Summer Doin's

Dog days are getting nearer - what a scorcher this week! I have to say my camera has been on vacation lately, but I have a few shots from June that I can share. I so dislike posting without pictures!

In early June we traveled to Lexington to meet the newest cousins - twins Peter and Ethan. Oh, what rejoicing on their arrival! They are just beyond precious. Molly in particular was so taken with "the babies" that we have had to play "Peter and Ethan" with dolls and bears ever since. 

We are anxious to see them again for their baptism this month.

Naturally, outdoor activities are most popular lately. We are blessed with an amazing park system in Louisville, and have enjoyed visiting as many as possible. 

 

One of our favorites, Cherokee Park, is home to the wonderful Beargrass Creek, perfect for wading and exploring. The kids can watch minnows, gather shells, skip rocks, and whatever fun adventures come to mind. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and what a treat in the middle of the city...

 

 

 

 

Up the path, water cascades from limestone cliffs. It feels like an alternate world when you're here, a little bit of heaven! We had a gorgeous, breezy day - this was long before the heat wave hit.

 

 

Closer to home, bikes, balls and frisbees are favorites. The kids have a neighborhood friend now, so it's easy to get them outside to play. However, they have outgrown the kiddie pool and always want to go somewhere to swim! We have visited some of the "splash parks" in the city park system, but haven't found a pool to frequent, so far.

 

At the end of June, Brendan turned 9 years old! We had a little celebration at home, with a clown fish cake.

A few days later, Grandma took the kids (and Daddy) to the amazing Holiday World water park for the day. I had the whole day at home to myself... I may have had almost as much fun as the kids! It was the highlight of the summer for them - unfortunately, no pictures were taken. No matter. They still talk about it every day and look forward to visiting again someday (tomorrow, if they had their way!) 

Now we are looking forward to spending more time with family and friends in the coming weeks. We finally traded in our disintegrating van for a nice, reliable vehicle, so it's been a pleasure to get out and around more. After 4 years with no AC in our car, we are positively in heaven as we beat the heat on the road. It's truthfully at the top of my gratitude list right now! We'll be reuniting with our old playgroup this week, celebrating my brother's birthday with my family, and attending the twins' baptism next week. August will bring Molly's birthday and State Fair. Just the current events of a pleasant, busy summer, with lots of everyday life in between. More to come as the weeks unfold...

The Crowning of The Year

Oh, so much to share. So many titles I could have chosen! But this is a line from one of my favorite Christmas (Advent?) carols:

People Look East

People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

Christmas really is the crowning of the year! There are a thousand things I love about the late days of December - the hectic preparations that overcome you no matter how organized you thought you were; the beauty of Christmas night, heading out to church in the snow (if you're so lucky); the exhale of sitting down to dinner on Christmas Day knowing that everything is done at last; the lazy, sleepy day after.

This year, I meditated quite a bit on another line from the song above: Make your house as fair as you are able. Not as fair as the neighbors', or as fair as your mom's, or as fair as that magazine cover or that other blogger's photos! Able means: within your means, your capacity, your ability. People like me need to be reminded that sometimes it's fair enough. I am genetically programmed to over-do until I drop. Intellectually, I know this. With some effort, I can intentionally put the brakes on my need to execute every grand plan that my head can come up with. That's what I tried to do this year, and it helped me move beyond survival to actual enjoyment of both Advent and Christmas. Tasks were fit in around the needs of lots of little people, my own limitations, and finances. Some things got trimmed, others adapted. 

One thing that has helped me is to remember this is not the only Christmas we will ever celebrate. Some ideas can be used next year! Maybe some traditions could alternate years, like the snow globes that are still packed away upstairs because I never got them out, and the kids haven't remembered (yet). 

On the bright side, every single thing I ordered from Amazon on December 18th arrived by Christmas Eve. This is when technology is my friend! The kids were clean and dressed. Most decorations got put up. The cookies and treats I envisioned got made. Mostly. 

The speed bumps? The tree never did want to stand up in its place in the exact center of the window. So we propped it up against the counter and decorated as usual. Looks gorgeous. Not perfect. The kids love it. We didn't get to a few of the recipes on that list in my head. No one noticed. This is the dessert table from Christmas dinner at my mom's:

See what I mean? Genetically programmed! (Isn't it beautiful?)

