Pineview and Dinner Guests

Corey took ASNODP to Pineview Reservoir last night. I stayed home with Lily and Wes, who both have homework to do. Lily has a .4 right now in her science class, which is a very solid F. She blames it on the teacher, but we insist you can still get good grades with not engaging teachers, as we have both done it in our jr. high days. Wesley has a B- in math which is a huge improvement! ...But he also currently had 3 Fs, in World History, 3D Design, and English (17% in there, like what is going on?!!) He had a C in architecture and a B in Chemistry, so we'll see where this ends up after this last weekend of school. He's working all the time and has been working pretty much consistently this weekend from what I can tell, so we'll see.

Anyway, with Corey taking the little ones away, I was looking forward to getting an uninterrupted night of sleep, thanks sweetheart ! I also thought that I would get work done - either reading, blogging, practicing violin, exercising, something, but part of the tragedy of staying behind with just one or two kids, is that YOU become the playmate and companion. This is also a reason why large families are really great. But as for this weekend, Lily didn't have any siblings to keep her busy, thus that role fell to me. I texted Corey that I should have kept Peter so that Lily would have someone to play with/babysit. Instead she talked my ear off. After the first few hours and as we got closer to bedtime, I realized I was not going to get anything done at home with her, so I gave up on trying that and I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk. She and I went on a brief hike in the canyon, where she proceeded to chatter about all her school and friend thoughts. It was cute, but also tragic to not be able to get anything done when the toddlers were all gone. Lily didn't work on homework last night because she had turned in her chromebook and couldn't remember her password. I told her that I wished she hadn't avoided me and my "do your homework" reminders all day, cause we could have probably called the school and gotten it, but now it's the weekend and grr. I texted Corey the bad news that she wasn't able to get any homework done, and thankfully with his parent control monitoring tools he was able to find it, yay! So I presented that to her this morning and said "get to work!" while I ran errands. I first went to Rancho Market to get some coarse sea salt so that Corey could cook up a nice churrascaria tonight, and then I went by Costco for the meat. At Costco I bought him a good birthday/Father's day gift - a set of two Lion Energy Power banks - the guy said that they hold enough power to charge a cell phone eight times! So that will be good! Because his phone died on their outing, as he predicted it would last night, and he was saying we should get something like that. Thanks Costco! So Lily worked on science and Wes did his school work, I went to the gym and then ran errands and then came home and cleaned the kitchen while I listened to podcasts with only a few interruptions from her or Wes. I was sad that I still didn't get any reading or much violin practicing done, but I was able to do a little bit. But I knew today was going to mostly be busy cleaning, which I did for several hours, and getting dinner ready. the house and dinner all looked great when they got here, go me. Corey was able to shower and get ready for guests. Eric and Sarah Jane got her first at 4:30, and Corey took them up to the Quarry Trail to try and lure them into moving into our neighborhood, haha, and then Father David arrived at 5:30. Corey brought ODP home with him, and ASN stayed a bit longer and Corey's parents brought are on their way home with them right now. 

Lily played legos with their little girl Hannah, who is like 2, and Lily got down a stack of paper bowls for some reason and they played with those until Owen and Daniel found them and took them outside onto the trampoline, where they kept Eric and Sarah's little boy Peter and our three boys well entertained. 

They all thought that was fun that there were two Peters! They came up with a game of "bounce the stack of paper bowls" and they had a great time making a mess with that. 

 

Corey, Eric, and Father David stayed inside and talked while Sarah Jane and I watched the kids outside. She and I had little totally non-competitive game of badminton with kids under our feet while we hit the badminton birdie back and forth and talked about stuff and tried to avoid hitting them on the heads with our rackets. On one hit it was really funny cause the birdie happened to fall close to Daniel, who had a racket and two birdies and was playing his own game, but he hit our birdie up as if he was secretly watching us play the whole time and was just waiting for it to come to him. Sarah and I both laughed and she said "His hand eye coordination is so amazing for a four year old! Wow!" So it was a nice evening, another successful visit with Father David. We talked about The Chosen with him and I learned more what Catholics believe about the virgin Mary, that she was a virgin before her conception, during her pregnancy, and after the birth of Christ. They believe that Mary was sinless and free from the curse of Adam's transgression, so the punishment in Genesis 3:16 didn't apply to her, saying that "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children..." The footnote for multiply there says that in Hebrew it means "increase thy discomfort and thy size (i.e., in the condition and process of pregnancy)" and therefore when she gave birth to Jesus, it was without the sin of sorrow in bringing forth children, so her delivery of Christ was pain-free and blood-less, unlike how it is described by Mary in The Chosen Season 2 Episode 3. So I thought that was interesting. Father David said he's ok with the incorrect portrayal because the director isn't Catholic. 

One quick story that the "pain in childbirth" topic makes me think of - we have a friend Eduardo, who once when I was probably pregnant and he and Corey were talking about the upcoming delivery, I can't remember, but Corey mentioned how I was going to get an epidural and had had the epidural before, and he was concerned that I shouldn't do that because women are supposed to have pain in childbirth, haha. Corey was like "Well I'M not going to tell her she can't have it!!" my thoughts were "Don't worry, pregnancy is plenty painful the whole long nine months, so I'm good - I've felt the pain!" 

I'm really loving The Chosen. I recently listened to the "Cultivate a Good Life" podcast's interview with Dallas Jenkins and how they talk about how it is really bringing all different religions of Christianity together, it's great. I loved how he said that the title of "The Chosen" refers to three groups: the Jews, the disciples, and Christ! Such good stuff. I'm glad that we have a friendship with Father David. As he left today, he asked Corey if he'd be interested in meeting a friend of his who converted from the Church of Jesus Christ to Catholcism, and Corey said sure, so that will be interesting. I don't know if his friend would come over to eat with Father David or if Corey and he would meet up for lunch, so we'll see, but it's all good. Jesus is real and I love him and his Gospel and all of his good followers.