@Gael- well, with five kids still at home there are always a lot of moving parts. Even a weekend where there isn’t that much going on still has a fair amount going on.

If I gave my kids the “choice” they would never go. I have decided that it is important to me and to our family, and strongly encourage them to go most Sundays. We have teens (18+16) and a younger kid. They do usually have an ok time when they are there, as far as I can tell. Sometimes they go to a different church with a friend instead and that is fine too.

@Amanda – I am trying to establish that generally we go during the school year, unless you have something else specific you are doing at the time (See: soccer, or if a kid had a tournament or whatever. Summer can be off.). The 17-year-old sings in choir, so he goes every week. The (almost) 13-year-old really likes youth group. The others (including my husband) are more of a mixed bag. Anyone who goes with me gets Starbucks after, but the kids get Starbucks all the time anyway, so it’s not like that’s a particularly effective bribe.

@Lisa- yep, the apple orchard was ridiculously hot, which makes everyone more whiny, which is kind of funny in its own way. I mean, here we are paying for the privilege of harvesting things in the heat — I have plenty of ancestors who did that to make a living and if they had lived long enough to see us paying to do it…

@Gillian – yep, it gets old fast…