What emerged as important was the time we spent in worship and thanksgiving, the time spent together as a family sharing the blessing of the children's joy, and the time celebrating with loved ones seen too seldom, sharing their joy. It was a wonderful, peaceful Christmas Day. (Mom's table, again).

We went to Christmas Eve Mass earlier than usual, a snow storm on the way. Once home, after the now-traditional stop at Walgreens for something we forgot, we made Tourtiere, the traditional French Canadian meat pie that Jeff and I both grew up with. I still had plenty of wrapping and baking to do that night. Even though they could not get to sleep before 11 pm or even later, the kids got up at 5:30 am. Jeff and I were still up! We rolled with it and had Christmas morning, since we knew no one was going back to sleep. Then we left them playing with their new toys and caught a few hours' sleep ourselves (with Molly) before cooking some more and heading out to be with family. 

It was such a treat to have a Sunday right after Christmas this year. It was the most blissful day of rest all year! Being together seemed like a fitting way to celebrate the feast of The Holy Family.

Our celebrating is a long way from over. My sister's birthday celebration is tomorrow. Then, family and friends are expected over here on New Year's Eve. We will probably be with family again sometime that weekend. Epiphany is also early again this year, the day after New Year's, and we celebrate that day as well. Honestly, I'm still in rest and recovery mode, while halfheartedly reassembling the house to be ready for New Year's Eve. I'm not sure how we will celebrate Epiphany yet! 

To take the last line from the song, it is all for Love: Love, the guest, is on the way. It's about Him, it's for Him. He is the reason for this joy, this labor, this togetherness! We are so thankful that He has come and has given us hope and a reason to celebrate. Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus!

Blessings of this beautiful season to each of you reading... May Love fill your homes and hearts, too.

St Nicholas Day Party

The St. Nick party last week was a success! We did have 23 kids and a total of 34 people in our house. It went amazingly well since there were plenty of activities to keep everyone occupied. We did 2 crafts: a color-your-own holy card with an image of St. Nicholas, printable here, and some foam ornaments that were simple even for little kids to put together.

I was thankful for my sister-in-law Katie supervising the crafts - she even cleaned up this mess afterward! Not a small feat for someone just about full-term with the newest member of our homeschool group.

Meanwhile, we finished setting out dinner in the kitchen (it was potluck).. You can see that some Dads were able to join us. Food, fun, and fellowship in the kitchen!

We had already made a nice dent in the dessert area by the time I took a picture...

...before we put on the St. Nicholas movie. The kids surprised us by relaxing long enough to actually watch the whole thing this year!

Then we played "St. Nicholas Chimney Toss" (inspired by Charlotte, here) with the kids grouped by age level. I had made a "chimney" out of a cardboard box, and the kids tossed in "bags of gold" in imitation of St. Nick  (see the moneybags on the table there?) The top scorers in each group won prizes.

I didn't get any action pictures since I was too busy running the game. But here I am with one of my favorite winners. Those are reindeer antlers on his head!

Finally, a large red sack appeared on the doorstep filled with treat bags for all the kids, a great finale to all the fun. A very good evening!

We just enjoyed relaxing weekend... now it's "real" St. Nicholas Day and the kids found their shoes stuffed with small treats and toys. Blessed Feast Day to all, and may St. Nicholas provide whatever it is you are needing today. God bless you, readers!

(from stnicholascenter.org)

A Season of Preparation

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was noisy and fun, just surrounded with beautiful, simple food and beloved family. I was so tired that we spent the next 2 days doing n-o-t-h-i-n-g! Literally. Therefore I am a little behind getting ready for the St. Nicholas party here on Dec. 1st. Grocery shopping was haphazard and I have no idea what we will be eating this week. But I did get lots of sleep!

I did manage to put a little thought into our Advent plans. It's just a beautiful time to me, and I am really enjoying sharing it with the kids as they get a little older. Here is our Advent wreath with lovely candles recycled from last  year...

We read the prayers together and the first candle burned during our Sunday night dinner.

I decided to make little cards with one-word inspirations on them as a focus for our good deeds. These are areas that we all need to improve on within the family, and we will each draw one randomly on each Sunday of Advent to inspire us for the week ahead. It was uncanny how perfectly matched each word was to the one who drew it this week!! God knows what we all need.

