In Other News...

We had a beautiful ordination service last Tuesday night! No one got any pictures that we know of; Father Rooster was lamenting the fact that he couldn't be both priest and photographer at these events! But it was a solemn service of commissioning two very worthy men to the office of deacon, the servant of the church. Abbi wrote her impressions of it here, and I think her word pictures captured the event well.

There were clergy and friends there from Church of the Resurrection and Church of the Redeemer (Light of Christ's two "mother" churches), as well as clergy and students from Nashotah House, an Anglican seminary here in Wisconsin, about an hour away. It was such a privilege to host the service and the reception afterward, and there was something special about all those Anglican clergy gathered in that chapel--which had once hosted such occasions on a regular basis, when the campus was an Episcopal boarding school for girls. The chapel was named for and consecrated by Bishop Jackson Kemper, the first missionary bishop for the Northwestern Territory of the American Episcopal Church--and it seemed so wonderful for Anglican life to be returning to the old chapel.

Our AMIA bishop performed the ordinations, and we were blessed to host him for two nights. But what does one serve the Bishop for dinner? Fortunately, Papa Rooster has been helping with the cooking lately, which has been just fabulous, and together we made steak fajitas, homemade guacomole, acorn squash, and green salad with pesto dressing and goat cheese. Yum!

The in-school kids are all acclimating well, but the big adjustment has been for Papa Rooster and myself, having to spend so much time in the evenings helping with homework! Maybe we won't have so much homework next week--Blondechick thinks she's starting to maybe get geometry, and Bantam14 is getting the hang of skimming through textbooks looking for answers to the chapter questions. He says he's feeling a little less overwhelmed now, after two full weeks.

Chicklet7 is loving school, especially recess, music, library and gym! But by Friday, the week is feeling long to her. Bantam18 seems to be doing fine...and actually may be understanding geometry better than Blondechick. Fortunately neither of these two have had much homework.

Bantam10 and I are trying to find our rhythm at home, and I think our first task is to learn to FOCUS on math and piano first thing. He just switched to a new piano teacher who is actually insisting on playing pieces with perfect timing and having him use a metronome, and B10 is responding well to the challenge. He's also regaining his footing in his math book and working on completing a whole lesson in a shorter time than he used to take--without another student, I've been able to sit down next to him, with my own work, and keep him on task. He's been reading Paddle to the Sea (Holling) to Bantam4 as well as reading for fun, and the other day when he finished all that before 11:30 in the morning, I let him spend a good hour in the kitchen doing simple science experiments from Usborne's Science with Water.

All for now.... I have been summoned to pick up kids from callbacks! They're done a few minutes early.