Seven Quick Takes. Okay, Six. Five and a Half.

Posted on October 17, 2014October 17, 2014 by Amy

Hooray for Friday!

I was getting ready to put the boxes for my girls’ new shoes in the recycling the other day. I happened to notice the labels.

I’m just going to note that I’m so glad my four-year-old has “running” shoes available in her size. These will be super important when we start her marathon training. And I’m not exactly sure what “lightweight training” is specifically, but I’m relieved that my five-year-old will be prepared when she encounters it.

Speaking of being prepared, I have been really trying not to freak out about the cases of Ebola in the United States. I think the media is (as usual) really overblowing everything and trying to make everyone feel terrified and therefore be glued to their televisions. I also think, “What-in-the-world-is-wrong-with-you-CDC-people???” Beyond that, I’ve been really working on not panicking about this thing.

However, I have spent at least one night of restless, nightmare-plagued sleep over it, and I am considering just boarding up my house and eating freeze-dried food for however long it takes the people in charge to come up with a cure and a vaccine. At least I’ll still have the internet.

Monday was the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. We made a dancing sun craft and watched our DVD about the Marian apparitions and miracle at Fatima. Then, because Mary referred to herself during these apparitions as the “Lady of the Rosary” and requested that people pray the devotion daily, I had the girls pray a complete rosary with me for the first time.

I’m all about inspiring a love for the prayers, and chocolate makes everything fun.

Thanks to Kendra for the reminder to try this this month (though we didn’t manage it on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary).

I have been liberated. I am truly free.

My children are of the age where they can go outside and play by themselves. However, after a few stings last summer and this summer, and due to an intense fear of the noise of the train near our house, they have insisted that they are too afraid to go outside without me.

Now, normally I try to be nice and sensitive to my children’s fears. But there are times (lots of times) when they just need to get outside but I have other things to get done, and/or I am not jazzed about the idea of standing out there with them. Over the past weekend I had one of those times.

Miss wanted to go outside, but not all by herself. Sis wanted to go outside but only if I went too. Lass didn’t want to go out at all. Two of them were crying. Sis was saying, “I so sferred!” (she can’t make the K sound).

I kicked them all out. I literally pried Sis’s fingers from the door as I slid it shut and said, “Have fun!”

She wasn’t happy at first.

You may think me cruel, but I knew exactly what would happen. She and her sisters all pulled it together and had plenty of fun. Now they go outside without me, without complaint or tears, every day. Tough love.

FREEDOM!!!

I came across Jess Connell’s blog the other day when a friend linked to this post on Facebook. The post is about Jess’s answer to the question some people ask (and someone posted in her combox), “Why do people keep having more kids if they are already exhausted with the 1 or 2 they do have?” Jess has six-going-on-seven kids, and her response to the question is perfect.

Basically it is this, anything worthwhile is tiring. And it comes down to how you view children: as a blessing or a burden? a joy or a chore?

She hit the nail on the head.

When I was tired from studying or writing my dissertation in graduate school no one ever asked me, “Why would you do that, since it makes you so exhausted?” That would have been a bizarre thing to ask. Yet people ask it of parents about their children not infrequently, on social media in particular. Read Jess’s whole post here. I’d love to hear what you think about it.

I know there were more things I wanted to put into Quick Takes this week. I just can’t for the life of me remember what they are. Someday I’ll get the hang of writing down the things I plan to blog about instead of trying to remember them on the fly. For now I leave you with five and a half takes.

Have a great weekend and be sure to check out the link up at Conversion Diary, where other writers actually get to seven in their posts.

Diary of a Grammar Geek

Posted on October 14, 2014October 14, 2014 by Amy

I freely admit that I am a big nerd when it comes to my love of proper grammar. I can’t really help it. I just really like it. It makes me happy.

I don’t mean to say that I think I am always perfectly grammatically correct. I’m not, in either my writing or my speech. I tend to write this blog the way that I speak, so I know it doesn’t always make the A+ grade for grammar. Sometimes I use sentence fragments if it helps my flow. I often start a sentence with a conjunction, though I almost never end one with a preposition. And (see?) sometimes I say things like, “I’m good” in response to the question “How are you?” *gasp*

I think what makes me a grammar geek is that I actually care about things like the correct use of adverbs and adjectives. Even though I don’t always do it perfectly (see what I did there?), I am always trying to make my grammar correct. And I love learning new things about proper grammar. For example:

I bought a book recently called “It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences,” and it’s fascinating.

It was only just recently that I learned the rule about when to use “who” and when to use “whom.” I thought I knew it, but I had only understood part of it. I was so excited. Truly.

