Does it make you a bad mom if you make a family tradition out of a bad habit or quite possibly an addiction?

Have I mentioned that I like Diet Coke?  When you drink it, its like having a shot of hard liquor.  I've never had a shot of any kind of alcohol but from what I have seen on TV, it seems that it must be the same.  You look forward to the diet coke run all morning and when its quite possibly an appropriate hour of the day you hop in the car and run to the gas station. They hand over that fountain of joy (no cans or bottles I only drink the good stuff), and you take that long first sip.  It bubbles and burns on its way down and you have to let out an audible "ahhh".  At that moment I know I can handle the rest of the day.

Now, I realize that this sounds pretty bad in every aspect.  I'm sure the burning is probably just that, burning.  But I like it.  I have been pretty good to keep it to one drink a day.  So hopefully it won't shorten my life significantly.  I know that some of you are "Dew" or "pepsi" or "water" fans and the thought of diet coke makes you gag a just little bit.  Be comforted to know that your "drink" has the same effect on me.

I'm sorry I got a little carried away there, back to the title of this post.  So this past Summer, I was clued in by a fellow diet coke drinker that a local gas station had a 32 oz for 32 cents on Thursday.  I do not let my kids drink soda on a regular basis, except maybe when we go out to dinner.  But this past Summer I had to figure out a way to get my kids in the van to go get me a diet coke.  So I boldly declared one day "It's Big Drink Thursday".  Well, they had never heard of this before so of course they were intrigued.  I explained that on Thursday drinks were on sale and that we were all going to get a 32 oz drink.  You would have thought they hit the mother load.  So off we went and I was NOT the only mother there experiencing the Big Drink Thursday tradition.  They held their cups dazed by the choice of 24 some odd choices.  To help them I narrowed it down to non-caffeinated drinks.  Even then it took along time.  Adam, smart kid that he is, put me in a corner when he announced that he would like caffeine free pepsi.  First of all, nasty..., but I gave in.  We all marched back to the van and thus began our Summer tradition.

It's over now.  I'm not sure if we will continue the tradition next year but it was good while it lasted.  Bad mom, I know.