Sunday... Lovely Sunday!!!

Sunday's are always a fun event at our house! We go to church at the oh so wonderful time of 1:00pm. This means that we have 7 long hours after the kids get up before we head out the door to church. A lot can happen in 7 long hours and boy it sure seems like it on most Sundays. Our schedule this year has gone a little something like this...

Kids get up bright and early between 6 or 7am. When they do sleep till 7 we count ourselves very lucky! Chris and I have a little system where one of us gets to sleep in on Saturday and the other on Sunday! It has been a life saver for both of us, that way we aren't so grouchy... Kids eat breakfast and then play around till 9ish. Then it's time for baths and for the other parent to get up and get going. I must say if I'm the one sleeping in I dread hearing the sound of the kids' bath running! Then it takes a good 30 minutes to get the kids bathed and dressed. Most Sunday's there is plenty of fighting and stubbornness getting this kids dressed! But we always seem to make it through. After the kids are dressed we head downstairs to let the one parent finish getting ready. The kids can play, watch baby zoo animals or whine and cry... Whatever they feel like on that particular Sunday! Most the time they look a little like this.....

If you saw my kids during this time you would only know we were going to church because of their dress... Usually their hair is still a mess because I'm not going to do it until after naps and closer to church or they would be going to church with jacked up hair as well! I don't mind when they put hats, helmets or baskets on their head because I know we can fix that later. It's when we come to lunch that I get a little stressed. (Usually by this time the other parent if finished and the other one gets their turn to clean up and get ready!) I feed my kids lunch around 10ish so that we can get them down for a nap before church. I know, many of you are thinking "are you crazy?" But I would rather them have an early nap than no nap at all.... This time for church is rough but this is how we combat it! So the kids eat their lunch of usually hot dogs and some cut up veggies and fruit. I try to get away with no ketchup or mustard just so I don't worry too much about their clothes. Sometime I get away with it, most the time I don't! But we make it work! After Lunch it is off to naps. Katelee is first. She usually goes down pretty good and then it's Ethan's turn. He gets to watch a little church show while laying on our bed. He doesn't nap as long at Katelee and it gives us parents time to finish up on ourselves and then one or both of us lays down with Ethan and we nap too. Most the time our naps are longer than Ethan's! Go Figure!!! We usually wake the kids up around 12:30 to get them "officially" ready for church. This 15 minutes seems to fly by as we get every one's hair done and bags checked and rechecked! This time is also used to fight with Katelee about not wearing her boots to church and actually getting every one's shoes on! After all that we usually end up with kids that look like this!....
Oh how I wish I had a picture of how they looked after church. It's almost like all the prep work before church has never happened at all... But at least when we get to church we look nice....