I kind of can’t wait until my kids are old enough for me to have them start diagramming sentences in our homeschool. It was one of my favorite things to do in English class.

See?

There are some things that drive me kind of nuts, like improper use of apostrophes.

Or lack of apostrophes when they should be there.

I mean, one of the reasons Super Friend and I are such good friends is because she knows when to type “you’re” and when to type “your” in a text or email.

Just kidding (sort of).

BUT, though I freely admit to being a nerd, I don’t consider myself to be a “grammar Nazi.”

I don’t ever correct someone’s grammar, punctuation, or spelling unless they specifically ask me to. Except in my head. And when I do it in my head, it’s not malicious. I just can’t help myself.

My thinking as I scroll through Facebook posts:

“‘Should have’, not ‘should of’.”

“‘Too funny’, not ‘to funny’.”

“‘Couldn’t care less’, not ‘could care less’.”

“Quotation marks do not mean emphasis.”

AND:

What’s my point? I don’t have one. I just like thinking about and writing about grammar. I do wish people would pay more attention to using it correctly. But I’m a nerd. Here’s a take home message if you want one:

Truth.

And even though some of this song is kind of mean spirited, I do enjoy this Weird Al Yankovic remake of “Blurred Lines.”

Grandparents (again), Field Trips (again), and Walls (finally)

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Amy

Quick Takes Friday!

We had a lot of fun with my parents when they were here. We got to celebrate my Mom’s birthday in my very favorite way. With gifts from the Dollar Tree, of course! I let the girls each pick two things as gifts for my Mom. The two older girls really tried to choose things they thought their Grandma would like. I just love watching how proud they are to see their gifts opened and appreciated.

Miss chose a fall-themed oven mitt and a water bottle (similar to the one my Mom uses for her coffee). Lass selected a six-pack of plastic hangers and a statue of a mother holding a baby, which she immediately thought to be Mary and Baby Jesus and decided my non-Catholic mother must have it.

Sis chose a snow globe with puppies in it and what she thought was a small “bouncy ball” that turned out to be a soccer-themed washcloth.

I never get tired of the dollar store presents.

The only time our little dolls and castle ever look like this:

With every. single. one. posed at “The Ball,” is when my Mom is here.

Grandparents are the best.

Two weeks ago, we read the book A Pair of Red Clogs (set in Japan). The Godmother brought me some real Japanese clogs and kimonos and an obi and other things from Japan, that her father had brought back after WWII. She told me to let my girls touch and feel and try on and play with these wonderful items!

Somehow I only got really crummy photos, but the girls had such fun trying on the shoes and clothes and twirling and clomping around. I have such a thoughtful and generous Godmother.

I had wanted to take the girls to a hibachi restaurant for a meal/field trip, but didn’t get around to it during the week that we read the Red Clogs book. So we went with my parents on Wednesday night. The older girls loved it.

Sis didn’t want anything to do with it.

Speaking of field trips, this week we’re reading “A Glorious Flight” about how Louis Bleriot built an airplane and was the first person to fly a plane over the English Channel. We have an amazing aviation museum nearby, which was the perfect field trip this week.

In case you’re wondering, that’s at least seven field trips for us already this year!

Finally, I am very excited to show you this last photo:

Walls! We have walls finally going up. We have such a long, long way to go, I know. But this, seeing something coming up from the ground for real, has just made my weekend.

For more Quick Takes, check out the link up at Conversion Diary.

Baby Catholic Answers All the Things, Volume 7 – The Rosary

Posted on October 7, 2014October 7, 2014 by Amy

Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and October is the month dedicated to the Holy Rosary. When I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day, who is in the process of reversion to the Catholic Faith, she mentioned that she is eager to learn about the rosary so that she can begin praying it herself. So I’m bringing back Baby Catholic Answers All the Things (sorry, it’s been a while!) with a post all about this beautiful devotion.

The rosary has a long tradition in the Catholic Church. You can read a history of the devotion here. It is made up of five decades of repeated prayers, Hail Marys separated by Our Fathers, used to meditate on sets of mysteries.

So, what does that actually mean? Using sets of prayers, called decades, to meditate on sets of mysteries? Wha?? Why the repetitive, memorized prayers? Why the devotion to Mary?

Let me break it down. First of all, you can read my Baby Catholic Answers post on Marian devotion here. In a nutshell: Catholics don’t’ worship Mary. The rosary is not a way to worship Mary. One of the people in my RCIA class from last year had been staunchly anti-Catholic before converting from Protestantism. She began praying the rosary during Lent and asked during class one week, “What is the deal with all these prayers to Mary? Why am I praying to Mary??” My answer to her was something like this, “The rosary is not so much about praying to Mary as it is about growing in our understanding of and faith in Jesus. The mysteries are almost all about Jesus, not Mary. Mary always leads us closer to her Son.”

