A Concert in Bed

The internet is so awesome! Right here in the comfort of our cozy, warm bed, we just listened to our family's favorite band play a live concert at the Battle Ground Brewery in Tennessee! They even played one of our requests and dedicated it to Miss Sunshine! How cool is that? Thank you Momma Rees for singing Lily Mae for her!


P.S. You can watch the archived show here.

Feast of St. John Bosco

Bachelor Buttons today! Why? It's called...tradition!

Amy's hosting an auction...

...for this adorable St. Therese doll!

Go take a peek and consider placing a bid! It's for Marci's sweet girl. And please help spread the news.

Puppy Post

Our sweet little puppy is making herself at home and finding lots of laps available for cuddling...

But when a lap can't be found, she makes do with the next best thing...

The children think she sleeps a lot, but she is still a puppy. Housetraining has been going so well that we even have her trained to ring a bell on the back door when she needs to go outside. I have been trying to record her doing that, but haven't yet.

The children really love it when she goes "cracker dog" as they say (courtesy of James Herriot). She gets so excited that she runs all around and tries to play with everything, including the things she shouldn't play with. That's made "tidy up time" especially easy and necessary!

I think she's a keeper. Everyone loves her, including the boys who were the most uneasy about getting a dog. I have found that I am much more comfortable with her than I was with Beegee, the greyhound. We used to have medium to large sized dogs when I was growing up. I guess I never realized how much of a little dog person I've become. Shortcake still hopes one day to work our family up to a golden retriever, but our little dog suits us best right now. As a good friend said when I told her about Crouton, "She's not a whole loaf of bread, just a little crouton!"

For Marci

Marci has written a couple of posts that will rip your heart out. She is asking for help to raise money for a very special treatment for her daughter. This amazingly strong woman has humbled herself to ask for help because of the situation she and her children now find themselves in. I first "met" Marci through Jessica who was the beneficiary of Marci's energy and industry on many occasions. She truly is a beautiful friend and a great example of strength in adversity. She continues to give to so many even when she is so in need!

Can you spare a donation for this sweet woman who has been the joyful servant of so many and who is now suffering unimaginable sorrows?

If he weren't so darn cute...

Watching the beginning of Emma last night and commenting to Husband as the children readied themselves for bed:

Me: Emma's father (Michael Gambon) was Roger's father in Wives and Daughters, Mr. Holbrook in Cranford and he's now playing Dumbledore in the HP movies. He was also in Amazing Grace with Emma (Romola Garai) who was also in Nicholas Nickleby and Daniel Deronda.  And that guy (Mr. Knightley) was in that version of Mansfield Park that we couldn't show the kids, not to mention The Flying Scotsman.

Sunshine (listening in): Wow!

Husband: Yeah, apparently there are only 8 actors in the world who can speak English with a British accent!

Later, I commented that the set looked really familiar: It's very similar to Return to Cranford.

Husband said: If you look closely you can actually see the other actors in the background. I think I just spied Dame Judi Dench in the shop window there.

I was tempted to throw a pillow at him but told him I would blog it instead! Ha!

Coloring Page Reminder Post

Tomorrow is the feast of the conversion of St. Paul so this St. Paul coloring page might come in handy as you discuss that moment in St. Paul's life with your little ones or... save it for February 16th to remember the feast of St. Paul Shipwrecked. Any kind of ship themed crafts would be fun to do as well. Especially these Victory Vessels found over at Catholic Cuisine. If you are looking for a dessert idea, BigBoy's pirate ship birthday cake (which was almost a wrecked ship disaster) jumps to mind! You don't have to embellish it as much as I did, just a simple sail would be fine.

Also coming up for February:

Feb. 3: St. Blaise  (our plans from last year which will probably be the same this year... it's called tradition!)

Feb. 8: St. Josephine Bakhita (original post here)

Feb. 11: Our Lady of Lourdes (Immaculate Conception coloring page, but it works)

Feb. 14: St. Valentine (for the reason behind the pic, click here)

A LEGO birthday

So the Professor is officially a "tweenager". I knew it was coming. When his shoes came in bigger boxes than his dad's and he started getting closer and closer to looking me in the eye. Sigh.

