We've Been...

participating in  the Acolyte Festival in Washington, DC, taking the PSAT test at the high school in Mt. Airy, attending library programs, and re-working the shrub bed in the front yard. And doing regular school stuff.

Well, more accurately, the kids went to Washington with our priest and some others from church. Ed and I stayed home, but we did Watch the kids do their acolyte thing via "cathedral cam." It was great. Really it was lovely. The cathedral is gorgeous, and the music was beautiful. The presiding bishop's homily was condescending and inane, but otherwise the service was great.

After the service they got to go to the Smithsonian -- Air & Space and Natural History. The lucky dogs! (I was So glad the government didn't shut down this year, the way it did last!)

They ate Caribbean food this time. They say it was excellent.

(They visited Eleanor too!)

And they liked these quotations.

On Sunday they helped feed the homeless, through a ministry of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. And then they went to church.

Travis took the PSAT on Wednesday. It was our first interaction with the public school system, aside from when we had the special needs foster children. It actually went very smoothly. All the administrators were very nice, and I didn't get lost trying to find the school. Travis didn't quite finish one of the math sections because he didn't here the proctor say "Start" and it took him a while to register that everyone else was writing. Live and learn. (The test doesn't "count" until 11th grade -- we had him take it this year, in 10th, for the experience.)

The nice young man who gave some art classes earlier in the fall did a "bonus" one on Wednesday afternoon, focusing on computer modeling. That gave Travis a nice confidence booster, after the PSAT thing, since he has had a fair lot of experience with computer modeling.

And.... we planted shrubs at the front of the house! Back when we moved in we dug up a three foot deep bed along the whole front of the yard and planted roses. They looked lovely for several years, but then... viruses. We kept hoping that they would get better, but they just got worse. The expense (and the work) were daunting enough that we've just been trying to ignore the disaster in front of our house for a few years (weed bed? no! those are perennials! we just don't know what kind!). This year, though, we allocated some of my birthday largesse to the project, and got plants, mulch, landscape fabric, etc.! We have two Japanese maples (they are supposed to stay small -- 10 feet -- so they won't get into the power lines) and a bunch of azaleas. Both ends of the bed still need help, but it looks vastly better! I suspect that I won't be able to stand up straight tomorrow, but I will hunch outside anyway and admire my pretty shrub bed!