Let me back up just a bit more here to explain how the rosary works and what a “mystery” is in this context. First, how the rosary works:

If you pick up a rosary, you will see a loop of beads with a tail coming out from it. At the end of the tail is a crucifix.

Above the crucifix, on the tail, there are five beads. First is an “Our Father bead.” Our Father beads are sometimes different from most of the beads on the rosary, and sometimes they’re just separated by more chain. The next three beads are “Hail Mary beads.” Then there’s a space and another Our Father bead, followed by the joiner (I think that’s what it’s called). The joiner can differ from rosary to rosary. One of mine has a Holy Family medal, another has an Ave Maria thingy (see below).

^ This one is an example of a rosary where the beads are all the same but the Our Father beads are separated from the Hail Mary beads by more chain.

Looking more closely at the beads on the loop of the rosary, you can see that there are groups of ten Hail Mary beads, called “decades,” that are separated from each other by Our Father beads.

So to pray the rosary, you start on the crucifix and say the Apostles Creed. Then you move to the first Our Father bead and say. . . an Our Father. Then three Hail Marys on the Hail Mary beads. On the the chain between the last Hail Mary and the next Our Father bead, you say a Glory Be. Then on the final Our Father bead, announce the first mystery, then say the Our Father.

Then you move to the first set of ten Hail Mary beads and say ten Hail Marys. When you get to chain before the second Our Father bead, say the Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer (I’m not sure if some people maybe don’t do this last one?), then move to the next Our Father bead, announce the second mystery and say the Our Father, then pray the next decade of Hail Marys. And it goes the same way through all five mysteries and five decades until you get to the last Fatima Prayer. After the last Fatima Prayer, on the joiner, pray the Hail Holy Queen. Then to conclude there is another prayer, but I’m not sure what it’s called. Most sites I looked at included it at the end of the rosary, but I haven’t seen a name for it. It goes like this:

Oh God, whose only begotten Son, by his life, death, and resurrection, has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant we beseech Thee that, meditating upon these mysteries of the most Holy rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain, and obtain what they promise, through the same Christ our Lord, Amen.

So that’s the sequence of praying the rosary. But you may be wondering what in the world are these mysteries I keep referring to, and why so many prayers repeated over and over?

The answer is meditation.

The rosary isn’t so much about the prayers, as it is about meditation. The prayers are repeated over and over because most Catholics can say Our Fathers and Hail Marys and Glory Bes without needing to think about them, freeing their minds to meditate on the mysteries. The rhythmic nature of the prayers actually facilitates the meditation. And what we meditate on are the 20 mysteries of faith.

For centuries, there were 15 mysteries included in the rosary, grouped into three sets of five.

The Joyful Mysteries (prayed on Mondays and Saturdays):

The Annunciation
The Visitation
The Nativity of Jesus
The presentation of Jesus
The finding of Jesus in the Temple

The Glorious Mysteries (prayed on Sundays and Wednesdays)

The Resurrection
The Ascension
The descent of the Holy Spirit
The Assumption of Mary
The crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven

The Sorrowful Mysteries (prayed on Tuesdays and Fridays)

The agony in the garden
The scourging at the pillar
The crowning with thorns
Jesus carries the cross
Jesus is crucified

In October 2002 Saint John Paul II (is he referred to as Saint John Paul the Great now?) added the Luminous Mysteries (prayed on Thursdays):

The baptism of Jesus
The wedding at Cana
The proclamation of the Kingdom
The transfiguration
The institution of the Eucharist

When you pray the rosary, you meditate on the days’ mysteries, each for the duration of a decade.

^ Someone else around here really likes my rosaries and chaplets.

To sum it all up, when I pray the rosary today, it will go like this:

I will make the Sign of the Cross
I’ll say a short prayer stating my intentions for the rosary (i.e. I offer the rosary for the intention of my children, my husband, my godson, a sick friend, etc.)
The Apostles’ Creed
The Our Father
Three Hail Marys
The Glory Be
Since today is Tuesday, I will then say, “The first Sorrowful Mystery – The agony in the garden.”
Then I will pray the Our Father
Ten Hail Marys
The Glory Be
The Fatima Prayer
I will do 8-11 all while focusing my thoughts on Jesus’s agony in the garden. This is the meditation part. I’ll try to think about how He felt, remember what He went through, imagine myself in that situation, etc. I’ll try really hard to stay focused, but sometimes (often!) my mind will wander. I will repeatedly bring my thoughts back to Jesus in the Garden.
I’ll repeat these steps for each of the other four Sorrowful Mysteries.
I’ll pray the Hail Holy Queen
Closing prayer (above)
Sign of the Cross

If you pray the rosary frequently, you are repeatedly meditating on all of Salvation history, all of the mysteries of our faith. It covers Jesus’s conception and birth, high points of His childhood and His adulthood as He spread the gospel and performed miracles, His Passion, death, resurrection, ascension into Heaven, and His sending down of the Holy Spirit.