OK, back to the party... we all woke up a little late thanks to a late night taking care of a puppy with tummy trouble. The kids found their personalized mini-fig heads on the table and got busy working on the rest.

Some of his gifts were wrapped to look like LEGOS. I just used these little pillboxes and taped them on top.

Here is the birthday guy standing tall and standing small!

On the walls, we taped construction paper pieces together to make the number 12. It wasn't that hard to figure out since I made a smaller version for the cake first.

The kids insisted Mommy and Daddy had to hold hands in the corner. Can't say why! ; )

Just so you know,  I did not try to make Sunshine's mini-fig face look angry. I tried to make it look like this:

All of my kids are fascinated with my ability to arch my eyebrows, one at a time. Sunshine has been working on it especially hard lately which means just about every time I turn around, I see this face and crack up! She is my Sunshine, my only Sunshine!

When it came to the cake I figured he would want something like this or this. I was surprised when he said, "How about you just put some LEGOS on a cake?" OK. That's easy. Then Colleen turned me onto these Candy Blocks which can really click together! They worked great for decoration, but unfortunately didn't come in enough shapes to make the 12.

So here is what we came up with. The Professor picked out a Lethal Peppermint Chocolate Cake (it's amazingly pepperminty with a crushed peppermint buttercream filling and a peppermint ganache frosting...so good!!!) and I created a scene on top. Super easy! Thanks kid!

But of course, no LEGO birthday would be complete without a trip to the new LEGO store.

Beaming, he was. Just beaming!

Check out Dylan's awesome LEGO self  and please, let us see yours if you make some. We were thrilled to see his! Thanks Melissa and Dylan! Here are some examples if you need ideas for faces.

A gift for you!

The first part of the Big 1-2 birthday celebration was turning ourselves into mini-figures this morning. I thought I would share the templates I made so that you could have some fun too. Enjoy!

Figure Part 1

Figure Part 2

Figure Part 3


P.S. These templates were made really late last night. Please forgive my wavy lines! And if you do this today or soon, let us know... we'd love to see you as a mini-fig!

Celebrate Life!

Today, we will be off celebrating the very first life God created with us and placed into our care.

Twelve years ago today I was at the hospital wondering when I would be meeting this sweet boy we were expecting. It wasn't soon. No surprise there, he was already 10 days late! Twelve hours after I was checked in, all twenty one inches of him was born... yelling and screaming mad! So mad he yanked the suction tube out of his mouth and pulled the hearing testing devices off his head. He also didn't sleep for the next year!

He still likes things the way he likes them and really doesn't like things to change, although now he's almost as tall as me and doesn't sleep on my shoulder anymore. : (

We love you, Professor! You are the leader, the protector, the policeman and the trail blazer and we wouldn't have it any other way! Blessings on your birthday!

Love,
Mom

And for those of you who are wondering, his birthday theme is LEGOs this year and yes, I will be back with pictures later!

Do you know...

...what a Groom's Cake is? Did you know that it is primarily considered a Southern tradition? I did not and it wasn't until I read a thread over at the forum that I realized it. My sweet Husband is even admitting rather sheepishly that he had never heard of such a thing until...get this...our own wedding!

I seriously had no idea!

Our Groom's Cake has a little story behind it. I wanted something special for Husband and something that would be a surprise. My mom found a lady who made 3 dimensional cakes in her home. Now this was way before the Ace of Cakes and all that jazz. She showed me some of her previous designs. One of them was a computer circa mid-nineties with keyboard and everything, something like

 this!

But... it was frosted with grey icing. Too reminiscent of the bloody armadillo from Steel Magnolias. (language warning)

So, this was our Groom's Cake:

Since Husband's family moved around a lot when he was growing up, I thought it would be fun to pay tribute to those travels. This very talented lady ended up making us a chocolate cake in the shape of a map of the US. I made little flags for every place he had lived and found a baby boy figurine to sit in Illinois (where he was born) and a cute bride and groom to stand in Texas. You know, for the life of me, I can't remember what that little banner said but we still have the bride and groom figurine and pull it out occasionally on our anniversary!