As always, for each good deed in the next 4 weeks, we will be adding straw to a little basket representing Baby Jesus' bed, making it as deep and soft as possible before His birthday. It's delightful to see how earnestly the kids are trying to please Him, at least so far! It's a great reminder to me of how important it is for all of  us to have a focus and motivation for our good works, and of how wise the Church is to give us these seasons and challenges to reach higher in our efforts to love and serve.

So granted, none of the above takes any time to actually do, so this year I am finally implementing a Jesse Tree devotional for each day. I've never done one in the past, either because I didn't get myself together in time, or the kids weren't really old enough to participate. I searched online and found there are dozens of versions out there, kind of overwhelming! Basically, this is a way of learning salvation history through well-loved bible stories. Each story has an accompanying symbol which is made into an ornament and hung on a tree. I settled on something that seemed very simple and sweet even for small children, with printable symbols to make it easy for me. Our tree is just a little Christmas tree I happened to have, although I would have liked a real branch if I'd had more time.  Here is our first ornament, the shoot from the "root of Jesse" (Isaiah 11: 1-2)

It's been fun putting the materials together and the kids seem to be into it. What kid doesn't love a story, especially a bible story filled with drama? I hope this will help us all to see the big picture of why Jesus' birth is so important and that there really is more to Christmas than shopping and opening gifts. We love everything about Christmas here, so it is a joy to deepen our understanding and discover greater meaning to our beloved traditions.

There will be lots of fun celebrations along the way, too. Advent is really such a joyful time! St. Nicholas day is big, and as I mentioned, the party for our homeschool group will be here, on Wednesday. It is a big party! I'm also planning a peppermint day, something yet-to-be-determined for December 8, (the feast of Mary's Immaculate Conception), and a Mexican feast for Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. I am sure there are more celebrations to follow, they're just not on my radar yet! We always drive around to look at Christmas lights around Christmas day, but I recently heard of someone who had a tradition of doing it for St. Lucy's day, December 13. I'll have to look into that.

One thing I still need to do is get together our Advent/Christmas book basket. That will be another post. For now, Advent blessings to all my readers! I hope this is a special time for all of your families. 

PS: Oh, and it's Catholic Cyber Monday at Lacy's - look at all these deals she has rounded up!! You could shop all day right there.

Turning Two

Yesterday was a wonderful day of remembering and thanksgiving for me - remembering Molly's blessed arrival, and giving thanks for the joy she has brought to our family! I didn't know just what a special treasure a baby daughter could be, and I have loved every moment of her... Happy birthday to my lil' Molly Rose!  Being your Mama has been one of the greatest gifts of my life, and I praise God for the blessing that you are. You are so loved by your Mama, Daddy, and those big brothers. May God bless you, sweet girl.

A Feast of Grace

Every last detail was finished. Flowers arranged, clothes ironed, little ones prepared, batteries in the camera. Everyone arrived for the 2:00 pm Mass. The kids walked beautifully in procession. Mom looked as radiant as any bride! Loved ones sang the hymns in beautiful harmony, read the Bible readings, and served on the altar. And the grace flowed...

Midway through Mass, Mom and Dad renewed their vows. Forty-four years faithful, not without battle scars, they stood victorious, asking for grace anew. When we sang Faith of Our Fathers, my heart was filled with gratitude for a family that was together, sharing this precious Faith and passing it down.

Finally, Brendan carefully approached the altar to receive his Lord for the first time  He was followed by his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, a line of unbroken faithfulness. Grace flowed.  As a proud and grateful mother and daughter, I was moved to tears by the beauty of these blessed moments.

The reception afterwards was a joyous celebration with family and friends. While the food was delicious and the music nostalgic, the best moments were spent visiting, reminiscing and relaxing. We were all too tired to dance! 

Now if only I had better pictures to share! It seems I was... distracted. I've been promised better ones from other photographers that day, so there will be more to come. For now, here's just a peek from our day.

The vows ceremony:

My parents, me on the right behind the kids, Jeff holding Molly, plus all my siblings and my sister-in-law in blue:

 Brendan:

Dessert table at the reception (notice cookies in back row!):

 

Close-up of cookies Brendan with his cake:

Molly, sacked out at the reception: 

My tom-girl: scraped legs, frilly dress and party shoes!

That's all for now!