I really love praying the rosary. It is so beautiful and such a fulfilling way to pray. I highly recommend it.

^ Only two of those are rosaries, the others are chaplets (Seven Sorrows, Stations of the Cross, and Hannah’s Tears)

Happy Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary!

Awesomeness. Plus Puppies, Leaves, and Grandparents

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Amy

It’s Friday!

I chaperoned a field trip for Miss’s kindergarten class on Monday. We went to a Farm where they got to pick an apple and go on a hay ride and pick a pumpkin. I had three little girls in the group I was charged with. One of them is a girl I’ve heard Miss mention several times as her special school friend. I overheard that little girl say to Miss near the end of the trip, “Your mom is awesome.” And Miss just said, “Yeah.”

Winning.

In a few weeks we’re going to have a couple of additions to our family.

Two of these little cuties will be coming home with us in early November. We have been looking for a Border Terrier puppy for months. They are very hard to find and most breeders have waiting lists. I happened to find the owner of these dogs on the AKC website. She bred her two dogs, and then decided she doesn’t really want to do the breeding thing, so this is her first and only litter of Border Terrier pups. Since she’s not a known breeder and doesn’t have a website or anything, she has no waiting list! We decided to get two puppies, one male and one female. We get our pick of the puppies in the picture. The hard part will be choosing the puppies from photo and video, since she lives seven hours away and we won’t be able to see them in person before picking them up.

My parents are coming to visit today. Yahoo!

Lass is very excited, because that means she gets to share her room with Miss.

I’m very excited, because that means I get to have an overnight date with my husband this weekend.

And everyone is excited, because Damma and Tuppa rock, of course.

Speaking of Lass and my parents, over the weekend we had beautiful weather, and my husband blew/raked all our leaves up into a magnificent jumping pile for the girls.

At one point, the pile had gotten quite flattened and dispersed from all the throwing of and jumping into leaves.

I was raking it back together when Lass exclaimed, “Mama! You learned to rake the leaves for us!” (apparently, my husband usually does this?). I responded drily, “Yes Honey. Grandpa taught me to rake leaves a long time ago when I was a little girl.”

She said, “Oh, I just love my Grandpa. It’s so good that he taught you to do that Mama.” I’m not sure that my childhood and adolescent self would have agreed with that, but I’m sure glad she thinks so now.

While the girls were jumping in the leaves, I decided it was a good opportunity to experiment with shooting in manual mode. I got a few shots I really like.

And several that didn’t turn out so well.

I really, really want to learn to shoot in manual all the time, and though I have a general understanding of most of the basics (shutter speed, aperture; I’m still working on remembering ISO), at this point it’s all pretty much just trial and error. I just need to do it more, I think.

I was finally able to get my girls back into gymnastics starting this week. Trying to schedule it so they could all go was just not working out before, but they were missing it and asking to go back.

^^ Somersaults in the leaves.

I managed to get Sis into the tot class in the morning, and Miss and Lass are in a private lesson right after hers. It really isn’t much more expensive than regular classes for them, and it’s probably a wash when you consider that now we won’t be paying for the weeks they miss when we travel. They get so much more from it with the more focused attention of their teacher (last time I had them in a class there were nine children in Miss’s class!), and I get to not hate every minute of taking them to a class in the evenings (I’m not a fan of evening activities if I can avoid them). Win/win.

That’s all I’ve got. I’m off to put ham and bean soup in the crockpot, so it will be all ready and yummy when my parents arrive. Since we have company coming, we may be having a “Home Ec.” day in our homeschool today.

Have a great weekend! For more quick takes, visit Conversion Diary.

My First Michaelmas

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Amy

I first heard about Michaelmas through Haley’s blog, and have seen and read more and more about it over the past several months. It is a feast day with such rich tradition and interesting history, I knew I wanted to celebrate it in a fun way with the girls this year.

I decided to go all in and invite the Super Friend Family over to make it even more fabulous.

I got pretty much all of my information and ideas from Haley’s post here and Kendra’s post here, and the St. Michael prayer card above is a printable from this post.

