Esglesia de Sant Vicenc d'Espinelves, Spain

In the small hamlet of Espinelves in the heart of Catalonia is a church dedicated to St. Vincent of Saragossa. The church was consecrated in the 12th century, following the Lombard traditions dominant in French and Catalonian architecture. It sits on top of a hill in Espinelves, making it a little tricky to photograph outside.

Esglesia de Sant Vincenc d'Espinelves, Spain

The interior is small but nicely intimate, with a simple altar in the central nave.

Central altar

To the right of the altar is a small chapel featuring a crucifix; to the left is a lovely statue of Our Lady. The church was re-dedicated to Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary in the 15th century after the victory of Don Juan of Austria at Lepanto.

Crucifix

Madonna and child

At the back is a rather tall staircase leading up to the bell tower. J and I were tempted to climb but we were there for a wedding, so there was no way to be subtle about sneaking around.

Would be nice to explore...

For the wedding, one of the guests did ring the bells at the beginning and the end, which was lovely but not easily heard inside through the stone walls. The wedding was quite beautiful and we all had fun at the reception afterwards (though I criminally forgot to take pictures at the reception; I guess I was enjoying myself too much).

Happy couple exiting the church

Till Death Do You Part?

I ran across this video and had to pass it along because, hey, it's Bruce Campbell at a zombie-con.



Zombie wedding vows seem backwards to us since you don't become a zombie till after you have kids. On the other hand, the video is called The Evil Dead Wedding Renewal Ceremony, so renewing your vows after zombification is okay with us. All my wife and I need to do is invent a time travel device so we can go back to this event. That'll be tough with our lack of brains. I'm sure the kids will help out.

Making Choices, Zombie-Style

 Being a zombie parent, sometimes your choices are limited, either by circumstances or your darling little children.

We were supposed to go to a wedding today. Mommy picked out a lovely dress for Lucy, Jacob looked sharp in his new vest and pants. Directions were printed out. A card was ready, along with a gift certificate to the store where the happy couple are registered (we waited too late to go shopping to pick something out, whoops!). Everything seemed to be in place.

Except for last night. The family has been on the verge of recovering from a cold for the past three days. Last night, Lucy thought we were losing our sleep-deprived zombie state and had to intervene. She decided she couldn't sleep without one of her parents in her room. I spent the night "sleeping" on her floor. She was still ill in the morning and I was sleep deprived, so we started to discuss options for the wedding. The original plan was to have the kids nap on the drive to the church about an hour and a half away. It wouldn't have been quite enough nap but they usually are okay if they are healthy. We thought Lucy wouldn't get enough sleep to keep herself on the road to recovery, so maybe she shouldn't go. So the options were:

1. We go anyway, hoping Lucy would sleep extra in the church or driving between church and reception.
2. Just Daddy and Jacob go.
3. Just Daddy go with Mommy caring for Lucy and Jacob.
4. Nobody goes.

Option 1 seemed highly unlikely. Option 3 looked like it might be too much for Mommy, especially if Lucy didn't nap anyway. So 2 and 4 were the most likely contenders. In order to get me more sleep, Mommy would take the kids on some errands in the morning while I rested up.

I helped get the kids in the car. A serious problem manifested itself quickly when the automatic doors on the minivan wouldn't open from the key fob buttons. So I sat in the driver's seat and pushed the buttons to open the doors. Still no action. So I put the key in the ignition and turned it. That's all that happened. No lights came on, no bells started ringing, nothing at all. Seemed like a big problem with the battery. I noticed one of the automatic doors was slightly ajar, so maybe the interior lights were on all night.

Luckily we have jumper cables, so we would be okay.nIn order to jump start the van, we'd have to get it out of the garage. The new problem was the gear shift not changing to neutral. It runs on battery power, of which there was none. Consulting the owner's manual, we found the manual override in the dash that let us change the gear.

With the car finally in neutral, Mommy pushed because she didn't want to be responsible for steering out of the garage (a minivan is a tight fit for a one-car garage). After getting it out to the driveway, we drove up the other car. But the jump clearly wasn't working. A quick call to our favorite repair shop determined that it was probably a completely drained battery. The battery's six years old, so replacing was probably the best idea.

Extracting the battery was challenging too, since we don't have proper wrenches to loosen the cables. Phoning a friend worked out well. Thanks, BJ, not only are you a great source of YouTube videos but of great tools too! We got the battery out in no time, even though some of the nuts were hard to get too. A quick trip to the auto parts store procured a new battery and eventually a revived car.

Of course, by this point, going to the wedding was a moot point so we chose number four, though not by free choice. Sorry we couldn't make it to your wedding, Mike and Kimberly. The card will be in the mail shortly!