Bad parenting skills

Sometimes you have to practice your bad parenting skills...

Yesterday someone knocked at our door at 2:15pm. I opened the door, it was someone from our ward. She had Kate with her. I said to Kate "Why are you home from school so early?" The lady in our ward told us it was early out Friday, she had gotten to the school late, and Kate was sitting there still. She took her home and tried to call, but Tara had been on the phone with Amy at the time, so she brought her by. Kate seemed quite ticked that she had to sit at the school for so long.

We had totally forgotten about early out Fridays. We would have piddled around for another hour before we decided to go get her. Between early out Fridays, and the preschools early out Tuesdays, we may go crazy. Or we may get a lot of "Are you going to come get so-and-so calls". Or lots of neighborhood Moms may bring our kids home. We are bad parents.

Now what I really want to know, is why the school lets Kate sit outside for a very long time with no one watching her, on the first week of school? Kate's the oldest. This was our very first early out Friday. (In 5 years, we will be used to it...) Shouldn't they be keeping a closer eye on the children when they are on the school grounds?

Last December, we got Tom to come over to watch the girls while we went Christmas shopping. We took Ruth because at the time, he had concerns about us leaving a 6 month old with him. We merrily drove along, got to Walmart, got out and started shopping. About 10 minutes into shopping, I realized that we had left the house with Ruth, but she wasn't then with us. I ran out the to car, where she was still in her car seat, peacefully sleeping. The car was still relatively warm, no harm, no foul, but we really felt like bad parents then.