Traditionally on Michaelmas, folks have served goose and carrots and blackberries. I couldn’t find a goose (not for lack of trying)

so I made cornish game hens instead, with this recipe. I had never made this particular recipe before, and it’s been a few years since the last time I cooked a cornish hen, but this was easy and quite yummy (and made enough to feed four adults and seven children). I also made whisky glazed carrots from this recipe, which were amazing, and blackberry cobbler from this recipe. I literally decided to throw together the cobbler Sunday night at 9:00, and I’m glad I did. It was very easy and so good.

I love the story of why people eat blackberries on Michaelmas. The legend goes that, when St. Michael cast satan from heaven, he fell into a blackberry bush (satan, not St. Michael). He was angry, and he cursed and spat on the blackberries. So, tradition says to eat all the available blackberries on Michaelmas, because after that day they will taste bitter from satan cursing and spitting on them.

The food was good. The company was excellent. Before dinner the kids colored archangel pictures I copied from various coloring books I have. I happened to have a coloring page for each of the archangels, which I was quite excited about because St. Raphael tends to be the archangel that no one mentions much, and I wanted to be sure to have something to celebrate him, because he is the patron of our home parish.

The big fun, however, happened after dinner. I stole Kendra’s idea and got a piñata of the devil for the kids to beat up on. I found one to order on Etsy in this shop. I don’t see the original listing in the shop anyone, but it was for a DareDevil character piñata, which looked like it had a mask on and a slightly smiling face. I asked the artist to make it a bit more devil-like. She did a great job.

I put some candy in the body of this guy and the kids went to town on it.

I thought for sure that the bigger kids would smash it open in no time.

But this piñata was actually made a bit too strong. They went around and around, taking turns banging on it, and it just wouldn’t open. Finally I suggested putting it on the ground to give them better aim and leverage on the thing.

Even that didn’t really work. They made some holes in it, but not enough for the candy to spill out all over the floor. I think perhaps grown men with baseball bats could have smashed it open, but not children six and under with a segment of Swiffer Sweeper handle. The good news about that is that it is still intact enough that I will be able to salvage it and reuse it for next year.

I the end the dads ripped it open a bit where the kids had made the holes and dumped the candy on the floor. The kids didn’t seem to care. They got candy. They got to take many turns whacking the devil. They got to stay up past bedtime on a school night (seriously, it took forever to get that piñata open!). I think a good time was had by all.

At one point in the evening, I believe between dinner and dessert, I heard Lass in the next room, leading all the kids in a rousing cheer for St. Michael. “Three cheers for St. Michael!” she yelled. And all of them chimed in, “Hip-hip Hooray! Hip-hip Hooray! Hip-hip Hooray!”

I think we have a new yearly tradition.

Happy Michaelmas!

What I Learned From a Drawing of Poop

Posted on September 25, 2014September 25, 2014 by Amy

Sometimes I get kind of caught up in the stuff of a day. The endless repetitive tasks that moms do. The routine. You know.

Make breakfast. Clean up breakfast. Get everyone dressed. Make beds. Do school for a while. Serve snack. Clean up snack. Do more school. Clean something. Make lunch. Clean up lunch. Get little girls down for naps. Do more school with big girl. . . And so forth. Every. Day.

I can get caught in the routine and overly focused on getting the job done. Or overly focused on making sure that my girls use their manners or learn XYZ lesson. I want to raise my kids to be thoughtful, generous, kind, grateful, faithful, well-spoken women. There’s a bit of pressure there, so sometimes I just put my head down and plod forward, toward achieving the goal.

But when I do it that way, it’s not always very fun.

“Please chew with your mouth closed.”

“We don’t use potty talk!”

“Please use your strong words if there is something you need.”

Over and over and over.

Right before snapping the above photo, at the end of our field trip last Friday, I sounded like this while trying to wipe mud off the pumpkins so the girls could hold them to pose for a picture:

“Come here please. Stop dropping the pumpkins. Don’t climb in the wheelbarrow. Don’t touch that stem, I told you it has prickles on it. Get over here please. Okay, hold the pumpkins and look at me. Nevermind, that one’s too heavy. Just sit and face me. Turn this way. No. This way. Please. Just sit by your pumpkin and let me take your picture to show how. much. FUN. we’ve. had!!!”

We really did have a good time. Pony-riding, cow-milking, pig-petting. . .

Some of my favorite moments:

And then there was the goose-chasing. Oh my goodness. The hilarity.

Miss wanted to try to sneak, but her sisters don’t have an ounce of stealth between them.

They screamed. They ran (the poor geese). We all laughed and laughed and laughed.

You know, when I remember to do it, that’s one of my favorite parts about being a mom. The laughing. My kids are really funny sometimes.

Last night was a good example of one of those moments when you just have to let the lesson pass you by, skip the moral of the story, and just laugh your head off with your kids.

