Proud moments as a mother.

Not long after we moved to the beach, I had set a cheese board to smoulder on the stove.  Calvin was at work and I was sitting with the oldest son and youngest daughter assisting them with their homework at the dining room table.  It was dinner time. You know mw, Ms. Multi tasker (even at seven months preggo, I was pretty good at it.)  Well, the dining room table was off from the kitchen, sort of in the living room.  It also happened to be about five feet from the back door.
While cooking, I happened to turn the wrong burner on to boil a some water.  Ikept a small, wooden, cheeseboard on the back burner and THAT was the burner I turned on instead.  While we were not in the kitchen, it had a chance to fill our small kitchen up with a great deal of smoke. Then the AC kicked in and smoke just ROLLED out of the kitchen.  Everything else seemed to happen at the same time.  At the instant we noticed the smoke, the smoke detectors went off.  I immediately knew what I had done as I do that chit all the time. So I got up an took two steps toward the kitchen.  My mind was racing and focused on getting that cheeseboard off there and into the sink before it burst into flames. At the same time, I also thought of the kids. I turned around, and CJ was still sitting at the table...totally not knowing what was going on. I am certain he knew exactly what I did.  There was not a fire....YET.  I turn to look for Alyssa and all I see is the back door swinging.
I lean just a little bit to my left and see a tiny face of a five year old, about twenty feet outside the back door trying to get a glimpse of what was going to happen next.  I will take the time to tell you I could not have been more proud of our baby girl in that moment. I immediately took care of the cheeseboard, no fire, just a lot of smoke. Whew!  Then retrieved our daughter and covered her face in smooches and filled her ears with praise.
She had done the right thing.  In hindsight, it was cute and funny because she got the Hell out of Dodge Jack!

Now, lets move forward ten years:

My dear readers know that I am a WAH professional and I work from home.  The other night, I was working and a thunderstorm came through.  Just after I shut down my computer and systems, there was a terribly bright lightening strike as well as horrible thunder.  I heard my kids in the next room scrounging around.

When I finally got everything settled, I walk into the hallway to a pitch black house. What happened next would have been a good scream scene for a horror movie (provided that I screamed, of course.)
The darkness began to speak to me in children's voices. O.o....I held up my phone as I was not near a light switch and seen that my children were all sitting on the couch, in the living room, in the dark.  Well, well, well.  I found out later that Alyssa corralled the children to the couch and turned all the lights off to be safe during the storm.  Another proud moment, I must say.  However, when the ten year old got up to use the bathroom, (I had joined them in the darkness, of course, it was quiet and I was NOT going to pass that up) he turned the light on so he could see.  Here comes Alyssa "All that electricity!!!!"  Hahaha.  Yes, she was being overly cautious, but she was being safe all in the same breath.  Yes, Momma is proud!  Daddy taught her that and she absorbed the safety knowledge well.

I am confident, as a parent that she will be safe and have an emergency plan when it comes to nature bringing forth her rage.  I can only hope that it will spill over into her interactions with people when she goes off to college or begins to have a more colorful, (yikes, and even less structured) social life and as an adult.  We parents spend our entire lives teaching our children to be safe and to be their own person and can only hope that the values we establish for them to mirror are the good ones and that they apply them to their own lives and go on to be productive adults who get to live long, healthy, and happy lives.

This is the direction I believe our daughter is heading in and I could not be more proud.  What proud moments have you had (like these) with your children?

Have you ever had a moment that was potentially catastrophic and hilarious all in the same moment?