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...

Winter White

What a beautiful snow we had today - we so enjoyed watching it fall all afternoon! We don't get too many snowfalls in an average Kentucky winter, but this year has been an exception. Here are a few snapshots from our yard.

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.

Advent Trial and Triumphs

How are your Christmas preparations coming? Predictably, we've had our ups and downs already - the days are growing short and there is still much to be done, both spiritually and materially.

Notably, we are way behind on our Jesse tree, and the kids have been watching too much TV. But our focus on good deeds is helping everyone to put forth some extra effort, always a joy to see.

Here's a peek at some of our recent activities, successes and failures!

We made snowflake cookies with blue frosting for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8:

(Benjamin has since had a much-needed haircut!)

We had early Christmas with the paternal grandparents last week. New Lego and K'NEX sets and books are keeping small hands and brains busy while Mom has so much to do! Definitely a win in my book.

Another Christmas gathering is scheduled for this Sunday at our house. I hope I can figure out what to do with the tree before then!

You can't exactly see from the picture, but two of the three feet broke off the stand, and the tree is leaning against the blinds. It can't stand up at all. We never even made it as far as ornaments! Getting a new tree isn't really an option, so we are trying to decide between a bucket of sand, or looking for a used tree at the Goodwill that we can swap out the stand with. (The bucket of sand sounds like more fun for the "chipmunks", don't you think?)

Needless to say, this is terribly frustrating for an impatient person like me. I have come to realize that I already despise tedious Christmas tasks, including fancy cookie baking and tree trimming. I know, Scrooge!!  Then when things go wrong, I am really not so much fun to be around. I am trying to keep the Christmas spirit by remembering that these are minor things which are supposed to add to our celebration, not define it. And I love the results so much that I will go through the aggravation to enjoy them later.

Fortunately, I have drowned my sorrows in the most decadent, easy pumpkin spice latte from Sarah. I finally broke down after weeks of eying her sidebar photo, and I bought the requisite holiday ice cream. In seconds I had something that rivaled the costly lattes available at those places we all know too well. Oh, soooo good!!

It was even better with a chocolate biscotti from the homeschool moms' cookie exchange this week. Happy sigh. I am trying to shut out the little voice in the back of my head, from a Mass reading on the first Sunday of Advent: "Make no provision for the desires of the flesh." Hmm. Still have to work on that one.

Now on the agenda: getting family photo, finishing Christmas cards, more baking, cooking and wrapping. Some new treats I am hoping to try are these darling meringue mushrooms that someone brought to the cookie exchange and some cereal clusters that I would write home about. Yum.

So those are the kinds of things keeping me from my blog these days... An ice storm is headed our way tonight and we are wondering if there will be power tomorrow. Every day an adventure! Hope the last week of Advent is going well for everyone.

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.

Thanksgiving Prep!

Is this what you're doing today? Well, even if you're not outdoors stirring a cauldron, times haven't changed too much - we're all still busy preparing for the feast. I think my baked sweet potatoes, ready for mashing, look exactly like the Pilgrim mothers' probably did!

On the menu at our house: traditional roasted turkey, sausage stuffing with apples and cranberries, red-skinned mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, cranberry salad, green vegetables, rolls, and promises of dessert brought by guests: pumpkin trifle and cranberry apple pie! I am making a maple syrup pie, which is traditional in my family, and a pumpkin pie will undoubtedly materialize as well. Such abundance - we have so much to thank God for.

Wherever you are this holiday week, I wish you and yours every blessing, and especially the gift of gratitude on this Thanksgiving Day. Enjoy your turkey and all the traditions your family loves! I'll be back after the big day.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

November Ponderings

Well, I never had any visions of discussing weighty topics here, but November does make me pause to reflect on eternity and the hereafter. Not only do we begin the month with the feast of All Saints - a joyful celebration - but we (as Catholics) spend All Souls' Day and the entire month remembering the souls still awaiting their reward.

Lately, I have heard of the passing of several acquaintances, including Mr. Berquist, one of the founders of my Alma Mater. And this is also a time that I commemorate the pregnancy or infant losses of some dear mommy friends... always a hard reality to understand. Combine these with nature's movement toward cold and darkness, well - it's easy to ponder eternal realities!

