Kids in Church

We make an attempt for the whole family to go to church each Sunday, but some days we do better than others.  There is no doubt that the kids can be a huge distraction, not only for us but for our fellow church goers.  Here are such a few examples of what happened today and last week.

Children's Sermon time: First, I do not dare take Elizabeth up and leave Grant behind or he starts crying.  I learned that lesson last week when Elizabeth and I needed to blow our noses and I had failed to packed any kleenex.  So this week we were at early service and Grant and Elizabeth are 2 out of the 5 kids at the altar.  They are sitting quietly until we do the prayer and Grant starts covering my mouth (I wasn't saying anything) and saying "nooooo, noooooo, noooooo!"

We get back to our seats and the sermon starts.  Elizabeth turns to me and says (in a non-church voice), "Mommy I saw something on TV today" I try to shush her but she keeps going... "it's this hook that you can hang on the wall and when you want to take it off you pull a strip and it comes off! Just like that!"  Fantastic honey, we are trying to listen to the story of the good Samaritan and you are telling me about 3M hooks!  At some point, Grant who doesn't normally say much, lets out this big string of gibberish that sounds like he is speaking fluent German!

We didn't even feed the kids breakfast because we pack them so many snacks to keep them quiet.  Today they got juice and milk, normally it is just water.  They also had Chex cereal, Cheerios and pretzels.  They pretty much eat their way thru the service.  We of course pack activities and the church has a spot with things they can grab, but food always seems to work best.  Last week Grant choose some Noah Arc animals to play with...well should I say gnaw.  We had to take them away from him.  Today Elizabeth choose a lovely coloring book, but it contained permanent markers to color with.  We had to take that away too.

After the sermon concludes Elizabeth always asks if it is time to go.  We always tell her that we still have offering and communion.  She is into the offering game now.  Last week she emptied her piggy bank and said that she had so much money she was going to give it to people who didn't have any.  That is our kind, sweet Elizabeth.  We took her money to the bank but have been letting her give $1 each week.  We are still trying to ease into the allowance thing.  She made eye contact with the usher the whole time until he brought the offering plate her way.  Grant actually made it to communion with his shoes on today.  Usually by that time we have long lost the shoes!  As soon as we came back from communion today Elizabeth starts packing up.  All I could think was, I can't get these kids to pick up after themselves at home, but at church they pick up all of their stuff without even being asked!  Of course they had a scuffle over who was going to put the pencil back into the red membership pad, but luckily we were singing the closing hymn by then.  Oh until next time!