Church Adventures

After our church service today, I headed down the hallway to the Sunday school classrooms to pick up the girls.  From several doors down the hallway, I could hear the sound of a pipsqueak little voice belting out music.

VOICE: My soul is spiraling in FROOOZEN FRAAACTALS aaaalll AROOOUUUND!

Yep.  Madeleine was engaged in an impromptu performance of "Let it Go" for her Sunday school classmates and teachers.

After I picked the girls up, we headed outside for a special Memorial service, in honor of World War II vets from the church.  Madeleine loudly announced what ELSE she had shared with her peers and teachers during Sunday school.

MADELEINE: And MAMA?  I told my teachers about the time I was playing with POOP!

Well, that's great.  I'm really really glad she brought that up to people at church.  I wonder if Madeleine is going to follow in her daddy's infamous footsteps and get herself kicked out of Sunday school.

(In all reality, I am very lucky in that all of the adults at our church seem to understand very well that kids will be kids.  Even when Madeleine is doing things like crawling around underneath the pew instead of kneeling during prayer time.)

I had to stay after church for a quick choir rehearsal, and since I hadn't come equipped, I simply gave the girls a pen and flipped over that day's instructions for Liturgy so that they could draw on the back.  They had, of course, already drawn pictures during Sunday school, but they were at least moderately content to work on brand new illustrations.

Speaking of their Sunday school drawings, according to Julia, the kids had been asked to draw a picture of their favorite part of church.  Julia drew herself receiving Communion from the priest:

Madeleine drew this:

ME: Madeleine, what did YOU draw a picture of?
MADELEINE: Uhh...it's a SECRET.

Unfortunately for me, the choir rehearsal started with about fifteen minutes of paper shuffling, as choir members gathered the new sheets of music we were to rehearse while searching for pieces we already had in our folders.  By the time we actually got to singing, the girls were sick of coloring.

JULIA: Mommy?  Can I dance?  When the music starts?
ME: Uh...okay.

So we began singing through a piece for next week's service, and Julia started a wild and crazy interpretative dance off to the side of the choir loft.  Madeleine, not to be left behind, suddenly freaked out and began shouting to me (even though she was sitting RIGHT NEXT TO ME) as I was singing along with the other choir members.

MADELEINE: Uh, MAMA?  I WANNA FINISH MY PICTURE AT HOOOOME!
ME: (wearily) That's fine.  You can go dance too.

Before I knew it, the Liturgical music was intercut with the sound of elephantine booming and thumping, as the girls paraded around the choir loft, jumping off of steps, climbing up and down from the podium, all the while waving their arms in a dancing frenzy.

It wasn't distracting AT ALL.

Needless to stay, I didn't stay long at the rehearsal.  It was time to get my antsy kids out of there, and seeing as they had sat still through the service AND the Memorial, I was more than happy to embrace the "let kids be kids" idea and acknowledge that it was too much to expect them to sit still much longer.  So we rolled down the windows and cranked up our "Sgt. Pepper" album and the kids sang to their hearts' content. 

Happy long weekend, everyone!