Let me start off with an expression of not-love for Daylight Savings Time. It ended on Sunday. I told my kids they had to stay in bed until at least 6 (which was formerly 7) am, and they were all up at exactly 6. They're not really good sleeper-inners. It was Fast Sunday, which means anyone old enough to do so (and not nursing a baby) was not eating breakfast. Which meant at 6am, I had 6 kids with nothing to do! And guess what - church doesn't start now until 1pm!
We used to wake up, eat, give anyone who needed a bath/shower still one, get dressed and head to church. Not much play time. We literally had no idea what to do with ourselves.
Everyone eventually figured something out - some kids just played with toys, some did some exploring of family history, some just took their good sweet time bathing and getting dressed :) We made some green bean casserole for the potluck after church. We had a long discussion about how to help ourselves focus and learn when you don't understand a lot of what people are talking about. My sister in England got home from church and we video chatted with her a bit. That was remarkably awesome.
We left for church early because we didn't know how hard it would be to find parking, but we got a spot in the parking garage. That was good because I'd forgotten to feed my baby :) So we didn't get to Sacrament meeting too early. But when we did come in, I found out that the sound system wasn't working. (Why would this matter in an ASL branch??) They use pre-recorded hymns for the music, since nobody could play the piano/organ before. So I got asked to play the organ, which I was excited to do, though at the expense of nobody sitting with my kids...again. Jane found "Grandma S." pretty quick. Even though we'd talked about behavior before church, 1:00 is a difficult time for a 2 or 4 year old kid to implement the principles discussed, and Sam and Martha were pretty horrible. And Jane was crying her exhausted cry, too. But I didn't want to put her to sleep, because I'm not sure I can play the organ with a baby strapped to me!
I didn't need to worry about the awkwardness of a baby strapped to me, I managed to have plenty of bloopers all on my own :) I didn't get any chance to preview the organ, so I just picked a random pre-set, which honestly had a little bit of a weird sound. I played way too quietly at first, then way too loud. And during the Sacrament hymn, I hit a wrong control and turned on a bunch of extra sounds instead of just increasing the volume. It startled everyone! So I quickly turned it off, and then it was too quiet again...I tried to switch to the right pedal and got the same wrong one again...then off again...then FINALLY hit the right one. Whose idea was it do put all this stuff at foot level, anyway???
So, it was a long morning, my younger kids were sleepy messed-up maniacs, and I scared everyone with the organ. Fortunately, the day got better from there :) But it was definitely a crazy way to start life in the branch!
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