We have the best kids ever ...

... this was on the laptop this morning to greet Rick & I:

BTW, that would be a "pen flower" that our favorite mail-lady gave him one day -- a loved present indeed!

... and this just came from Kotch and the "littles":

Gorgeous flowers for this gorgeous (but COLD!) day ... the florist even put real lemon slices in the vase

 

Birthdays: Happy 19th, Kotch!

Happy 19th Birthday, Kotch!

We love you and are VERY proud of you .... have a blast in the big city on your day!

May God grant you many blessings today and always....

Where should we go today? Father's Day 2010

We love Father's Day around here, doing do our best to allow dh a bit of R-and-R and getting to be in charge (for a change!). 

On dh's "favorite things to do list" is walking ... (no matter how hot) ... and walking around D.C. is higher on the list ... and walking around D.C. and visiting the National Gallery of Art is probably pretty much on the top of his list.

So, after dropping Kotch off at her summer job (she'll be teaching various subjects to inner-city middle school girls and helping with drama; all while living in Washington AND getting paid -- cool, eh?), we headed to the National Mall and our favorite, always open parking spot ... and then headed to the National Gallery of Art.  By this point, we needed nourishment and headed directly to the NGA's cafe and had amazing gelato ...

and took the requisite picture of the kids in front of the waterfall. 

Heading upstairs we wandered the sacred art galleries, the Dutch painters and investigated the dellaRobbias.  What an amazing collection we have FREE in D.C.!  We are so blessed to be able to spend a few hours, just wandering and finding old favorites and new works to add to our favored lists. 

A request from the kids had us heading over to the Archives (with a quick stop to cool feet in the fountain in the Sculpture Garden -- all perfectly legal!).  The Archives is the home of THE most important documents for our country -- Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 

After finally getting to see them "live" we checked out the "Public Vaults" exhibit which is a great overview of exactly the job placed in the hands of the National Archive and Record Administration -- the keeper of the nation's records.

Heading home in afternoon I-95 traffic, we mused over our weekend ... which included a quick run down to Craig Springs for our annual Infant of Prague Pilgrimage -- this year including 160+ other Catholics with lots of babies and kids running around and having fun in the beautiful Allegheny Highlands.

And lest you think I was forgotten today, never fear.  ALWAYS check the sale tables ... I found a lovely art book at the NGA titled In Praise of the Needlewoman: Embroiderers, Knitters, Lacemakers and Weavers in Art ... a collection of 80-some gorgeous works of art that show women creating gorgeous works of art with a needle of one kind or another.  The book includes "The Knitting Lesson" by Jean-Francois Millet ... the work that graces the cover of my Great Yarns for the Close-Knit Family -- as well as other works of art by amazing artists.  I'm thinking this would be a GREAT book for picture study next Fall!

Prayers and blessings to all fathers, living or deceased, but especially to my dh who does so much for us ... a single day hardly seems fair ... so, since he is finally done with teaching for the summer, maybe we'll just have to let him be in charge a little longer (maybe!).

Choose Life .... National March for Life, Friday, January 22, 2010

Last year, living so close to the Nation's capitol we all went to the Life March.  Kotch and the three littles and I went up on a parish-sponsored bus from Woodbridge to DC.  We arrived around noon and left around 5:00p.m.  It was a long day ... filled with life and hope and faith that someday our country would turn this all around and stop killing the babies (and the lives of the women who abort their children). 

This year, unfortunately, only some of us are going. 

Kotch is on her way with other kids from Ave Maria University.  She got on a bus yesterday in Ave Maria, Florida at 5:00 pm and as of 1:30 pm, they'd gotten as far as Fredericksburg!  She'll spend the night at the National Shrine, bunked in with other college kids from across the nation (she's got two cousins that will be at the March -- one representing Franciscan and one from DeSales).  After a full day of praying and marching and praying and singing and praying some more .... they'll head back south on the bus, buoyed up knowing they've done a good thing.

Dh is heading up to the March tomorrow morning: he'll leave the house at 4:00 am, picking up students on the way to school, and then getting on chartered buses to head into D.C. for the Youth Rally/Mass at the Verizon Center.  He'll get back home sometime around 6:00 pm, tired but buoyed up knowing he's done a good thing.

