Church, Chimis, Chores, and Chiu

The title of this post is an alliterative summary of the day:

It started with Sunday school and then church at St. John. First things first: we bought some lefse and peach kuchen that The Church Ladies had made and were selling between church services. Then to class. This was week two of a three-week commitment for parents to accompany their fourth-grade children to Sunday school to learn about baptism, continue memorizing the books of the Old Testament, memorize a Bible verse, learn some of Luther's prayers, and discuss the sacraments. Suzanna already has her chosen verse (Romans 6:3-4) memorized as well as all the books of the Bible, and she has already completed the entire "homework" packet that they're assigned to do a little bit of each week. All this she did last Sunday after returning home from the first session. Overachiever. Church afterward was an opportunity to visit with Susan's grandma, Laura, who is a member there. Hillary also gave Pastor Lisa a hug during the regular post-church "greet 'n' grope" at the door (she always hugs Pastor Steve, too, on our way out), and Abigail complimented Pastor Lisa on "good church," saying she would miss it until next week. Suck-up.

Afterward the girls conned me into taking the family out to eat. We parked at one restaurant and walked across the street to eat at another! We were going to try The Red Pheasant but, upon discovering that they serve only a breakfast-y buffet on Sundays, we walked over to El Sombrero, a Mexican restaurant with delicious food. There I had a dish that featured three chimichangas: chicken, seafood, and shredded beef. The girls gobbled down their burritos and ate the pre-meal very hot salsa and chips like nobody's business. Hillary alternated between panting with her tongue out over the pain of the spicy salsa's sting, slurping down orange soda, and reaching for another salsa-laden chip. Sucker. Great meal, though.

The weather was beautiful, so after we got home, I did some outdoor preparing for winter. I put away tables and chairs, cleaned and covered the grill, stored garden hoses, and put away decorative lights from the veranda. Indoors Susan did laundry and vacuumed, and the girls practiced piano lessons and folded laundry. We ate lefse and kuchen (from church) with our supper: baked cod, pasta in a creamy tomato sauce, and snow peas.

Our last event of the day was a concert by Frederic Chiu, a classical pianist performing at Dickinson State University as part of the Dickinson Area Concert Association's series, to which we have season tickets (and did last year, too). He was terrific. Hey, you can even listen to him here! He played Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev, Liszt, and Beethoven. The girls were excellent audience members, sitting very well and paying good attention even during the final number, which itself lasted a half-hour! Maybe they will recall him when they practice their piano lessons and will aspire to play as well as he does. (With the excellent piano teacher that they have, by the way, that's entirely possible.)

P.S. More on the Mobergs as a Sunday school-going family here and here.