What is if I forget…?

One of Emily’s big worries about my departure was what if she forgot to tell me something and I was gone? Steph assured her that they could email me any forgotten messages, so I found out the other day that she had found her blue whistle at the back of her special drawer. Hey, I have a blue whistle too actually! It’s in the front pocket of my little backpack. Don’t know why I have one…I think I thought perhaps it might be useful some time. Have had no need for it.

The purpose of this introduction is that I realized I forgot a couple of things too in my memories of my stay at the Morley’s.

One Sunday afternoon Sophie’s friends Riley and Jess came over and I provided a Canada program for them. Sophie was upset that her teacher didn’t seem to be interested in having me come to their class so we agreed that I’d do the program at their house with a couple of Soph’s friends. It was a fun time. We ended up doing it a little bit like a game with clappers and percussive toys. A lot of good questions were asked. And I taught them Hilary’s Proclaimer Energizer. It was a big hit and we subsequently performed it a few times for each parent. I entertained them for about 2 hours!!

Also on Sundays I would go to church with Charles and the kids. Charles is Catholic and takes the girls to church faithfully. Sophie had her first communion last year. Steph goes and visits an elderly lady who has no family at a local age home at the same time. Church was nothing particularly special but I enjoyed going. It was interesting to see the bits of interest that the kids showed. There wasn’t anything that was particularly child oriented in the service except that once a month they have a children’s Sunday school program. The girls were interested in some of the rituals of liturgy. I like that they always wanted to sit at the front to have a good view, they’d line up by the entrance of the pew during the processional to shake the priest’s hand, which he always did. Emily was cute when she’d go to a side chapel to say her prayers to Mother Mary. Sophie’s children’s Mass handbook was very helpful to me. Interesting at this congregation was that they also served wine for everybody with communion which, in my ‘vast’ experience seems to generally not be usual for the Catholic Church, although maybe that’s becoming more commonplace these days? The music was not so exciting. They did have a variety of traditional and more contemporary music which was nice. But it was often difficult to sing it. They only had words on a sheet so for me it was hard if I didn’t know the melody. And obviously for many others it was hard too because congregational singing was not always very strong. There were several songs where I thought it would have been great if they had taught them first. Maybe I’m spoiled. I organized getting the Morleys a Hilariter CD which did cause for some appropriate oohing and ahhing.