Sunday and Saving Time

Getting up this morning was brutal. Rachel has a bit of a stuffy nose and woke up to fuss every half hour or so all night long. Finally, at 6 am, after enduring the whole night, I decided to break out the snot sucker. I would have used it sooner but she hates it and I didn't want to wake up the neighbors with her screams. Half asleep, Andrew helped to hold her down while I sucked out as much snot as I could. She screamed. And then she nursed and quickly fell asleep.

The alarm went off, all too soon, at 7:30 AM. We hit the snooze button three times before finally getting out of bed at 8:00. Andrew got Rachel ready for church while I got ready myself and then Rachel and I packed up and left the house, with me pushing the stroller and trying to eat a piece of cold pizza while speed walking to church. We had to visit the first ward today and we were going to be late.

I was a little worried when I didn't see anyone else walking to church. Perhaps we were later than we thought. By my calculations we should have only been five or ten minutes late.

I bursted through the doors and started beetling down the hall to the chapel, stroller, pizza, and all. Just as I was about to make it into the foyer, Brother Jones upset a container full of pencils, blocking my way. I bent down to help him pick them up and when we had the hallway clear I started heading for the chapel again.

I could hear the congregation singing. It wasn't a sacrament song. That was a good sign! I had made it just in time for the opening song.

"That's the closing song, Sister Heiss," Brother Jones said as I reached for the door handle.

"What?"

"How'd she adjust to the time change?" asked a sister (who used to be in our ward before we split but whose name I can't remember), indicating to Rachel.

"Ummmm..." I said.

"Daylight savings," Brother Jones and previous sister said together.

"Really?" I asked.

"Really," they assured me.

"I need to go call my husband," I excused myself and headed for the courtesy phone. Andrew was scheduled to play the organ for our ward and it just wouldn't do if he were an hour late for church.

"Hey, Hon!" I said, "It's daylight savings! So now it's 10:00 and not 9:00."

"Oh," he said, sounding disappointed. He had a lot to do this morning and had just lost an hour of his day in one short phone call.

Rachel and I sat through primary. They had a lesson on the atonement and we sat behind a little boy whose name was Simeon, as far as I could tell. It is difficult to read six-year-old handwriting upside down. I thought it was cute, though, that he kept writing his name over and over again. They were supposed to fill in the blanks of a sentence on their paper, I can be forgiven when I _________ because of the __________ of Jesus Christ. The blanks are "repent" and "atonement," respectively.

Simeon wrote, Simeon. I can be forgiven when I Simeon repent because of the atonement Simeon of Jesus Christ.

It made me remember that the atonement really is a personal thing. It's as much for me as it is for Simeon. The Savior atoned for my sins, personally. I'm not sure if Simeon meant to remind me of this, but I hope that he will remember his whole life that the Savior's atonement was for him, Simeon, personally.

After that lesson we had singing time where we baaed and mooed our way through a number of songs to review the tunes. Rachel thought this was hilarious.

When primary was over, Rachel and I sat through a short meeting and then walked home to get daddy. Somehow I had spaced the fact that he needed to play prelude, so I surprised him when I walked in the door and suggested that we walk to church together because he had been planning on driving because he was running late.

He didn't really tell me this until we were already on our way to church.

"We're going to be late," he said.

"No, we're not. We have plenty of time."

"I have to play prelude."

"Oh, yeah!"

We ran to church. Me in my heels, with my skirt, diaper bag, scripture case, and hymn book trailing out behind me; and Andrew, pushing Rachel full speed ahead with his tie flapping in the wind. We made it to church sufficiently early (and in record time).

Rachel was relatively well behaved during sacrament meeting but she completely lost all sense of self control during Sunday School so I took her out in the hall and let her crawl all around. After all, she had already been sitting through a full three hours of church. We can't expect her to behave all the time.

Andrew took over the hall walking duties halfway through the lesson, following Rachel all around as she wandered through open doors, crept under benches, pulled herself up on staircases and explored every other nook and cranny a church building has to offer. He kept her through Elder's Quorum and she did the same thing (absolutely refused to behave) so that was another hour spent roaming the halls, after all his piano playing was finished, that is.

By the time we picked Rachel up off the floor the tops of her socks were completely black from dragging across the carpet for so long. The poor girl fell asleep almost immediately once she was in daddy's arm and had a luxurious fifteen minute nap before she woke up and was at it again.