melted smoosh

no exotic travel plans today -- we're doing laundry, cleaning house, bathing the girls, and in general, fighting the good fight against entropy, while looking forward to Sabrina and Rebecca's arrival tonight! so i figured we'd have a more domestic celebration for the Feast of the Archangels. there will be no traditional roast goose for supper, but there will be honey mustard chicken, and i sold my soul for 250 g (1 cup) of fresh blackberries with which to make a blackberry cobbler (i'm making up the rest in strawberries, which did not exact quite so high a cost). cobbler success! and it couldn't be easier. i used this recipe (and just mixed 2 TBSP sugar into the berries  and let sit for about 10 minutes before adding the topping).  the archangels used to have separate feast days, but they are now combined into one. here's a bit about St. Gabriel, from a homily by Pope Saint Gregory the Great: "Those who deliver messages of lesser importance ar

i don't know which is more surprising, a pyramid in the center of the city or a cloudy day our next few days with Kira were relaxed. on Sunday, we went to mass and pranzo (which on Sundays is actually brunch), and walked around the grounds a little. even at the NAC, there's always some surprise hidden around a corner. today's particular discovery was a beautiful mosaic that stands opposite a staircase leading up to the chapel. the girls continue to be relatively well behaved in church. before we moved here, i had had a vague notion that we might travel to various churches for mass every Sunday, but for so many reasons, mass in the chapel here is by far the best choice for our regular Sunday worship. it strengthens the community between our family and the seminarians (who, God bless them, have never given the stink-eye to my kids, who are usually the only kids in attendance and therefore the only persistent sources of noise/distraction). the girls behave so much