The Happenings of a Sunday. OR Will They Jump In?

On Sunday we arrived at the gathering place early so that Leon and the rest of the worship leaders could sync up. Naphtali brewed coffee and we poured it into our mugs from home. They had creamy goat milk and xylitol already in them. We sat in the crying room and played with some toddler toys. Lazuli sat in a car that was just her size and played "running to the store for a few things". Nelinha found a doll that lit up and played 4 songs. She loved it and pressed the heart every time the song ran out to make it start again.

Nehemiah begged me to make her stop but I thought it was comforting and Nelinha obviously enjoyed it. We had a slightly nice time in there until it was time for the service to start.

Nelinha fell asleep halfway on my lap and stretched over the next chair. She slept the whole service through.

Last week at a church picnic I accidentally got the attention of almost ten people and while I had it, I explained why Nelinha was so fussy, "she hasn't had her nap, she didn't even sleep during the sermon!". Then I saw that the pastor was right there so I had to take it a little farther. "which is hard to imagine!" 

(Nelinha age 4)

I was glad that he is humble and has a good sense of humor. It was fun to laugh together without any awkwardness.

This Sunday we sat on the second row while Nelinha slept, Naphtali spilled his coffee (last week Zurielle and Nehemiah spilled theirs)

Also, last week, Nelinha let a water balloon go which we all watched in amazement as it very slowly continued rolling until it rolled all the way up to the pastors feet while he was preaching. A different little boy ran after it and I thought, " I'll pretend I never saw it before,.. the pastor thinks it's his".

The pastor said, "that's okay, we're age integrated, you can come up and get it".

After fetching it the bold child walked straight up to me and said, "here's your balloon"

"thank you"

So this Sunday, I did not allow any water balloons in the service. My mother would have never allowed any such thing in 'church'. She never could understand or approve of my parenting.  I don't think that she had as much fun either. I think that she laughs with us now as she watches from paradise.

After the service, while Naphtali was soaking up his coffee with paper towels, Zachariah came up to me. He's 4 years old. He was very excited about his new ability to use the big toilet.

Zachariah said, (while constantly vibrating with excitement and hyper stuttering), "I fell in. but I didn't fall ALL of me in".

We stopped by Ephraim's house afterward to pick up some high grit sand paper. I went walking to see how far toward home I could get before the family picked me up. A black and white dog lunged at me aggressively while I gave it commands. The owner shrieked at it and fought to control a much larger dog on a leash that wanted to attack me. There was a police officer at the corner that would have come to my aid if that monster dog would have got away from it's leash, but it didn't

When we got home the boys sanded while I made my first installment of lunch. By the time Nick got to our place to pick up Naphtali and Nehemiah (to go swimming in the river again) I had 3 plates of spaghetti, with cooked cabbage and slices of THM strawberries and cream pie.

Next I made 4 plates and served all the girls. I took pie and a protein snack up to Leon in his work meeting and fed him his real lunch when he came down an hour later.

At 4 pm Nick and the boys were back and while they did weird push-ups using the bar stools, we all loaded into the car. We drove to Pawhuska, right past the Pioneer Woman restaurant. Nick was making us all hungry explaining how delicious the biscuits and gravy are with an egg on top and the yoke running into the gravy.

We arrived at the falls and became intimidated. Elsie expressed our distress when she said, "there are bikini's all over the place down there!".

I took up my resolution, "well, we said that we were going to check it out and we can't do that if we don't go down, let's go".

Some of the strange crowd were jumping off the cliff into the river but most were standing around laughing and drinking beer.

We weren't thirsty so we just kept walking down the trail.

We found a great spot all to ourselves. Nick, Naphtali, Nehemiah, Elsie, Lazuli and even Nelinha got into the water, splashed and swam. We only had one life jacket to share and it got pretty deep so the boys got to be heroes for the little girls.

Nelinha did get dunked once. She coughed until she threw up all her lunch. I was so proud of those children. No one whined about that or even seemed to notice.

Someone said, "it will disperse" and sort of splashed the floating remnant around and the fun resumed.

When we got home I said, "you all go get changed and I'll make fried potatoes and biscuits"

Elsie actually made the biscuits and they were gobbled up pretty fast. It's so fun to eat after swimming because it makes you very hungry.

Leon acted as the DJ while everyone took turns calling out songs that they wanted Nick to hear. Of course we had to play ,"The Sound Of Starbucks" by Tim Hawkins, some old Clergy and Muse, for me. Nick was a good sport and even stayed for reading time. Then we all fell asleep.