Church, Church, and More Church

To Crispy's dismay (and Mommy's delight), his early morning scrimmage was cancelled due to a conflict with ice times at the arena. This left our morning open to more possibilities of an actual sane start to our always crazy Sundays. That thought was quickly squelched almost as soon as it was thunk(I don't think that is really a word, but I like it anyhow, and it IS my blog after all). Knowing how much the kids enjoy morning church and prefer it over the evening service, some of us bundled up to brave the frigid morning temps of -11 degrees(that's without the wind chill). Brrr....

Meanwhile, back at home, Melissa was having church for Crispy and her stuffed animals. Her creativity was impressive. Each animal or doll had a piece of paper next to it which Melissa had designed with a picture, maze, or some other type of puzzle, all with references to God in some way. Each one was unique, and each one listed name, date, and activity on the back. She had also produced a very detailed seating chart on her white board. By the looks of it, she had been working on "church" for our entire 3 hour absence. What a girl!

The rest of us(Laura, Jonny, Thomas, Michael, and I) stopped at the party store on the way home to prepare for Laura's birthday. She is a huge Max & Ruby fan, and that is the cake I plan on making for her for her party at Grandma and Grandpa's on Saturday. But it is so old news, that there are no other decorations to match. We settled on some pink shiny hearts, and butterfly candles for the cake. She also picked out Tinkerbell themed napkins for her cupcake party at the mall on Tuesday. She was especially happy with her Tinkerbell balloon boquet.

The stop for party supplies and trip to Taco Bell left us with only 30 minutes at home before having to leave for Crispy's hockey practice all the way out in Delano (unfortunately NOT cancelled). Since we were going to have to leave for church immediately from hockey to get the kids to rehearsals on time, 5 kids had to come with me. Bob stayed behind to take Michael to his hockey game at Minnehaha. Popcorn, pretzels with cheese, pop, and Gatorade helped everyone remain pleasant throughout the practice. Laura surprised me by insisting that she go to church again, and miss the shopping/grocery trip to Target with Mommy while the kids rehearsed. Once back at church, Jonny was extremely helpful and brought all the little people in with him, checked them into the system, and got them safely to their classrooms so that I could spare the baby yet another outing across the parking lot in the cold cold air. Now with just the sleeping baby in tow, I was able to enjoy a completely stress-free shopping excursion.

After picking up the kids, we high tailed it back home to get Alex to his own church youth group. He was almost an hour late.......bummer for him......he really could use a driver's license on nights like this. I made a very boring dinner for the kids: popcorn chicken and cheese bisquits. It was all I could come up with at 8pm...these kids needed to hurry it up and go to bed! A little blessing came by way of Alex getting a ride home from a friend just when I could not bear the thought of leaving my house yet again today. By 9pm, everyone was up in bed, Michael & Daddy were home, and the baby & I were crashing on the couch. What a long day!