teaching moment, it became a dessert bonanza.  Did you know that Oreos have a Golden and Ice Cream variety?  G and I - I swear.  The doughnut run was especially fun.  We drove downtown to a little shack and you would not have believed the line up of cars at this place.  We parked down the block and wondered if it was safe to get out and if the car would still be there when we got back.  We walked into said shack and it was packed and we were the only people of our race.  That, of course, was not a problem except we come from a ridiculously lily white part of town and suddenly being in the minority was jolting.  This was a cash only enterprise but the smell of the baking doughnuts was AMAZING!  We followed along in line for about 10 min. and I noticed that the price board really made no sense to me and everyone in front of me ordered without a pause and seemed to know exactly what they were doing and we had 4 little kids running around the lines and leaving prints on the glass case so when it was our turn to order I totally panicked. (Think Soup-Nazi episode.)  We ended up walking out with something like 4 dozen doughnuts - I am completely serious.  I blubbered something about needing 2 dozen glazed and Hubby added the stuff we actually came for and the total was ridiculous.  I walked out in some kind of trance but completely enjoyed the sugar coma that came later.  These doughnuts were AMAZING.  The place is Long's Doughnuts.  Two days ago, Hubby says to me, "I can't wait for L week".  Me too.