The littles and I are participating vicariously. We will be up watching EWTN's coverage starting on Friday morning (7:30 EST) to try and spot our various family members. We'll then head to Mass at 9:00 am, staying for Benediction and wishing the bus riders from our parish God-speed.

In the words of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta when writing to the US Supreme Court, February 14, 1994 about a pending case:

It was a sad infidelity to America’s highest ideals when this Court said that it did not matter, or could not be determined, when the inalienable right to life began for a child in its mother’s womb.

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.

It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society.
It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered domination over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.

And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.

The Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany recently ruled that “the unborn child is entitled to its rights to life independently of acceptance by its mother; this is an elementary and inalienable right that emanates from the dignity of the human being.” Americans may feel justly proud that Germany in 1993 was able to recognize the sanctity of human life.

You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.

I have no new teaching for America. I seek only to recall you to faithfulness to what you once taught the world.

Your nation was founded on the proposition—very old as a moral precept, but startling and innovative as a political insight—that human life is a gift of immeasurable worth, and that it deserves, always and everywhere, to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect.

Unfortunately, some 16 years later, we in America still have Roe v Wade and the deaths of millions of babies on our collective consciences.  Please join us at the National March -- either physically or spiritually -- as we all pray to overturn this heinous blot on the American escutcheon!

Family: college-bound Kotch!

Oh, the bags are packed ...
she's ready to go ....
Yep, our very own Kotch left this morning at 5:30 a.m. to fly out of Washington-Reagan down to Florida to begin her adventures as a college freshman.

As String Bean expresses so well, we'll all miss her. LegoManiac was in tears last night, saying "y'know how sometimes you get mad and say you can't wait till someone leaves ... well, I don't want her to leave." Bam-bam got up at 4:30 to make sure he was awake to say goodbye, then went promptly back to bed.

Yes, we will all miss her. But we all know it's her time to fly the nest and be whatever God would like her to be.

And we are so proud of her ...

Many prayers go with her as she heads out ...

It's interesting that she left today as it's the feast of St. Monica (322-387). St. Monica is famous for having prayed YEARS for her wayward son ... a "hot mess" of a young man who would finally hear the call and become St. Augustine of Hippo (those were some powerful prayers from his mama!). Charlotte, over at Waltzing Matilda, posted the parents' prayer to St. Monica:

St. Monica, patron of Christian parents, we entrust to your protection the children whose names you can read in our hearts. Pray for them that they may be granted strength to combat weakness, victory over temptation, guidance to resolve their doubts and success in all their undertakings. May they enjoy good health of mind and body, see beauty and worth in all created things and serve the Lord with firm faith, joyful hope and enduring love. Amen.

God bless, you Kotch!

Family: the problem with older sisters ...

... is that they bring these home for their younger siblings, but forget that their mom loves these too!

Oh well, she did bring me Liam the Lambto add to my collection of lambs from different wool-producing countries. He's gotten to be good buddies with the one from New Zealand!

August ... already?

It seems like we just moved in and we're already in August ... a month where we lose our favorite cook (dh) to school assignments, Kotch goes off to college and the really hot days don't help with trying to plan school.

We've done so much since we moved in on June 25th ... we've cleaned, and scrubbed, and built, and painted, and cleaned some more, and generally beaten this house into shape. The real blessing occured yesterday when we got our gas grill hooked up to the HUGE propane tank for our fireplace so we can enjoy the "dog days" with a barbeque and not worry about the tank! WHEW! We still have the appliance guys coming Monday to move our washer/dryer into place ... no we haven't been using a rock to do laundry around here, just really poor efficiency appliances left by the previous owner and I miss our washer and dryer. Those will be hooked up Monday.

Then we have a couple of weeks of doctor/dentist/eye doc appointments and shifting things to get Kotch ready for college (leaving August 27th) and dh ready for school (starts planning meetings on the 24th).

So August is fraught with planning, and more planning, moving and shifting and changing and general mayhem till September 1st rolls around and we're in a grove again for a while ...

I'll be posting my curriculum plans over the next few weeks ... for Lego Maniac (5th grade!), String Bean (4th grade, but needs help with reading and confidence building) and Bam Bam (1st grade who really doesn't understnad WHY he needs to be kept back when he really should be in high school -- or so he thinks!).

Prayers for all my dear readers and their planning for next year, and their finishing their summers with a bang, and just generally for their well-being.

God bless you all!