Picture it. Last night. Bed time. We were all piled on Miss’s bed for prayers and stories. My husband picked up a “book” Miss had written and we caught a glimpse of the back cover of it, on which she had written, “Poop.”

Miss grabbed the book and slammed it down on the bed. She did not want us to see what it said. Neither my husband nor I were angry or scolding, but he asked her why she had written that randomly on the back of her book (which was not about poop). She stammered uncertainly for a second. Then my husband picked up the book again, and we got a good look at the back, writing, drawing, and all. I’m not one for bathroom humor, but I just lost it.

Any thought of having a little teaching moment about using potty words gratuitously or whatever went right out the window.

All five of us sat on Miss’s bed and howled with laughter at her word and her drawing. The silliness. The absurdity. The drawing!

Teaching moment missed. Hilarious family bonding moment embraced. I say that’s a win.

And I was the one who learned a lesson.

Homeschooling is Going Quite Well, Thanks for Asking

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Amy

Many people have asked me about how our first few weeks of homeschooling have been going. The answer is they have been going mostly very well. We’ve already taken several field trips, and Five in a Row has been the perfect curriculum for us to start with. We’ve covered “The Storm in the Night,” “The Story About Ping,” “Lentil,” and “Madeline” so far.

When we were reading “The Story About Ping” (which is about a duck in China) we took a field trip to a Chinese restaurant to try a new type of food and also to experiment with eating with chopsticks (yes, going out to lunch can be called a field trip when you homeschool).

The next day we learned about how ducks keep their wings dry, doing an experiment with oil and water.

And then we took another field trip.

This time we shared our lunch with a mama duck and her babies. Field trips are my favorite.

When we read “Lentil” we learned about different tastes (in the story there is a character who makes everyone pucker by sucking loudly on a lemon).

Sweet brown sugar, bitter cocoa powder, salty uh, salt, and sour lemons.

Of course, then we made lemonade,

which also counted toward gym time, they were working so hard.

This week with Madeline we didn’t do much photo-worthy stuff. Other than ice-painting French flags.

We’re taking another field trip tomorrow to a local farm. It has nothing to do with our book this week, but it’s a place with pony-riding and cow-milking and chicken-chasing, and I want to go before the regular school kids start taking their field trips. And as much as I sometimes want it to, not every thing we do is always going to fit with our book or our theme of the week. I’m cool with that. And field trips are my favorite.

The girls are also (mostly) enjoying our reading curriculum, All About Reading. It’s a good fit for us, because we’re pretty much all about reading around here these days.

The jury is still out on our math curriculum, Math U See. It’s fine, but I don’t love it, and neither does Miss. I’ve been eyeing some Life of Fred books, but I’m not quite willing to bail on our current plan. Yet.

I have bailed out on some other things that I bought out of early excitement and over-eagerness to get all the things and start teaching my kids with Catholic Stuff! I bought a bunch of workbooks from Seton Home Study School, and they just aren’t a good fit for us. Other than the handwriting book, I’m not using any of them right now.

Art, science, and social studies are mostly rolled into our FIAR work. I’m winging it on religion, knowing that Miss is getting some back up teaching in her regular school time. Right now we’re memorizing the Ten Commandments (I don’t know them by heart myself), and we celebrate various feast days, read about saints, and talk about the Mass. There is also a Bible component of FIAR that we do, which includes verses and stories that are relevant to our book for the week. I think were doing pretty good there.

I try to have Miss do a little bit of computer time here and there using PBS Kids Play or ABC Mouse. She gets music class at her regular school and she takes piano lessons. Gym is not systematic at all at this point. It’s running around the couch and playing outside and going to soccer once a week. And foreign language has not made it into the line up at all yet. I have a Spanish program for them, but I haven’t used it.

We still have some tweaking to do, but I’m very happy with how our homeschool is coming together so far.

Next week we’re reading “A Pair of Red Clogs.” It’s set in Japan. I see a field trip to the hibachi restaurant in our very near future.

Okay, But How Do You KNOW God is Real?

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Amy

Nearly two years ago, I began a journey toward faith. After almost a decade of not believing in God, I decided that I needed to explore my faith, or lack thereof. I started to think that maybe there really was a God, and so I had better take a deeper look and figure out what I believed and didn’t. I said to my husband, “Okay, so maybe there’s a God, but I don’t believe in all that Jesus stuff. That’s all just ridiculous.” He said something like, “You never know. . .”

