Progress Report

Still meeting ourselves coming around corners, if you know what I mean... It's hard to get on the computer to do much blogging. When I do, it's stolen time. Still, I feel bad for not having the chance to visit in the combox, lately. And I've not had the chance to do much surfing around, outside of my very closest blog buddies. Such a bummer, as this is cherished relaxation/re-energizing time for me! I didn't think I'd say this when summer began... July is not even over yet! But ~ I can't wait for school to start again! I need the rest, doggonit!

(OK, that's out of my system for the time being...)

Back to our scheduled programming. Here's what we're up to right at the moment:

We're not quite finished with our dining room yet... All the sheetrock is up, though ~ walls and ceiling. The painting is just about done, the trim all in place. We just have a bit of finishing work to get through, as well as outlet and switch covers and a new light to choose and install. I promise to post some pictures of the finished product really soon ~ but we had to stall further progress for a couple days this week, in order to help out at church. Our parish is in the process of finishing our new church building and preparing it for the big dedication ceremony in about two weeks. And since my husband...

( Hey, ya know... I hate calling him that ~ "my husband" ~ though that seems to have been the pattern I've stuck myself with... But it seems so stuffy! I think I'll henceforth just call him "Dad." That's generally what he goes by, anyway! But I digress...)

I was saying that since my husband ~ oh, I mean Dad ~ has the week off, we've decided to tackle some church projects before we finish up our home projects. Many, many skilled hands have tackled an amazing amount of work to prepare a fitting place for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Since we don't have the finer technical skills many of our friends do, we thought it best to volunteer for some good grunt work. And that is how we got to paint the dreaded "green room."

You see, there's this particularly large room with a piano in it... And, of course, the piano made it inevitable; we've adopted it as our very own bouncing baby rec room and dedicated it to St. John Bosco. It's going to be tons of fun outfitting it as time goes by with dart boards and games, etc. Unfortunately, though, at some time in its history, some creative spirit painted this room a uniquely noxious shade of leafish green ~ walls and ceiling. Agh! There's no question that before we can get creative in any other way, we have to make the green disappear.

Below are some shots of our room being transformed to white by Jon, Dominic and Michelle. They're getting to be quite the construction/painting/all 'round handy-people work crew! In spite of being so goofy in the process. (Yes, kids, you're pretty durn goofy.) We think Don Bosco must have been looking on well-pleased.

I was downstairs most of the day working on other projects, but I could hear how the children progressed by how how often they paused to play the piano and goof around. As long as their little "recesses" re-energized them, there was no reason to say anything, though sometimes I wondered how anything was getting done at all. At one point, while I chatted with a friend in the vestibule, we heard them sneak into the choir loft to play around with the acoustics. Here's what I captured:

When I came home tonight and downloaded this, they said: "Don't play that! It's awful! Oh, Mom!" But, I say they're being too persnickety. God gave them the wonderful church with a great choir loft and gave them the gift to sing in it, so they should share it, right? Aren't the acoustics great in there? I love hearing them sing together. (You have to encourage them here for me, so I can justify having posted it in spite of their whining. &:o)