Our Yard Mama

We moved to our new house the last Saturday in February. This photo shows Mark with one of the items we acquired with the purchase of the house. Statues of Mary like this one are very common sites in St Louis lawns. On our short dead-end street alone, there are 3. After talking with a friend and long-time St Louisan, I learned that one slang moniker for these Mary statues is “Yard Mama.” As you can see, Mark was debating what to do with our Yard Mama. Since the photo was taken, I have found a home for her with one of our neighbors who wants the statue because of her fondness for the now-deceased lady who owned the house before us.

With a lot of help from church friends, we were able to have everything transferred from our old place to our new one in about 6 hours. We have had an eventful 2 weeks since moving. Of course, we have been unpacking with hopes of settling into a more normal way of life. However, we also had to go through normal activities for the kids–3 different birthday parties to attend, a school musical for 2 of the children, special school projects for the school’s Open House–throw in a little stomach flu on the side, and you have an idea of what our life has been like. We are hoping for better health and fewer outside activities to give us more time to get things settled in the coming week.

We are excited about the new place. It has a lot of potential, and the kids are really enjoying living on a street with other kids. We are enjoying having bedroom with a door, and we’re thrilled that our bedroom furniture fits in the new room!

Postmodernism

I’m a little late with this post that is loosely related to the Cultural Discernment presentations on postmodernism our pastor did the last 2 Sunday nights in February. But now that I have a few boxes unpacked and no one is throwing up tonight, I want to post about this conversation with my nearly ten-year-old on the way home from school last Monday afternoon (the day after the last presentation).

We were driving past a now-empty Lutheran church, and Calvin said, “Hey, that’s a post-modern building.”

I said, “Well, I really think it is more modern.”

He replied, “Well, yeah, I guess. But there are some traditional elements.”

No, I am not suggesting that Calvin (or I, for that matter) understand postmodernism. I just thought it was great that he was remembering something from the night before at church despite complaining that it was boring (sorry, Jeff).