"Today I've been asked to give a talk..."

...on Hope. As in, "I hope Chase will go back to sleep." Or, "I hope my children will behave in sacrament meeting." Or,"I hope I don't have to give a talk again...EVER." None of these hopes were, or will be, realized.
I really, intensely dislike speaking in church. And today I had to, and it was a really lousy morning.
It started at 5 am when Chase woke up starving and stinky. After feeding him he spit up all over himself, so I had to change his jammies. Then he ate again and was stinky again, so I changed him... again. After all that jostling around he was up for good - and not happy about it. He screamed on and off for an hour, then fell asleep right when I needed to start getting ready for church, so I couldn't go back to bed. We have 9am church with sacrament meeting last. We were late getting to church and then I taught my YW lesson, which was fine, and spent the 2nd hour going over my talk and feeding my baby again.
Then sacrament meeting started and the older boys were awful! Bryce insisted on drinking out of Austin's sippy cup, which Austin didn't appreciate and a huge battle ensued. Coming from our pew were comments like, "No, it's my cup", "I want a drink of water", "Stop Bryce, you sick". "I'm not sick", "Give it back" and "He's not sharing". When we were first married there was a family in our ward in Grapevine that we hated sitting behind because their kids were so loud. We are now that family. At the same time Chase decided his view would be much better if I was standing up, so out in the hall we went. This only caused Austin to decide that he needed me "right now". I could hear him yelling for me out in the hall. My friend Nancy happily took Chase and I went back inside.
My talk was fine. It was on finding hope in this life, and I know some people have a hard time being hopeful and optimistic, I am not one of them. But talks without personal stories are boring, so I drew on the most recent experience I have with hope, which is seeing how my sister has started coming to church again after 23 years, because she received a "wake up call" when my mom almost died, and how much better her life has been since. I should have known better than to talk about anything personal. When I was practicing my talk I could get through it just fine, but up in front of everyone just knowing that section of the talk was coming up got me emotional. And I hate crying in church. I am not a graceful crier. My nose runs, my face turns bright red and worst of all, I snort. It's humiliating. This is why I don't get up in testimony meeting either, because the self loathing I feel after just isn't worth it. So I boo-hoo-ed through a good portion of my talk, the pulled it together, then boo-hoo-ed again at the end. Then I practically ran back to our bench, avoiding eye contact at all cost, and Derek went up for his talk, which of course was well thought out and composed and everything mine wasn't. I didn't get to pay all that much attention to Derek's talk though because Bryce and Austin were still butting heads and being so awful. When we got home Bryce, who was the instigator in most of the fighting, had to have "reverence practice" and proved he is perfectly capable of sitting quietly for a length of time. The rest of the afternoon was actually really good. Chase was unusually content and Bryce and Austin played really well together all day. Too bad the day started out so lousy.