Cobwebs

It's been a long time. This website should have cobwebs on it. I have missed Halloween, my son's birthday party, and am finally getting around to writing the day after our first day on the job at Mercy.

Brief update: Halloween was good. Xander dressed as a Bionicle (no surprise to anyone who's tried to have a conversation with him in the last year), and Maia was a cute little fuzzy bunny. I forgot to take pictures. I'm a bad mom. Well, here's one from before Halloween. How cute is she? Here she was helping Daddy practice his "trump-trump."

We went scavenging (I mean trick-or-treating) in the neighborhood and, as I suspected, that was a way better deal candy-wise than going to the indoor comfort of the mall like we did last year. Plus we got to meet some of our neighbors (of course, the kids were wearing masks and going door to door begging for candy, so it's not like we started any deep relationships or anything. Did get the chance to thank our next door neighbor for tossing our lost t-balls back over the fence.

Xander had a great birthday party. We invited all the boys in his class, and 10 of them showed up (there are 17, so I counted myself lucky!) plus one girl from church, whom Xander referred to as his 'girlfriend' more than once (already? *sigh* well, her dad's a cop, so good girlfriend to have). My mom helped me out with games and it was nice enough to play outside. Family showed up at cake and presents time- 4 cousins, 4 aunts and uncles, 6 grandparents, and of course a sister, a mom & a dad. After presents the kids went home, and the family stuck around and we had pizza and talked for a while. We were able to have it at New Hope's cafe, which was a nice location for us. Fun.

We are officially back on the job as worship leaders as of yesterday. Actually, we started on Wednesday, but there wasn't much to do, just go enjoy dinner at the new church and join a small group Bible study. Saturday was rehearsal. Scheduled at 10, started at 11. That's gonna have to change.

We chose music according to what Shel was preaching on (Living as a Christian and Dealing with Illness). So a lot of "praise You even when things are awful" kinds of songs and "finding healing in Your presence" types of songs. A lot of what they've done before is Vineyard stuff that Matt & I don't know, so we were trying to be adaptable and do stuff that the congregation might know, even if we didn't. Turns out we introduced 3 new songs. Oops. This is not good. If you're going to worship, it's nice to be at least somewhat familiar with most of the music. Not to the point of doing by rote, but just knowing the song makes a heap of difference. Major faux-pas.

Sunday afternoon after church, we were headed out of town, but had time to eat out, which is rare for us. We chose a newer restaurant called Ci Ci's Pizza and were quite surprised to run into Hal & Martha there (Hal's the worship leader at New Hope), so we got to have a surprise lunch with them!

Then we went to Vermillion for choir practice. That's right, choir practice. Larry Torkelson, the retired choir director from USD, has decided to start a choir and do really hard music. He chose about 30 singers from around the region- most of which are alumni, and we get together and practice music for 2 1/2 hours once a month. This week, we worked on Samuel Barber's "Agnus Dei," Leonard Bernstein's "Best of All Possible Worlds" from Candide, Mozart's "Laudate Pueri" from The Vespers Solennes di Confessori and a Brahms motet in German all about how youth is fleeting and you never get a second chance. Cheery little number. Great for an alumni choir.

We saw a few familiar faces. I still sing really loud. Nice to be back in the familiar halls at USD and do something familiar. I was back there 2 weeks ago for a music teacher's conference, and it was so weird because I didn't know anyone. There were only a handful of my professors who haven't retired. Made me feel old. Yesterday was better. Good times.

Looking ahead to this week... excited for only 2 days of school. I don't have to teach at USF this week, so my longest day is cancelled. I do have to play for one student on departmental recital this afternoon, then lessons all evening, and some more tomorrow after school.

We are heading to Bruce & George's (Matt's folks) for Thanksgiving Wednesday through Friday morning. We'll also celebrate my BIRTHDAY on turkey day (fitting), as well as Matt's Mom's and Sister's who had birthdays Saturday and Sunday. My mom's BD was last Tuesday. We like to clump them together. Excited to see Matt's Uncle Bob and Aunt Kris whom our kids have never met, as well as Uncle Dave, Grandma Katie and Pa Pa Svale, friend Julie, Matt's sister Rena & family, and who knows who else.... Glad I'm not hosting! Matt's mom is really good at that kind of stuff.

We'll go to my mom's place for Thanksgiving on Friday and Saturday. I get to help Mom start to decorate her huge house for Christmas. We won't get done, but we'll get it all out, and get started. She'll putter the rest of it up after we leave. Jim was in the emergency room last weekend with what turned out to be a vacuum-related injury, and thus is not allowed to vacuum anymore. You know what that means... the carpets are going to get pretty dirty.

I am stunned that Maia is sleeping past 9am. Which is why I've been able to get so much written. Mondays are my day off, kind of. Until about 3:00. So I have a lot of housekeeping to catch up on. Too bad I don't have a vacuum-related injury.