Well. Now I am a confirmed and practicing Catholic. I pray daily, usually multiple times per day. I try to read the Bible. I do a daily devotional most days. I go to weekly Mass. I pray the rosary (not as often as I should!). I believe fully and absolutely in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

I’m not mentioning any of those things to suggest that I’m anything special or deserving of praise, but just to illustrate the transformation I’ve undergone in the past two years. I’m still amazed by the whole thing.

I’ve come a long way, and what I have discovered in all of my struggles and joys is simply this: God is here. God is here in every moment. How do I know? I could list the rational points that I believe confirm the presence of God. But lots of people have written plenty about those, better than I could do anyway (like say, C.S. Lewis, for example?).

So instead, I’m going to share a few of my own experiences to illustrate how I know that there is a God, beyond all the reading I did about the subject. How I know that Jesus is the Son of God, and wasn’t just a man who lived 2000 years ago and then got killed for saying He was the Son of God (that’s what I used to think).

So. Three examples from my life:

1. Adoration. I wrote once about a wonderful experience I had in the Adoration Chapel, which to my mind was, in itself, evidence of God’s grace. But I’ve never written about what it’s like just to go into the chapel. What it’s really like. I’ve mentioned that it’s beautiful and peaceful. But that isn’t even the half of it.

When I go into adoration and kneel before Jesus in the monstrance, I get this unusual, sort of surreal feeling. It’s kind of like a tightness in my chest and a lightness, at the same time. It becomes hard to breathe normally, but in not in a bad way (I know saying “hard to breathe. . . but not in a bad way” doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what it’s like!). I feel at peace (not just peaceful, but at peace) and experience a clarity of thought.

I can spend weeks stressing out about something, wondering what I should do, and then if I take that worry to Jesus in adoration, I immediately feel a sense of calm and understanding about the solution or answer to my question. It’s very hard to describe, and I’ve never felt this in any other type of situation (but see below for a similar one). In that place, with Jesus, I experience a real physical and emotional sense of His presence. I just know He is there.

2. When I went for my first pregnancy ultrasound in July, the doctor basically just said, “There is no baby. This is not a viable pregnancy. I’m sorry.” And he walked out of the room.

I had to call my husband and tell him this news, and then drive myself two hours home. I was sobbing, and trying to pray, but all I could put together was, “Help me. Help me. Jesus, please help me” or something like that.

After a while I managed to pull myself together enough that I thought I could drive home. On the way, I ran into a detour in the route I would usually have taken, which forced me to drive right past a big church. I remember coming closer to it, seeing that it looked kind of Catholic from outside, but then seeing that the sign out front said “________ Baptist.” I was pretty bummed until I got a little closer and made out what the first part of the sign said: “St. John the.” It might as well have been a billboard. I quickly pulled into the lot and went right inside.

The red candle was burning up front (indicating there were consecrated hosts, or Jesus, in the tabernacle). I knelt down and continued my barely coherent prayer from before. “Help me. What do I do now? I don’t know what to do. I can’t do this. Jesus, help me.” I repeated these same few things over and over as I wept. And then I got an answer. He told me, “Don’t give up.” I didn’t hear it with my ears, but with my heart, and I felt truly comforted. I was still devastated. I was still weeping. But I knew I was not alone. Right then and there, I felt His presence. He was going to help me carry my burden.

3. This last example is more about Mary, but it makes sense to share it. Because of course if there was no God, and Jesus wasn’t divine, then Mary was just a lady, and not Our Lady.

Not too far from my town there is a Marian shrine. It is the first (and only) approved Marian apparition site in the U.S. I went there in July. I only had my babysitter for a few hours, and I had two hours of just driving time, so I couldn’t stay there long. But I had been wanting to go for quite some time, and in the midst of my failed pregnancy and multiple ultrasounds, I went.

The shrine was just wonderful. I wanted to spend more time there. It was surreal to sit in the dark basement room, which stands at the actual site of the apparitions, and see the statue of Our Lady of Good Help.

The part that stays with me though, is the moment that I first stepped from my car. I was parked quite a distance from any of the buildings or statues of the site. There was nothing around me except asphalt and cars, and yet the first thing I noticed when I got out of my car was the strong scent of roses. It was powerful, and I immediately began looking around for the flowers. There weren’t any.

As I walked closer, this ^^ is the first area I came to where I saw any flowers, but none of them were roses. In fact, I didn’t see a single rose anywhere on the grounds, and yet the distinct fragrance of roses was the first thing to greet me upon my arrival. It let me know immediately – this is a holy place. I was in the presence of Mary.

God is real. Jesus really died for us. In addition to the three experiences I mentioned here, I notice it every day now. I experience God in my children, in my marriage, in the beauty of the world He created. I feel it. It’s not something that can be measured or tested. But it’s absolutely real.

So. That’s how I know.

