Advent cometh!

Ok, I know, that housework while homeschooling post still hasn't materialized. It's all up in my head, baby. Unfortunately, I've been too busy actually trying to get house stuff done to write about it. I hosted an unexpected Thanksgiving dinner this year because my parents' house finally sold and they had to start packing very quickly.

More pressing, though is Advent planning, and that's what I've been working on today. We do Advent up good, and my kids are almost as excited about the first Sunday as they are about Christmas, so I'm doing something right. I've written before about our Jesse Tree. Well, this year I've decided to forgo the candy. That was kind of an expensive pain to put together. This year I've decided instead to have something special planned for each day of Advent and write that out on a little scroll to be opened each evening. That sounds really ambitious, right? Well, many of the things are traditions we already have,,,like having an ornament making day...others are new...like watching special Christmas movies each Sunday of Advent...and many are very simple or based around things that need to get done anyway, like "have a present wrapping day" or "make tissue paper poinsettias".

Here's our plans for this week---

Sunday, November 30th- Read "Merry Christmas Strega Nona" and have an Italian dinner. Start the Immaculate Conception novena today.

Monday, December 1st- Read "The Manger Where Jesus Lay. First Movie Night- Polar Express and It's A Wonderful Life.

Tuesday, December 2nd- Ri's Shopping Day with Mom. We will pick up little somethings for her to gift her siblings and Dad with, and pick up a yummy goodie while we're out.

Wednesday, December 3rd- Read "Country Angel Christmas". Make glitter star ornaments.

Thursday, December 4th- Craft day at the art museum. Read "Our Lady of Guadalupe" and start the Our Lady of Guadalupe novena.

Friday, December 5th- Field trip to a local museum. Read The Miracle of St. Nicholas and put out shoes.

Saturday, December 6th- St. Nicholas visits! Town Christmas parade! Read "The Huron Carol".

What are your favorite Christmas traditions? I've gotten many of ours from Elizabeth Foss's lovely unit study. I'm lacking about 5 simple/special things for the tail end of my list. :) I love doing these things with my children. We try to keep the gifts and such to a minimum, and this leaves a wonderful void to be filled with better traditions.

on how I'm not dead, and field trips

Hello, I'm still alive. Sorry, I am a slacker blogger. Between all the usual hoopla and fighting others for the computer, it can be hard to find time to blog. It takes motivation, and that waxes and wanes a bit. :)

I have a lot of catching up to do, so here goes...

I use my blog to upload worthwhile "sending to the grandparents" pictures, so I have to get all the goodies on here...

From a field trip to a local artists colony...really neat place!!! Statue gardens, labyrinths, all kinds of fun stuff...this place is one of my favorites in the area, just very enjoyable...though it was pretty darn cold! Way too many pics of this, bear with me...



































All Saint's Day...This year's theme was "use what mom has available because she doesn't want to sew anything". Maria was St. Winifred. We turned up the costume at a local thrift store, and so I brought it home and said, "Pick a princess or something." She will kill me for posting this picture because she hates it. The dress all ballooned up in the front and makes her look like she has this big belly. Whatever. My blog, kid. My rules.

Kain was St. George...anything with a weapon is a plus for Kain. I had this armor and such to use, so that worked out.

Jack was St. Florian, patron Saint of fire fighters. Yes, I have two complete sets of armor. Jack refused to wear most of it. The red cape is a turtleneck, ha!


Kain's first confession...


Followed by celebratory stop for donuts....


I'm not a big fan of this "reconcilliation service" thing. I'm old school, I want a box and a curtain to hide behind, I want anonymity. None of this nansy pansy music, community prayer, getting up on the altar stuff for me! But, it was a nice ceremony anyway.

Other random pics...

skating rink...



The little girl here is the sister of a boy who's slice of head you can just kinda see behind Maria. They absolutely do NOT like each other. NOT. Even though they both skating together the whole time we were there, and even though they sat together at the snack bar while his friends rolled by snickering and her friends rolled by giggling at them, they do NOT like each other. Ew, Mom. Gross.

Jack is learning how to spell. Seriously.



Tess is using a cup...kind of...there's just water in there.

And teething on a baby carrot...this was great. Her first time with any food, though she didn't actually eat it, just gummed it. She kept holding it in her fist and turning it over and over between bites, thinking, "How long have they been holding this stuff out on me? Awesome."


In other news, I am way behind on everything around here, including computer stuff. I managed to catch up my email today, and tomorrow I will work on catching up on *your* blogs via my backed up google reader. Coming Monday,,,homeschooling and housework, a post in progress. My husband, and anyone who has ever visited my house, will laugh. I'm no role model here. But I've been questioned about this several times lately, and I do know what helps, and I definitely know what *doesn't* work! So, I will share my acquired wisdom, for whatever it's worth!

A Fall Walk

Yesterday we took our fall nature walk. It was a risky move on my part...it was pretty windy, cloudy and cold. And John was working. But we'd been trying to take our fall walk for a few weeks now, and I figured that it was as nice a day as we would probably see in November. It really wasn't too bad once we got moving, and I intended to keep the walk short for Tess's sake. But...we got lost. Maria wanted to take a leg of the trail I had never been on before. She had taken it with John at one point and said it was really interesting. And it was. We saw a stone foundation for a log cabin that used to be on that spot, and further on the foundation for the family's chicken house, and even further on the foundation for their pig house. It was pretty cool to stand in those woods and imagine what it must have been like to live in that spot before the built a golf course on the other side of the stream. I wondered who the family was, how many children they had, and what brought them to these woods from wherever they came from.

