Gooooood Morning.
Sunday morning. Gabe is at work. Soooo, like most Sundays, I get the privilege of taking the kids to church by myself.
I got up, was dressed, make-up on, hair done BEFORE the kids woke up. Basically, I just crushed a personal Sunday best. BOOM.
Once both kids were up, I asked..."Guess what day it is?!"
K: what?!!
Me: Sunday!
G: ughhh
Me: Time to get dressed and ready for church.
G: I don't like church. Why do we always have to go to church?
Me: Graham we go over this every week............
And that is pretty much how most of my Sundays begin....arguing over church. There is not a Sunday that goes by that I don't hear my dad's voice in my head.
Rewind to 25 years ago.......
Me and Jared: we don't want to go to church!
Dad: You can make time for ONE HOUR out of your week to go to church!
Back to present day.
We get to church, 2 minutes late of course. Get seated towards the back.
The kids were pretty good the first 10-minutes and I am feeling pretty good and then they start acting up! The priest is talking about how we plant seeds and God does his work to make them grow. So I start trying to put that into my daily life. I'm thinking to myself,
'why do I even bother to take them to church?'
'they are not paying attention'
So I told myself that it is my job to bring them to church no matter how they act, now matter how badly it make me want to pull my hair out or drink....that by me taking them to church, I am "planting my seeds." .....Just as my parents did for me.
Pretty soon, Kamryn sneezes....of course it's not a clean sneeze and heaven forbid I be a prepared mother with everything but the kitchen sink in my purse! No kleenex.
So I spotted a kleenex box in the back of church and told her to go get a tissue. She gets to the box and whispers (loudly):
"MOM, the box is EMPTY"
So I point to another one that I spot. She walks over there and blows her nose....I was so proud for a second..........UNTIL, she proceeded to place her snot filled kleenex back in the box!
I wanted to crawl under the pew.
I sent Graham to go fish the nasty out of the box. He comes back holding the tissue out in front of him as though he had just caught a ginormous fish. Kamryn heads back to get another Kleenex and is laughing her butt off.
After we got that mess taken care of....
They played with church books, Graham took Kamryn's prayer book she brought just to hack her off. Kamryn lost her keychain which she refers to as her "camera" and was trying to take pictures of God and everybody. Of course she had to add sound effects.
This point I can feel eyes all around me.
I got to the point that I had to separate the two kids, one on each side of me.
Let's move on to offertory time, shall we? Because I am on top of life, I did NOT have checks written for the kids to place in the basket. I had written one but not two so I was in the middle of putting my checkbook away after writing out checks, when the basket gets to us. Kamryn is fiddling around with the envelop I needed to put one check in...
Graham was holding the other envelop that was ready to go.
I grabbed the basket and handed it to Graham so I could put my other check in Kamryn's envelop......
He does his Graham thing, puts the check in the basket and tried to hand it to me.....lets go ....and TaDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The offertory basket full of $20 bills, $1s, checks, etc was all over the floor! Not just on the floor........UNDER THE PEW IN FRONT OF US. So, Graham is under the pew trying to pick up the money, I am down there trying to help....in a skirt............Kamryn is raising "HOLY HELL" because she doesn't have anything in her envelope. I finally put both checks in the basket and passed it to the row behind us.............I can only imagine the book people were writing about us at that point in time! Probably title "FIFTY SHADES OF RED!"
Kamryn proceeds to cry about not getting to put her money in the basket for the next 3 minutes. I managed to get her calmed down and held her....meanwhile, Graham is sprawled out on the pew bench b/c heaven forbid we sit up like we are supposed to!
It becomes time to kneel. I kneel while holding Kamryn. Graham stands.
Me: Graham what is everyone else doing right now?! When we kneel, YOU kneel.
G: (not whispering) But I can't see!!!!!!!!!
The gal in front of us turns around and looks at him.
G: (Whispers to me) Why is everyone stairing at me!??!?!
Me: Because of the way you are acting Graham! You need to straighten up. You can either behave now, or choose to be in big trouble when you home!
K: (NOT whispering) No mom! you can't put Graham in timeout!!
Me: Fifty shades of Red
We get to communion. My only regret is that I did not drink the wine. But I couldn't easily get to the wine because my two kids in front of me were treating communion time as though they were models on a runway, taking their sweet time, waving to anyone they knew! I just wanted to get back to our seats.
OF course when church is almost over...Father invites a guest speaker to come up. Needless to say, as soon as he was finished and the closing hymn began to play, we were off like a herd of sheep..........ready to get the "Flock" outta there!
Dear mom and dad,
I am so incredibly sorry for being such a ROYAL. PAIN.IN. THE .ASS. every Sunday back in my younger days! I am only apologizing for Sundays because I am positive I was an angel Monday-Saturday! Thank you for planting good seeds! Now if only I can get my "plants" to grow!
Love,
Shelly
And the journey continues................
