Week in Review: Feast Days, Fundraisers, Fall Fun

Happy October!  We had another full week here in the Martin family, which included a lot of worrying over JP's whereabouts while he was serving a medical mission in Guatemala.  He arrived back to school late Saturday night, thanks be to God, and I'm hoping to have him post a little about his adventures soon.  Here's one photo from the hospital, where he was allowed to scrub in on some surgeries:

I saw a recipe that looked good on Instagram, and tried it, and it was!  Butternut Squash Soup with Boursin.  I topped with Hot Honey and some Chow Mein noodles we had leftover.

We had bought some Chicken and Cilantro wontons at Costco last time we went and I turned them into a quick soup with chicken broth, sesame oil, soy sauce, hot chili sauce, garlic and onion.  We all loved it and it took less than 15 minutes:

Phil's sister, who is a Daughter of Charity, came to stay with us for a few days all the way from San Antonio, Texas where she works with asylum seekers and immigration ministries.  We visited with my parents and she was also able to visit Phil at his work.  "Aunt Nisey" as the kids call her, has many, many stories to share from her life that has been dedicated to helping those in need, it's just so inspiring!

On Thursday, Phil and I attended a fundraising dinner for Abundant Hope, the pregnancy center in our diocese.  It was also October 1 which is the feast day of St. Therese, and earlier in the day, Maggie had wished me a happy feast day (I have a cool rose story and Maggie was named after it) and said she had been praying the Novena, hoping to get a rose.  On the way to the dinner, I pulled out a little sample of lotion that's been in my car since last year to apply to my hands, and the scent was...  

Then at the end of the dinner, we each took a pen from the table that had a scripture verse on it, and guess what flower mine had on it?  A white rose:

I sent the photo of the pen to Maggie, and then Haley snapped a photo of me and used AI to add a rose, and we sent that to Maggie as well:

On Friday night we attended yet another fundraising dinner, this time for My Brother's Keeper, which is where our friend Jean used to volunteer her time before she died.  There were sooooo many friends and coworkers that we knew at this event and it was a lot of fun.  There are good people in the world guys, don't get discouraged, just go volunteer!  Maggie's bestie's mom and I had to send a selfie to our girls whom we miss so much in college.  Our text group is called "Maggies and Mumsies"

The statue outside My Brother's Keeper takes my breath away

While we were there, Maggie was attending 1st on 4th out in Steubenville with friends.  Update - she did not get HFM disease, thankfully!!

There was a random firework show over the water this weekend, so we had to watch from the living room:

On Saturday, we did chores and had basketball practice and a soccer game but on Sunday we had some fun apple-picking!  

Last weekend's Nor'easter made lots of apples fall off the trees, sadly

A nice worker offered to take our photo.  What a small family we are now!

Apple Cider Cheers

And last but not least, our Andrew Pauric Francis turned 22 on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi!  His friends threw him a party after the soccer game win on Saturday night, and he went out to lunch with Karolina and out to dinner with Eamon and friends.  I don't know about you, but he's feeling 22.

We can't wait to give our birthday boys hugs in person when we see them this weekend for the Hallow Summit!  Anybody else going?