The best kind of lunch

Have enjoyed a very people-fulled weekend; an awesome visit with the lovely and talented Viv Laursen yesterday with much occasion to gasp at her cleverness and creativity (and to be fair, Marc's DIY skills), and then a houseful this afternoon.  We had no particular lunch plans but I popped a chicken and potatoes in the oven before church, just in case.  Good thing - we had a gathering of nine around the table!  Ideal guests are the ones who offer to go home ahead of you when you have to stay at church for a quick members' meeting, so they can carry on preparing.  Really?  Really.  And they even have their own method for cooking rice which doesn't mess up your stove.  By the time we got home from the meeting and then giving a ride home to a first-time visitor, we had veggies steaming, another chicken bought and ready, rice cooked, rolls on the table, juice provided, airing washing relocated to less obvious places, and the table nearly set.  Thanks to Justus, Liz, Graham, Royce and Tom for an awesome afternoon and 'all hands in' preparation of a yummy Sunday roast!!  Most guests left soon after lunch with big plans for using the afternoon sunshine, but Justus stayed and so did his violin.  How convenient :)  Good opportunity to find out that this Bach concerto is not as complicated as it sounds - my next piece to work through with Rosemary in my weekly lesson!

Nick is doing a topical deviation from the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith with a mini-series on marriage.  It's been fantastic and very helpful.  Of course, being married to the person preaching about marriage can be tricky, but Nick is good at applying his own teaching and using the tools in his 'pastor's toolkit' (you can listen to the sermon on-line on Marchwiel's website (link to the right) for more.  After church (yeah I know, it was a full-on weekend) we had a few people gather for a practice of a song we'd like to record, and then, to finish off the weekend, we invited ourselves to the Frank home for Sunday-night-cake.  I admit that I had very little to add to the conversation and did wonder how everyone else found such clever things to say - I am not politically minded at all!