The Long Sunday

This past Sunday, I decided it was time get back to church. Unfortunately, The One who Works had to work all day, and there was no way I was going to attempt to drag all four kids to church by myself, so I drove down to my mom's ward and went with her. Needless to say despite having two grown adults to juggle all the kids it was still a nightmare. Walnut is finally old enough to go to nursery with his brother, so we dropped both of them off there before heading off to our class. Walnut screamed, but I felt sure he'd settle in after we were out of sight. We survived our first class, but I had to hold Little Red the whole time, he's very temperamental and it was all I could do to keep him from screaming louder than the teacher. Princess was her usual perfectly behaved self and just sat quietly in her bucket...thank goodness!

Anyway off to our second class, one my mom happens to teach. So there she goes up to the podium, leaving me sitting there to fend for myself. I sat next to a nice lady and her husband I know pretty well, I knew she would help me if things got out of hand. Before the prayer had even been said Little Red was up to his usual fussing, so I was bouncing him just as Princess started to cry. I handed her to the nice lady to deal with and kept bouncing Red, just then a frustrated nursery worker slipped into class caring a screaming, blotchy faced, snot running down his face Walnut. I guess he didn't settle into nursery as well as I had hoped. So the nice lady passes Princess down the isle to her husband and I pass Little Red to her and take the slimy Walnut from the very relieved looking nursery worker. As I look down the pew at my screaming/fussing children in their arms, I feel so bad for these nice people who had the misfortune to sit by me. Finally an hour later, we're all back at my parents house feeling exhausted, I can't believe it's only noon. We have dinner and the boys play for a few hours and I pack everybody up to leave and pick up The One who Works from work so we can all get back home at a decent hour. Everybody ready, but where are my keys? At first, I was sure I had just misplaced them, but after looking in all my usual places I was beginning to worry.

At some point we realize Walnut must have taken the keys off the counter and done something with them. My Mom, Dad and myself search the house for the next couple of hours, no luck. It's at this point I realize that we only have one key for the minivan, we had not gotten around to making another yet, what's worse is, the minivan keys are coded and the vehicle must be present at the dealer before they can make another key. We don't have a lot of options, it's late on a Sunday evening and the boys car seats are locked in the van. I finally decide to take my Mom's car home with the twins (I did have their car seat buckets) and pick up The One who Works.

I left the big boys at my parents house. We finally got home around 10pm fed the twins and crashed into bed. Early the next morning we packed everybody up again and drove the hour back down to my parents. We had the van towed to the dealership and $140 later we had a new key! Whew, I've decided not to leave the house again for a while, I don't think I'm up for it, I'm still recovering from last Sunday.