ready for church

We had a rough Sunday morning. The girls have been up late too many nights in a row. The water cup in the picture is Cumorah's, but in these situations that is not always the case. Rivers pretty much cried the whole morning. Fortunately, she was pretty happy during church. She fell asleep as soon as the van started to leave the parking lot after church.

Cumorah was the first to have her dress on. She then went and got her own footwear, purple ghost socks that say boo and her funky plaid tennis shoes (on the wrong feet). The pumpkin hat is the hair accessory of choice currently, even though it is getting a little small. If it were just a normal week day and we were just planning on going to HyVee and Sam's Club or something, then I would let her out of the house in this outfit. But today we traded in for cute white sandals (minus the socks) and a hair clip (that never actually made it into the hair).

Church has been exciting lately. I was released from my calling as Relief Society secretary a month or so ago and Brian and I were put in charge of the nursery. Nursery is always fun. The kids are now getting more comfortable with us and we're getting into a routine that works for us. We finally got the chairs out for lesson time today instead of the carpet squares. I've done nursery a couple of other times and I prefer chairs for lesson and singing time. They were so much more attentive and into singing time. Yep, they still get up and out of their chairs a lot but for me it's a lot better than trying to have them sit on the ground. Maybe it's the no-nonsense educator in me. I like structure, flexible structure, but structure. I don't think I'm much of a free spirit. Life is chaotic enough. However, I don't mind the chaos and mess of play time, that is fun. The kids are having a great time, they're discovering things, learning how to interact, it's great. It's mostly just when I'm given the task of teaching something, then we're going to be serious about it. Even if it's only a five minute lesson that requires pictures and rhymes with hand motions and songs and much animation and repetition from me in order to teach a very basic concept that they won't remember well enough to communicate to their parents what they learned about that day. Today one of our nursery assistants suggested we take a walk outside after snack time. She has a much longer experience in the nursery than we do. You should see the kids gather around her during play time. She loves them and they love and adore her. Cumorah sits with her almost every Sunday during sacrament meeting. She is wonderful. So out we went. Wow. That was exciting. We had eleven children ages 18 months to 3 years old (only one was actually 3), plus Rivers who is really not nursery eligible yet. There were 3 adults. I'm just glad we didn't lose anybody and I think I'm going to make one of those ropes with the little handle loops for them to hold onto if we're ever going to do that again. There are a few of our little ones who are good runners and who like to just start running, fast and far and away and towards the parking lot. It was a short walk and ended with Brian counting them as we corralled them in the space between the double doors going into the church. It reminded me of herding little animals or something. The kids loved it and they were extra crazy hyper as their parents came to pick them up a little while later. Good times, yesiree, good times.