A Church Triple Header

Today we were going to be at church across all three services, so I decided to bring my camera and document what goes on during a typical, atypical Sunday morning at the CUMC.

Iria always starts the day out with a little exercise by lugging around as many babies and bags as possible- and quite often in heels, no less.

The children move a little bit faster than the grown ups (at least at the start of the day) and are usually waiting around at some point of entry to exit for us to catch up.

This is the face that Lennon gives me when he realizes that he is about to get dropped off at his Sunday school room.

First up today was church service. Katharine's vacation bible school group was set to perform a few songs. Here she is chilling with Charlotte before everything got started.

Lukas was a little more quiet, but its not like he had to sing or anything.

We sat next to Kara. The service has yet to start, and the children are sitting up and starting to get a little bored.

But every kid knows that all of the fun to be had is below pew level- Lukas wrestles and Charlotte draws.

Katharine takes the stage and flashes me a smile before starting.

They put on a great show, with lots of choreographed arm waves that the bulk of the children were actually performing. Well, I guess they had a whole week to practice.

Katharine informed me that she "sang the loudest".

The rest of the service went by pretty fast- and while I can't say that the kids were entertained, they were certainly quiet and well behaved.

Our new associate minister, Stacy. She preaches a great sermon- and we are looking forward to having her with us.

After service, picking out the right doughnut always involves a considerable amount of careful thought.

Doughnuts!

Lukas showing me some teeth rather than the usual open mouth of half-chewed doughnut...

Katharine and Trinity exchange a secret. Apparently, "the gum is spicy".

Trinity's sister, Gwen.

And of course, what doughnut room would be complete without a tableful of cops? :)

For hour 2, Katharine and Lukas are dropped off at their Sunday school classes (Lennon and Keira are in the nursery wing for the entire time). Lukas looks a little nervous, but minutes later he will be running around with all of his friends.

The all-important coffee in hand, we are off to our adult Sunday school group called "Cornerstone". Randy and Chris join the procession.

Here is our room. We seem to be changing rooms just about every 2-3 weeks this summer, so don't get too attached to it.

This is the second time that Iria had to re-tie her shoe today- Keira snuck up and unlaced it when Iria was brushing her hair this morning.

Kandice kicks off the lesson; our second class on the book "The Shack".

As usual, our class discussion fluctuates between the serious...

and humorous.

I like Iria's doodles on the attendance sheet.

I took a photo of the construction of our new sanctuary as I walked back to church for the third hour. Iria took off for a church meeting, and I helped out with the 4 year old class (Randy and I teach this class every other week during the school year).

I love working on the art projects with the kids.

And the kids love outside time.

Lukas's class was in the next playground over.

It was amusing to me that about half the kids waited until they were outside before realizing that they had to go potty. Here we see a potty escort exchange going down- I bet you can guess who is coming out and who is going in.

All the kids were really thirsty coming back in. The empty bladders might have contributed to this, but I'm guessing that the real reason was because the thermostat was already inching up to the 100 degree mark again. I was drenched in sweat after only ten minutes.

As you can see, any kind of trepidation was long gone by the time I picked Lukas up from class.

The kids helped clean up the room at the end of the day. They really love these carpet sweeps (I should probably get one for our house). Imagine if those wooden rolling wheels that our kids push around all day actually cleaned at the same time...

Back to the car...

Is Lennon still mad that I dropped him off at the nursery earlier?

And here is one of those smiles that your baby gives you after not seeing you for a few hours. Pure gold.