If you had a Groom's Cake, I'd love to hear about it!

Woodland Fairy Mushrooms

We are celebrating Shortcake's baptismal day today and instead of coming up with or finding some creative baptismal craft or snack, I decided to let her decide what she wanted to do. That decision is a post for another time. Sunshine bought Barbara Beery's Fairies Cookbook with some Christmas money and the girls have been pouring over it ooohing and aaahing. Well, after we heard an amazing homily by our favorite young Cistercian deacon about celebrating baptismal days, we decided to make a concerted effort this year to do just that. Shortcake was most anxious to try this beauty of a cupcake and I couldn't help but smile remembering a similarly beautiful, prize winning picture that a sweet friend posted that enchanted me too!

Now, I am the kind of gal that sees a recipe as merely a suggestion. Maybe not when it come to some fancy French dish, but definitely when it comes to dessert! So while I stuck to the book where the cake was concerned, which was a simple cake mix doctoring, the frosting came from a tube. Many years of at home cake decorating and an unforgetable experience with frosting a giant Elmo head have taught me that there isn't enough food coloring in my cabinet to pull off the kind of red that comes in a tube.

The kids added the white chocolate chips and had so much fun, even my soon to be 12 year old boy in a young man's body joined in.

This cookbook is a sweet little thing with beautiful pictures of some very creative ideas. There is a whole series: the Pink Princess Cookbook which Sunshine wants for her birthday, the Pink Princess Tea Parties book, the Mermaid Cookbook and the Pink Ponies Cookbook look like keepers too if you are interested in checking them out!

What she said...

Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her a reward of her labors, and let her works praise her at the city gates. ~Proverbs 31: 30-31

There is, of course, a difference between this sort of idea, the idea that a woman ought to make herself attractive to the opposite sex so she can then manipulate them into the sort of behavior she wants from them, and merely wanting to dress or look nice. But I've seen the blurring of the line from time to time, when women will describe, say, a vintage-inspired look as "sassy" or "flirty," or sigh over a time when "feminine" women got what they wanted with a careful batting of the eyelashes and a slowly-curving, red-lipsticked smile. To be fair, I'm not sure there ever really was such a time; the woman in that pleasant daydream was just as likely to be told, curtly, by her other half to quit wasting his time with her tricks and get dinner on the table--but it's the idea that it's both acceptable and essentially feminine to be a flirt that I find disturbing.

You can read the rest here. We women don't like to have our ideas challenged, but if that challenge makes us look honestly and objectively in an examination of conscience kind of way at what we believe in the light of what God would have us believe, isn't that a good thing?

Interesting

From Barbara the Wise who shares some very valuable information about making donations by texting and the downside you might not know about. Thanks Barbara and tell your hubby thanks too!

From the combox...

Lisa mentioned worrying about giving money to a charity that can be trusted and I admitted that my skeptical nature lends me to the same kind of distrust. I found a website called Charity Navigator which has helped with that concern. There are others out there like it, this one just happened to be the first one I found. I really like how they break down the organizational efficiency by program costs (what actually goes to help the poor), administrative expenses, fund raising expenses and fund raising efficiency. That's the kind of math my brain likes to have spelled out for it. For example, Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, which was founded by a group of lay Catholics in the 1980's, donates 94.6% of it's raised funds to the people who need it and the programs they use. They get a four star rating.

One other feature I find helpful is the Leadership info (scroll down a little). In most cases, you can see how much the CEO is compensated and even other salaries of note. It just makes sense to me that if a company was really all about helping the poor, then the controlling officers wouldn't be raking in the big bucks (and everyone can decide for themselves what "the big bucks" look like).

Anyway, just wanted to share and if you know of any other websites like this one, please let me know!

Prayers for Haiti

If you are just staring at the screen, watching the suffering and feeling helpless, ask yourself what you can do today to help make it better. Can you contribute to the relief efforts? Can you pray for the devastated? Can you offer a small sacrifice for those who are risking everything to rush to their assistance?


We are off to Mass to do what we can do. Have a wonderful Friday!

It's a girl!

For Miss Robina and family! You have to take a peek at that soft, sweet pinkness! You know you want to!