My Sunday Pet Peeve

I have had a pet peeve with church for a long time. I thought I was getting over it, (this is probably because I've been on time lately) but as I found out today, I haven't.

So here is the problem, our chapel is not really big, and it has a couple of overflows. Our bishopric only likes to have the first overflow open before church actually starts. Having a bigger family, if we don't get there early, we can't sit in the space. Occasionally we can still find room, within the first few minutes of church starting, but not normally, so we end up having to open up the next overflow, which is very loud and disruptive to the whole meeting.

If Andrew is not at church with us, I will just generally try to sit out in the foyer and fight with the kids, trying to keep them from running all around, and making lots of noise out there. A few times when I have been having a bad day before church, I have even been known to leave because it just felt so unwelcoming to me, and with 5 kids being by myself, I just couldn't handle trying to open those monstrous large sliding doors, or trying to corral the kids. (ok, this was just my problem, but I had had a hard enough time getting myself to church in the first place, I just couldn't deal with it. I did go back in time for Primary.)

Once Andrew was sitting in the second overflow, the Bishop came and asked him to move forward, then shut the doors to it. When I walked in, still before church started, there was not enough room for our whole family to sit together, and we ended up having to just re-open the doors. There were normally about 5 large families getting there late and sitting in it., so I have never been able to understand why they close them just before the meeting starts.

So today was one of those days, I was a few minutes late, the chapel and first overflow were filled, Andrew was on his way to Los Alamos, and I was stuck with all the kids out in the foyer. In the spirit of Celia and always having the camera ready, here a few pics. of my kids trying to do Sacrament meeting in the foyer

At first it wasn't too bad, they were managing to be on the couch a bit. But then.........

Sandra and Cammie started thinking they needed to dance around the big open space and .........

The boys thought they should start making paper airplanes.

I know this is just really my problem (although I know I am not the only one in our ward), and I should really use this as incentive to try much harder to be on time.