Easter Sunday & City of Greenville Egg Hunt

 What a fun and meaningful weekend.

We joined with a few hundred other people on Saturday evening for a city wide Easter Egg hunt.  

 

I'm pretty sure they grossly underestimated how many 0-4 year olds would show up.  Our category was finished in less than 2 minutes, most kids had 1-3 eggs in their baskets.  In the other categories kids came out with full baskets (4-8 yrs, 8-12 yrs).  

 

Remy and Ben still had fun trying to collect the eggs.  Remy collected 2 and Ben ended up finding 1/2 of a shell.  He was pretty amused with himself.  It's a good thing they don't realize what was supposed to happen or they might not have had such a good time.

 

Ben is walking around on all fours lately.  He is capable of walking, he just doesn't want to commit yet.  I can tell he doesn't like crawling because it hurts his knees, so he's settled on the spider walk. 

 

Remy thinks it's a funny game to walk behind him and step on his heels and push his bobo down.  He laughs about it, but I know he's plotting a scheme to get back at her.  He told me just before nap time.

We also attended the Easter service at 11:00.  

At this time I would like to enlist the help of any parents that would willingly offer advice.  The church we are currently attending, and have been attending for about 6 weeks, has one option for service time.  Eleven o'clock.  If you are a parent, you know that this is right around nap time.  Not only is it difficult, nay, impossible to get my children into the arms of the nursery caretaker without tear streaked cheeks, runny noses and wails of agony, the enhanced tiredness of the said children only adds to the melodrama that ensues.  This makes me want to stay home in my pj's with my cup of coffee and watch a televangelist.  I'm pretty sure the sight of our family walking into the nursery causes tension and knots on many a neck and shoulders.

We have avoided any conflict in this area in the past by attending a Saturday evening service at Preston Trail Community Church.  It started at 5:00 pm and we could be home by dinner and have the kids in bed by their normal time.  We have done this since the kids were born.  If there was ever a scheduling conflict on a Saturday night we could just move to the 9:30 service on Sunday and still make it home for nap time.  When we moved we had to hunt around.  The first thing we checked for was beliefs, but a close second was service time. 

Now, I'll be the first to admit that we did not choose this church.  A series of events led us here, events that will be best described in another post.  In order for us to retain our sanity, reputation (like we had one) and to fellowship with a community of believers we really need some help in this matter. 

I'll tell you what we've tried:  bringing snacks, drinks.  Bringing familiar toys from home.  Talking about it on the way there. (BIG no.)  Saying we're going to visit friends.  Going to play with friends.  Going to play.  Going in to the nursery to play for a minute and let them get settled.  Dropping them at the door.  Allowing the main culprit, *ahem...it's a she*...sit with us during the service. (BIG BIG no.)

Also, helpful information....the nap time can't change.  The child care they attend during the school week has them on a schedule of taking naps around 11 or 12 every day.  I'm sure other parents have had this problem.  I'm just running out of ideas for a solution.....