Interestingly, it's also a time when the hint of celebrations soon to come bring some excitement and anticipation to the gray days. In fact, the very season we anticipate promises the antidote to death - death and sin give way to Light and Life! Recently, I read a passage in a booklet that captures the hope that Christians have:


"Death is now a supernatural event, a highway to Heaven. For Christ has given death new meaning... 'Thou hast made death glorious and triumphant, for through its portals we enter into the presence of the living God.' "


It's sometimes difficult for me not to let the material world and its present sorrows weigh on me. I internalize the troubles of others easily - and with the access to the world enabled by the internet - well, there are many, many sorrows. We need to feed our souls with hope and joy! Scripture reading is second to none for keeping us grounded in the eternal. There is a wealth of other reading available to encourage our hearts on this journey. One book I read a few years ago was a logical study of heaven - immensely captivating and one I would recommend: A Travel Guide To Heaven.

While pondering many endings at this time of year, how blessed we are to have the the comforts offered by our Faith - a new Church year beginning soon with the hopeful seasons of Advent and Christmas, the consolation of the communion of saints united in praising God in heaven and on earth, and the expectation of our bodily resurrection on the last day. Like the natural world around us, we rest in the winter of our existence, knowing that the coming of springtime is only a matter of time.

Read more about the Catholic belief in the resurrection of the body at the Knights of Columbus website here. Scroll down to Lesson 9.

(photo credit)

It's Cold!

Wishing you hot cocoa and leaf cookies and a warm jar candle on a chilly night. Love this time of year!

Hickory Nut Harvest

Remember that infamous nature walk? We went back there yesterday, but this time we drove. I had a specific mission in mind: picking up hickory nuts to use for fall crafts. It was getting dark when the inspiration hit, so we had to hurry. It took about 11 seconds to get from our house to the hickory nut tree on that road. I knew it was the right tree when the tires started crunching shells on the road! Thankfully, no one cried on this excursion.

I have seen hickory nuts at my parents' house and we must have the same variety here. I was always intrigued by the smooth white nut inside the ugly outer shell. It just looks like a doll's head to me and my brain immediately starts grinding out hickory nut craft ideas.

It turns out there are many different kinds of hickory nuts. Jeff and I had an argument this morning when he saw our cache. Apparently, our hickory nuts don't look like real hickory nuts, the ones he got paid for picking up in the yard when he was a kid in Arkansas. But those ugly things?! Those are not hickory nuts, as far as I know!  Here is a page showing the varieties. Here, we have shagbark hickories. In Arkansas, it must have been shellbark or kingnut. Funny how different they are! No wonder we didn't even think they were the same animal.

So here's a picture showing some of the nuts we collected. At the top you can see the nuts in various stages of breaking out of their hulls. Aren't those inside kernels pretty?

We were interested first in using the outer shells to make hickory nut boats, which I saw on this blog post. We needed half-shells, but they were so dried up that they fell apart in quarters and we had to glue them back together to make our boats. While I was melting a pumpkin spice jar candle in the oven (which is what you do when you have no beeswax per the instructions) we made little sails from toothpicks and scrapbooking paper scraps. Then we poured the wax into the hollow boats, let it set up for a few minutes, and then installed the sails. Voila! A fleet of lil' nutshell ships!  They smelled great too. So cute. Wish I had seen this in time for Columbus Day...

We read that hickory nuts are hard to crack, but we tried anyway. We had to hit them with a small hammer and pick the meat out with a skewer. I had to sit on the kitchen floor, which is vinyl over concrete - it was the only place hard enough to hammer on. (Note to self: try to avoid sitting on the kitchen floor. Way too much down there that should never be seen at close range!)

The nuts were delicious! They tasted exactly like a sweet, extra-creamy pecan - not surprising since they are related. After about 1/2 an hour of work, this is what we had. Molly made off with the stash as soon as I took the picture. She loved them! It was a lot of work for little result, but it felt very primal to harvest and eat something uncultivated straight from nature. I have a lot of respect for squirrels now, too.

So then we had time to play with the hickory nuts and other interesting items from our nature box, to see what we could create. (I'm surprised how few ideas I could find on the internet.) Here is what Benjamin came up with on his own. It's supposed to be a frog! He also wanted to use the glue gun on his own. (gasp!)

Here are a few of my creations. Forgive my lack of camera skills! I was stuck in a Christmas ornament rut, so that's what they're meant to be. They are about 3" tall.

Caroling Angel

Snowman

 

Woodland Critter

I'm still mulling over some ideas for when I have more time. I was thrilled to find that there is a little book still in print from 1946 called Miss Hickory, about a doll with a hickory nut head and her nature friends. It sounds delightfully quirky, and this site gives instructions for actually creating the doll and her accessories - no pictures, though. I can't quite predict if the boys will enjoy this adventure, or if I'll have to wait for Molly to grow up a little. I plan to get the book and see! This stuff is right up my ally, so I know I will have a good time regardless.