A Day of Rest and One of Some Progress

Between the 11:00 service at our new church (which is really a chapel and only has one service a week)  and the 4:00 house blessing/birthday party at our rector’s house, we didn’t get much done on the house yesterday, but it was lovely anyway.  The rector and his wife recently bought a new house, and they made a point of inviting us to their party. I’ve never been to a house blessing before, and it was interesting.  Ed particularly liked the bit where the priest who was conducting the service blessed the bathroom (most people stayed in the living room during the service, but the priest walked from room to room and sort of yelled so we could hear and give the proper responses), because he mentioned the blessing of bathing in clear, clean water.  Ed thought that if we got our house blessed it might make the water less muddy.  

Father Ralph and his wife are originally from Arizona, and a lot of the food they served was southwestern.  Nachos and bean dip are about the extent of my familiarity with southwestern cuisine, and I got a fierce surprise when I bit into a chestnut sized nutty thing mixed in with some sort of bright green dip!  I don’t know what it was, but I’m staying away from green dip from now on.  Most of the food was good, though, and the company was wonderful.  I’m not good at parties, being somewhat shy, but there were friendly people at every turn, and I even got a possible job lead (I’m planning to take a couple months to get the house together and maybe find some friends for the kids, but I would love to get some sort of gainful employment lined up).  There were even a couple other children for T. and K. to play with.  Father Ralph’s son is an opera singer, and he had come back from Japan for the event.  He sang an aria and a bit from Faust, which was neat (I don’t know beans about opera, but he sure did have an amazing voice!).  We left when T. was worn out from playing and eager to go home and eat some good old mac and cheese, but it was, happily,  too late to work on any of our house projects,

Today we made some good progress on the house, and T. took a more positive attitude toward his work.  Even K. said she wanted to do some flash cards, although she changed her mind soon after.  I think the shock of getting back into the school thing may be wearing off, and we are starting to see a hint of daylight at the end of our kitchen remodeling adventure (although, Ed pulled off some of the formica backsplash near the stove today and found that the horrible black glue is apparently wedded to the wood paneling underneath.  And a chunk of counter formica came off too.  It is okay, since we are replacing the patchwork formica anyway, but our little projects have a way of turning into bigger projects before we are quite ready for them.)  Tomorrow, the excellent Dan has promised to return, and we have promised him that he can work inside (he found trimming trees dull) painting ceilings!