7QT – Mary’s Birthday, a 20-Year-Old Photo, Soccer Cuteness, and More

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Amy

This post started out as a “Quick Takes Friday” post last week. Except that I only got two takes done when I started it Friday morning. And then before I knew it, it was waaay past Friday, and the Quick Takes Ship had sailed. So, I changed it around, and it was going to be just a random catch up post. And then I felt like I just had to write yesterday’s post (it had been bouncing around in my brain for months), so the random post didn’t get done either. And now, well it’s Friday again! Woohoo! So a couple of these “Takes” are a bit old. But they’re still riveting, I assure you.

My girls started soccer ~~last week~~ a couple of weeks ago. Holy cuteness.

Miss is very into it. Lass is not really decided yet.

It’s so fun to watch them and to visit with the other moms on the sideline. Wait. Am I a “soccer mom” now?! I think not yet.

I mentioned that Miss is going to our local Catholic school one and a half days per week. On the way home after her first day, Miss asked if she could make a dessert for our family to eat after dinner. She said wanted to make it with graham crackers, chocolate chips, and an egg. I said “sure.”

We got home and there were no graham crackers, but she was willing to improvise. She ended up using five leftover lady fingers, which we crumbled up, two eggs, a splash of almond milk, the remains of a bag of chocolate chips, and two Tablespoons of water (initially she wanted to use a cup of water, but I convinced her to add it a little at a time).

The end result was quite. . . interesting. It was a bit like a dessert frittata? She was pleased, and her sisters enjoyed it too. Pinterest-worthy for sure.

Tonight is my 20-year high school reunion. Yeah. 20 years. I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to go, but since it’s scheduled on a Friday night and it’s in Michigan and I’m in Wisconsin, it wasn’t possible for me to go even if I had wanted to. But really, 20 years? I can’t possibly be old enough for that.

Or maybe I can. I look so very young (and ridiculous) in this picture (second from the left is me).

I’m really starting to get into the swing of celebrating feast days and such with my girls. We celebrated the one-year anniversary of their baptisms on Sunday by lighting their baptism candles, renouncing Satan, and zinging them with holy water. And having dessert of course.

Monday was Mary’s birthday, so we had a little birthday party for her. We had ten candles on the cake and did a decade of the rosary, lighting one candle with each Hail Mary. Then we sang Happy Birthday and blew out her candles.

I’m not eating cake these days, so I just got a baby smash cake with blue and white frosting from the grocery store pre-made case (it was the perfect size for the girls to each have a piece). It worked out perfectly that the blue and white one was the one my girls wanted too. It originally had some plastic sea animals stuck to the top of it, but we took those off, and it went instantly from undersea-baby-cake to Marian-blue-birthday-rosary-cake. Mom win.

I have discovered a major difference between my husband and me: The need for peace and quiet and relaxation when indulging in a treat of some sort. He needs none. I need all.

He comes home from work and cracks open a beer if he cares to have one. He grabs a sweet treat after dinner, either forgetting every.time. that the little-girl audience will descend on him faster than vultures on road kill, or not caring that they do (I still haven’t figured out which it is).

And then there’s me. If my kids are awake and I just must. have. chocolate., I hide in the laundry room to eat it. But the majority of the time, I wait until they are in bed to indulge in any sort of treat food or beverage. I might let them have ice cream after dinner once in a while, but if I have any myself, I wait until after they go to bed. If I’m going to imbibe, I never do it until they are in their rooms for the night. And it’s not because I’m worried that my parental judgement will be impaired. One drink (or even two) would probably only improve my motherly attitude once evening time rolls around.

I just want to enjoy it. Savor it. In peace. I don’t want to have to share my ice cream or answer, “What is that? Can I try it?” about my wine. I’m even the same way about my coffee. I get up extra early before my kids so I can enjoy my coffee in peace (and finish it while it’s still warm).

Am I alone here?

It’s already cold here. Highs in the 50s. Fall is my favorite season, but I wasn’t quite prepared for it yet. Sunday we went on a hayride with friends and were sweaty and sunburned and dehydrated by the time it was over.

^^This picture makes it look like our kids were dangling precariously off the edge of a wagon stacked with hay. They weren’t.

In the past two days I have had to do an emergency Zappos order of new fleece jackets for my older girls since they now wear the same size and last year’s jackets don’t fit them (though Sis now has lots to choose from). Where did my summer go?

Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of this blog. Five years! I looked back at my very first post, and it just made me laugh. I still don’t know much about what the heck I’m doing, but I’ve come a long way from post, after post, after post about almost nothing but cloth diapers! Anyway, Happy Blogversary to me!

See more Quick Takes here.

Motherhood and Miscellany

Author: Amy