Updates on the Home Front

Homelife. There's not been much exciting enough to post about on its own, but there sure has been enough to keep us interested in life!

* On Saturday, Joanna and Josiah both performed in one of the Rockford Music Academy's string recitals. Joanna, on the violin, performed Bouree by Bach, and Josiah, on the cello, performed Hunters Chorus by von Weber. Good friend, Ethan Webb also performed on the cello... but I can't remember what he played!

* Josh and Dad have been busy finishing our basement - primarily working on the completing the bathroom, and installing a wood burning stove. As I type they are working on the chimney.

* A very large 10 point buck has been sighted in the neighborhood. Dad was on his way home from town last week when he saw something move in the bushes, came to a stop as the buck stood on the side of the road (1/2 mile from our home) and looked at him, before running away. We heard a couple of gunshots a couple of days later and tried to convince ourselves that some hunter was very happy with his catch, but Sara spotted him again on Sunday in the river that runs behind our home. At least one person in this house would be a more relaxed driver if we knew that he was not in the neighborhood any longer.

* On one of our recent beautiful autumn days, Uncle Don stopped by on his new motorcycle. Jonathan has a picture posted on his blog. Several of us enjoyed rides!

* Josh and Jessica will be flying down to Birmingham, Alabama this weekend for Resounding Voice's final conference of the year. It is a bittersweet thought that we are done traveling for awhile. Though we look forward to being at home, we'll miss seeing all our distant friends. Y'all come on and visit us now, ya' hear?

* On Sunday we enjoyed the experience of trying to get a good family picture. With two babies and 12 others of us, it was quite an experience. Thanks, Yens, for taking the pictures and helping get the babies to smile!! I'm sure it will only get harder in the years ahead. Next year already promises twice as many babies, and after that - well, maybe we'll just forget trying to get everyone to look at the camera!

* One of our neighbor's coworkers came out to Harvard last weekend to show them how to cook authentic Mexican food. They invited us over to join them, and we enjoyed semi-authentic Mexican food - they would have tripled the jalepenos if they were cooking for themselves!

* There was some distress in our home over several baking failures this past week until it was discovered that someone somehow mixed the containers of baking soda and baking powder, resulting in rather awful tasting pancakes, etc. How the error occured is still unsolved, but it has been corrected and we are again enjoying our food.

* We haven't posted pictures of late, because the adapter for Jonathan's camera was somehow lost in our recent travels. So to get a picture onto this computer is a little more complicated. That has been remedied, so we can now again post pictures!

* Wow! There was a run on LaSalle Bank today! The "Messiah" tickets were sold out by 9:30am! If you were among those who did get tickets, please let us know if you have any extras. If you didn't get tickets but would like to attend, let us know how many you need and we'll see if we can match the needs with the haves.

* There's a possibility of snow in the forecast for today and tomorrow (flurries, anyway)! Winter is on it's way!!!!