One Sunday Afternoon

Last Sunday after church, the five older kids went with a group of friends (wait, is that assuming too much, Stephen? :-) to see the progress on the church building. We stopped at our house to eat and got to the church sometime after 1:30.

The newly installed back doors were locked, though there was a key in it.

Some raced to the front,

including Eric in his car.

At first the girls took a systematic tour, while the boys ran around and hid.

The platform was built, so of course we went on it and sang.

The tiling in the bathrooms which some of us helped do. It looks really nice.

The stone added on the pillars in the main hall looks really cool.

As we were singing "Red and Black" from Les Miserables, as we often do with Mercy, and then talking about the colors in the church, we improvised our own words: "Blue, the color of the sky, yellow, the color of the sun," etc.

Doors were installed in many places, making it look much more finished.

Some, however, had no glass in them, so of course they walked through them.

Melody did the number limbo, but as she forgot about the piece at the bottom, this picture was taken just before she fell.

No one feels like falling off of the stairs now that they're closed in. 

Upstairs in the big unfinished portion, we signed our names in the dust. There were signatures on it from another time some of them had been there.

The boys thought it was fun to run around and hide from each other.

We met up again in the sanctuary.

The boys surprised us by coming out with brooms singing Chim Chim Cher-ee from Marry Poppins. It was quite amusing, and they actually sounded pretty good. It's fun to sing in the building since it's echoy. (Echoy doesn't seem to be a word, but it ought to be.)

The boys

and the girls

had a singing contest to see which group could sing the loudest.

There wasn't an official winner. When we stopped, the boys were singing Taylor Swift.

We like the following picture. Their faces are funny, looking down at us. (Click on the picture to see it larger.)

Then we went outside to the pond, which had a light layer of ice over it.

When you skimmed a pebble over the surface, it made a really neat whirring sound.

Stephen and Eric using a paint lid for a Frisbee

Parker brought his camera as well, so some of these pictures were taken by him, Abby, or Melody with his camera.

Mercy lost her shoe in the mud.

On our way back, Melody took a picture of the rest of the girls striding across the parking lot.

Then Parker and Stephen decided to get in it.

Which turned out rather cool.

"The doors are locked," we said to Stephen.

"Hope springs eternal in the human heart," he replied.

His hope was unfulfilled, so we returned to the front, with a stop by Eric's car to get a drink and eat his oreos.

I had not noticed the doors hung opening into the sanctuary before. Mercy said you should throw them open like someone I forget from Lord of the Rings. (Aragorn, they tell me.) Instead of bursting through, I jammed my hands on the doors. I didn't realize that they opened the wrong direction. They laughed at me.

Parker suggested we do a group photo. After a bit of broom jumping, we did.

Parker was good. Stephen and Eric...jumped, but couldn't make it over the broom.

   

Parker had his camera take 10 pictures in a row. Notice Stephen's reaction:

Stephen had the awesome idea that we should all stand under a board at the same height to take a picture. Which meant they all had to get down to Deanna and Abby's height.

"Why is nobody standing by me?" Stephen asked.

Then we went upstairs.

Melody took this cool picture, which she says Parker ruined by looking up.

Ryan and Grace came, so they knocked on the window at them.

They smiled and waved at first.

Stephen organized a system whereby we were at all the windows, following them.

For some reason they ignored us after a while.

We wandered around a bit more upstairs.

Finally we decided we should go home; we'd been there for about three hours. Before we left, we went into the office part to say goodbye to Ryan and Grace. Stephen poked his head in a room and said, "Bye!" Following his lead, the others did, and when those at the end of the line peeked in, we were surprised to see...a room containing only a cardboard box.

When Stephen really found them, he said, "Hey! They were smart and locked the door."

Before we left, I snapped a picture through the window, but Grace turned.

It was a fun Sunday afternoon.