The Great Birthday Surprise!

On Oct. 24th, an enormous box was delivered to our apartment.

The two delivery guys brought it in and set it down, leaving barely enough room to close the door.

The side labeled for opening was facing the ceiling when they set it down, so there was only one thing to do...tip it right-side-up.

With some heave-hoeing, Malea was able to right the 100+ pound box only to find that the side for opening was now snug against the wall to the kitchen. She pushed with her tiny, tiny legs and eventually created enough space to begin. Yet there was one last obstacle in her way...those black straps weren't plastic. She resorted to the big guns (heavy wire clippers), and with some rockin' and wrenchin' the metal straps gave way with a sounding "ping" that was like music to her ears.

Next she busted out her handy dandy pocket knife and slashed the heavy packing tape.

She opened the box and as the last layer of cardboard fell away, she saw...

The long awaited contents of the mysterious enormous box!

Can you see it?! Can you see it?!

Braving the darkness, Malea reached into the abyss and hauled the beast out.

The beast peaks from its dark abode.

MUSCLES!

Then Malea peeled away the layers of packaging to reveal a large brown oven mitt.

Here's the great reveal...

The beast...

Gazing back into the hole from whence it came.

Finally free of all its packaging--meet the Chíc...short for Chicago Concert Grand Extended #71313 in Mahogany from Lyon and Healy. (As you can see, that's a bit of a mouthful...)

Malea then spent upwards of 4 hours tuning it. 

But the sound is worth the wait, sweat, and even pain...(more on that once the blister heals...).

Texas Missions

Concepción

There are 5 old Spanish Missions in San Antonio including the Alamo. We decided to take a Saturday and go visit a few.

Our first stop was the mission Nuestra Señora del la Purísima Concepción. This mission was built in 1731 and is said to look essentially as it did in the mid-1700s. 

This is a small-scale model of what the mission grounds probably looked like. The hole in the right hand corner was a quarry where they got the stone to make the mission.

This is what the quarry looks like now.

This plaque describe the process they used to build the mission--predominantly manual labor...

Concepción from the quarry.

A pomegranate tree was blossoming on the grounds.

One of the really unique things about Concepción is that it is the most original out of the 5 San Antonio missions.

As you can see, they were able to preserve a lot of the original wall paintings. Many of them have religious symbolism, but some are just for decoration.

We don't know when the hole was knocked in the ceiling and the chain added, but we are pretty sure it wasn't original...

Inside the chapel--Another cool thing about Concepción is that they still hold weekly Mass here.

There was also a little Prayer Garden off to one side of the mission.

It was a very peaceful little place.

Conceptción from the Prayer Garden.

San José

Small-scale model of the mission and grounds.

Built in 1720, San José y San Miguel de Aguayo mission was the best known of the missions. It was suppose to be the "model mission." The wall around it had small homes inside it (kind of like Cove Fort, only much bigger), and the natives would move in and learn how to farm. The natives were very susceptible to the Spanish monks at the time because there was a drought and many of them were willing to do just about anything for food. The sad part is, once they moved inside the mission's walls, they had to leave everything from their own culture behind; they even had to take on christian names. As a result, much of the native culture was completely lost. Additionally, once inside the mission walls, the natives' chance of survival wasn't really improved  much. Poor hygiene and foreign illnesses killed natives almost as fast as they could move in. Another factor in this was that there was one stone oven outside for every two huts. The adults all had to be out in the fields, so that left children of 5-8 doing the cooking, and disease spread quickly from child to child and home to home. However, the mission did offer safety and security to many.

As you can tell, the mission grounds are a popular place for pictures. This is obviously someone's senior pictures, and there was also a wedding ceremony going on in the chapel when we arrived.

Its size and intricate details earned San José the title "Queen of the Missions."

Inside the chapel. They still hold weekly Mass here as well.

Chapel doors.

Prayer candles.

Beautiful flowers growing on the grounds.

Only in Arizona they said... ;)

They said the doom actually collapsed at one point, so they had to restore it, but luckily no one was inside the chapel when it came down (even though it collapsed during their Christmas service...).