Finally it was getting later, and colder. We pressed onward. Maria said the trail would turn around and come out at the parking lot. We walked. And walked. And walked. We walked so long that even Jack, my brave outdoorsman who never gets enough of hiking, was asking to go home. And then the trail dead-ended. I almost cried. We had to turn around and walk allll the way back to that old cabin foundation. The sun was setting by the time we reached it. There we found another leg where the trail did, in fact, turn back towards the parking lot. Jack was exhausted and poking along, my back was aching with Tess on board in her pack, and we were all cold. I was glad I had brought my cell phone just in case I needed to call for help, because it was nearly dark by the time we reached our van. Tess's feet and hands were purple and still cold when I curled her up to nurse at home. My shoulders still hurt. But hey! I got pictures!! :)




















Here's our findings on our seasons table, in that basket on the right. It's not a great picture...the sun coming in that window messed things up for me. I've not posted pictures of my new seasons table before. It's very modest so far. I'm slowly collecting things to use on it, seasonal bowls and covers and fun things to decorate with, seasonal books, etc. The yellow basket in the middle has holy cards for All Saints Day, and there's a stack of the Father Lovasik Saint books next to it, and some seasonal picture books on the other end. When it becomes too cluttered, the kids quit paying attention to it. There's more books in bins underneath, but I just want a few things out at a time.


Here's what's in the basket.

Death of a pumpkin....a photo essay

Tess at 5 months

Tessie turned 5 months old at the end of October, so I've been meaning to post something "official" about it. Here's a little milestone,,,we tried to have her first sitting up bath....




...it didn't go to well. She's still pretty slumpy when sitting up, she leans forward really badly, so I had to help her out after a few minutes. Mostly she seemed pretty bewildered by the whole thing. We'll try again in a few weeks. She also rolled over from back to front the other day, and it was really funny because she hates being on her belly. So she would roll over, and then immediately start to fuss about being on her belly. I'd roll her back, and then she'd roll over and start to fuss again.

Tess is still an angel baby. She's incredibly sweet tempered and very doted on. She rarely cries, and rarely needs to with so many people in this house ready to pounce when she makes the slightest noise. She's very vocal like Maria was as a baby, loves to chatter, and I'm sure she'll be an early talker like Maria was.

I need to give a shout out...

to my Grandma, my dad's mom, who reads this blog, the only family member who regularly does, can you believe it? Because my parents don't have regular computer access, what with living in the woods and building a house and all, and my mother's mother would never, ever own a computer. She doesn't even have one of those new- fangled ATM cards. I've tried to sell John's family on the blog as a way to keep up with the kids, but as far as I know no one has bitten yet. Anyway, Happy Birthday Grandma, I'm so glad to know you enjoy the blog and seeing my babies. Here's some new and random pics from this fall I've been meaning to post. I haven't had a good reason to post them, so I'll post them for Grandma, who doesn't really need a reason!

My pretty girls...


Jack and my guitar...


Tess, asleep in the exersaucer. This is where she sits when I'm fixing dinner.


Tess, being cute...


Tess, curled up with a good book. We start 'em young.

and quotes

As always I rely heavily on those that say it so better than I,,,Mother Teresa, this time, my daughter's namesake.


"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 dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters" ""But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?...Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion. " "It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."

The rare political rant

It's not that I'm surprised that Obama won. I'm really not. It's not that I'm not just a little tickled at thinking about all the racist folk around here squirming in their recliners as the polls rolled in. Even though I don't get a guy who is supposed to be such a hero for his race even though he is rabidly pro-choice, and that abortion now kills 50% of unborn African American children. What has really saddened and surprised me is that so very few people seemed to care or even know just how pro-choice this guy is. And I know that the majority of people out there, even the majority of Catholics, are pro-choice to some degree or another. I'm not talking a little pro-choice, if there can be any such thing, I'm talking about infanticide pro-choice. I'm talking scary, scary ethics and screwed up logic. And this was just a non-issue for practically everyone. During the exit polls last night, abortion was not an issue that was even ON THE LIST.

Why? Well, everyone's big concern is the economy, right? Money. Mammon. I'm not trying to trivialize the economy. We live so close to financial disaster in this house that I started crying when my husband told me that his brakes were going to have to be replaced before Christmas. So close that I get a little warm and giggly knowing that milk prices have gone down 30 cents a gallon. But we are talking about a man who believes that a late term baby that manages to survive an abortion procedure, that is BORN ALIVE should still die if the mother wills it so. That in one hospital, a child may lie dying from hypothermia and the effects of abortion, a thought that just makes me want to shrivel up and cry, while in that SAME HOSPITAL thousands of dollars a day might be spent to save a baby of the same gestational age, all based on whether that particular child's mother decides her baby is worth keeping alive? And this actually MAKES SENSE to people? I mean, even if you aren't pro-life, how does anyone actually make that giant leap of logic?

But we are worried about the economy, that's what matters. Apparently, that's all that matters. “Wherever your treasure lies, there will your heart be…"

Apparently our hearts are in our gas tanks. May God have mercy on us.

fall menus

I finally have posted my fall menus on the sidebar over there...
I still need some side dishes. I'm burned out on our old standby quickie side dishes and I'd love to come up with some more seasonal ones. Any favorites? Also, always looking for some more seasonal baked goodies... :)