The Ballad of Katie: Somewhere Under Heaven Series

Girl Scout Cookies

Katie's POV

"Have the Keebler Elves taken over the living room again?" 

Those are the words my dad says to me when he sees the cases of Girl Scout Cookies in the living room. As one of three leaders of my troop, Mom helps oversee and coordinate the sales of Girl Scout cookies. This means every year, we end up with cases upon cases of cookies in our house and every year my dad swears a bakery exploded in our house.  For my dad, it means enough cookies to put half of New Jersey in a diabetic coma but for my mom, it's all happy memories of her time as a Girl Scout." 

"Dad, it's Girl Scout cookie time," I say. "Speaking of that, how many Thin Mints are you buying this year?" 

"I'll take a couple dozen," he jokes. That's when my mom walks in laughing. "You say that every year," she says to him. "I swear, I'm going to have to get a second storage freezer at this rate." 

Dad doesn't hear that because he's trying to figure out how much a couple dozen boxes of Thin Mints and Carmel de Lites would set him back. He knows he has to at least get one box of the latter since they're my mom's favorite and we all know he'll do anything to make her happy. Hey, he doesn't call her "my queen" for nothing. By the way, that's just a term of affection on his part. Mom finds it hilarious though on account of him being from England.

"Casey, I think we need the second storage freezer," he says to my mom. She just rolls her eyes and walks away. He then looks over at me. "There's a way to pay by credit card, right," he asks. 

"You were always my best customer, Dad," I tease as I grab my iPad to get the online ordering while Dad hands me his MasterCard. 

Casey's POV

My family...gotta love them.

The twins are 12 now and they really are the greatest kids any parent could ask for. Ashton plays soccer and is a B+ average student who loves music and being around his friends. He plays drums which I could honestly slap my cousin Eric for teaching him but I realize that he enjoys it and plays in a band with a couple of friends. 

Ashton also started taking up karate and became an orange belt by the time he was 12. He also is fluent in Spanish and is currently learning French. I asked him why he wanted to learn French and he was like, "It makes you sound cool."  I should have expected that. Ashton Pattinson, ladies and gents. Tip your servers, he'll be here all week. 

Katie, on the other hand is the basic definition of an overachiever. My beloved grandmother taught her Gaelic and now she's quite fluent much to the chagrin of her dad who has to deal with us using Gaelic as a secret code of sorts. Of course Rob got his revenge by teaching his daughter how to play piano at four and guitar at seven but I won't lie, Katie's pretty good at it and I can find her and her dad most Saturday afternoons in the living room having a really cool jam session which is nice to hear in the background while I'm in my home office working on a few things.

Katie is also a blue belt in karate, the captain of the lacrosse and soccer teams, a straight A-student, fluent in Spanish and Italian, mastered both American and British sign language, and the top cookie seller in her troop. She also received the Bronze Award in fifth grade after leading her troop in a drive to collect items for the local hospice.

We love how our kids have done all these amazing things by the time they reached middle school. Some argue that we put too much pressure on our kids and others accuse me of being a Tiger Mom but the reality is that we just sit back and let the kids decide how much they want to do. A colleague of mine at Rider who teaches psychology and family development told me a few years ago what Rob and I really are is the classic stealth fighter parents because while we're letting our kids explore the world and learn whatever they want, we're always in the background and ready to swoop down the minute things get a little too crazy and they need a gentle nudge in the right direction.