A few weeks ago my three year old daughter wanted to wear a pink princess dress to church to show her Sunday school friends and teacher. Even though it was a little too large for her I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Pick your battles, right? Besides, it was actually cute seeing child #5 rock the same dress 15 years after Grandma made it for my eldest, who is now 19. She even brought along Peanut Butter, her new doll that was wearing a matching pink princess dress (also handmade by Grandma years ago). They looked adorable in their matching outfits.

The first surprise of the morning happened when I went to buckle her in her car seat. Apparently, three year old princesses go commando. I asked my 9 year old son to run and grab some drawers for his sister and he complied immediately. My second surprise was the discovery, after we were already at church, that my son had inadvertently grabbed a tank top instead of undies. As we walked to her classroom I tried to impress upon my daughter the importance of sitting like a lady so that no one would see her princess privates. She giggled at that and agreed. I mentioned to her teacher what had been left behind that morning and went to service. Apparently the full moon warning didn’t get passed on to her teacher for the second service. My third surprise of the morning was when Teacher Daisy laughingly explained her discovery to me after class when I went to pick up my daughter. During storytime my princess and some of her friends decided to lie on their backs and raise their legs in the air. Seems as though the two adult teachers (both cool moms, phew!) were the only ones to notice Princess Panty-less. The kids were oblivious. (Double phew!)

I’ll admit to having a flashback to a similar incident involving our oldest daughter when she was about three and an only child at the time. She also managed to make it to Sunday school wearing a dress with no drawers. And my wife and I were even volunteers in that class. I guess we (I) didn’t fully learn the lesson to always check under the hood, so history repeated itself 16 years later. It’s been worth a chuckle every time I’ve seen Teacher Daisy at church. Kind of our inside joke.

And speaking of inside jokes, did you catch the latest news from Down Under? It was all over the internet recently. Seems as though the lovely Kate Middleton found herself in a rather embarrassing situation while on a royal tour of Australia and New Zealand with Prince William in April. Let’s just say that, thanks to the updraft from the nearby helicopter (from which the royal couple had just disembarked), a photographer shooting the official event captured a royal full moon. Reports indicated that apparently this wasn’t the first time something like this has happened with this particular princess-to-be. (I’m not obsessed. Just find this to be hilarious.)

So, I guess that the end result, or the bottom line, if you “will”, is that I need to take back my apology to Teacher Daisy. I guess I wasn’t such a bum after all. It seems as though my daughter was dressed perfectly to be a princess thanks to the cheeky example from Down Under!