Category: Family

3 Missals for Small Children

One of the things that is a constant struggle with little kids is helping them be quiet and if they are able be attentive at Mass. Something that has worked for us so far is to just keep things simple. Since M and I have a missal for Mass (for both the Ordinary Form and the Traditional Latin Extraordinary form), we decided that each of our children should have their own personal missals appropriate for their age. The key to encouraging children to use hand missals is to use them yourself.

By small children, I mean children who are not yet reading or not yet reading enough to actually read along in a missal. I like these ones for their simplicity and pictures.

1) Ages 4-8: Marian Children’s Missal

While originally printed in 1958, Angelus Press has reprinted. We got our very old copy from some really sweet friends at our TLM parish in Buffalo, NY. What I love about it is the photographs of a priest celebrating Mass at the high altar. The photographs give your child a close up look at what is happening at the altar, to help familiarize her with the parts of the Mass without actually being in the sanctuary. Actual photographs are way more interesting than drawn illustrations, at least in my book.

My almost six year old uses this at both OF and EF liturgies. The great thing about children’s missals is that they focus on the key parts of the Mass which were maintained in the New Mass. This one has a lot more detail than the other ones that I am showing you today, so it is actually more appropriate for the EF Mass. This does not stop my daughter from using it at the daily OF Masses we attend.

The Marian Missal has a photograph and accompanying page with simplified prayers for: the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the Introit and Kyrie, The Gloria, The Collect, The Epistle, The Gospel, The Credo, The Offertory (Host), Preparing the Chalice, The Offertory (Chalice), Washing of the Hands, Prayer to the Trinity, Orate Frates (Pray Brothers), Preface and Sanctus, Te Igitur, Prayer for the Living, Hanc Igitur, Blessing of the Offering, Consecration (Host), Elevation, Consecration (Wine), Elevation, Blessing Host and Chalice, Minor Elevation, Pater Noster (Our Father), Breaking the Host, Prayer for Peace, Prayers-Holy Communion, Domine non sum dignus (Lord I am not worthy), Priest receives Host, Priest receives Sacred Blood, Communion of the People, Communion and Post Communion prayers, Blessing, Last Gospel.

Following the photographs of the Mass are summaries and illustrations of the Gospels for Sundays and Holy Days.

Following that are the parts of the Mass in Latin and English. On each page of the photographed parts of the Mass are page numbers for the text of the Mass, so a child who is reading well could flip between them. (Our copy once had a ribbon, but a baby pulled it out):

I highly recommend this missal, and would probably purchase another once my four year old is a little older.

2) Ages 3-8: My See and Pray Missal

This little gem of a book is short and sweet. It is published by Tan and very reasonably priced. The only thing it has against it is that it is paperback and the bindings are stapled, so it is not really good for a destructive child. We once had a printing with red and black illustrations inside. It got left in church one day, and the one we have now is just black and white. The illustrations are reminiscent of the Baltimore catechism, but not as cool as the photographs in the Marian Missal.

 The Missal based on the EF Mass, but this one more than the last is very usable for the OF Mass.

The book starts with guide to the altar, and a reminder to pray to Our Blessed Mother.

The headings of each page explaining the Mass pictured with brief prayers are: The Sign of the Cross, I Confess, Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, Epistle, Gospel, The Sermon, Creed, Offertory, Washing of Hands, Sanctus, Get Ready, The Consecration (Host), The Consecration (Wine), Jesus is Here, Our Father, Agnus Dei, Jesus is Coming, Holy Communion, Thank You, O God, Last Blessing, Last Gospel.

 It has the simple words SEE, HEAR, PRAY where it is appropriate, so a child does not have to be super literate to understand the prompts.

My four year old has been following this book with ease since she was about 3.5, and since she is a very active child it really helps for her to have something in her hands. I also love that the girl is pictured with a head covering, which you do not see in children’s missals featuring the OF Mass.

3) Ages 3 and under: We Go to Mass

Our copy has seen a lot of Masses with toddlers.

This is the best board book I have found for toddlers to follow the Mass. It is simple, straightforward, and the priest is young and reverent. That being said, if I were to make a board book missal for children I would use pictures like the Marian Missal, have the women and girls with head coverings (or at least some of them since that is fairly standard where we go to Mass), and the priest celebrating Ad Orientem (facing the tabernacle and crucifix).

This sweet little book, with a nice handle, has a page for the following parts of the Mass: Procession/Introit, Epistle, Gospel, Offertory, Sanctus, Eucharistic Prayer, Consecration of Host, Consecration of Wine, Minor Elevation, Our Father, Agnus Dei, Lord, I am not Worthy, Holy Communion, Closing Procession.

My two year old never follows the Mass in its entirety in this book, but she does like to see the pictures of Jesus and pretend to each the hosts. So, we get what we can in good behavior from her. One of my children at age three did use this book to follow short, daily Masses in their entirety. I like that it is simple straight-forward and durable.
_____

So, there you have my top three missals for small children. I would love to hear of other great missal-like books for children. One last thought is that my five year old, when we attend the EF Mass often just grabs one of the red books provided by the church and uses that.

Something to Hope for…

My heart is heavy this week, hearing of so many who have passed away. I have been praying for everyone who has asked, but still there always seems to be someone else. With the world made so small through social media, there is always something sorrowful to hear about.

Then there is the March for Life in D.C. on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. I was asked to write a pro-life piece for ChurchPOP, and all I could come up with was another reflection on miscarriage.

Despite all of these things, there is still hope. The people I know of who passed away are people of faith, and have so many praying for the repose of their souls and for the comfort of their families.

We celebrated on Sunday the one year anniversary of my Dad’s nearly fatal aortic dissection. He is alive and better every day.

And last week I got to see this:

Our little baby is growing and kicking, and the gender is still a surprise, if you were wondering.

I drove to the ultrasound alone, since one child had a fever, and we could not leave the kids with a friend as we had planned. I was leaving, the two year old really wanted to come. I told her that she could not come, but that I would bring back some pictures of the baby. Then I asked her if she knew where the baby was, gesturing toward my growing belly.

“At the doctors,” was her solemn response. Well, I guess it might seem that way to a two year old…

A Cookie Kind of Day

The kids have a cold over here, and as a result they have all been a little bit more cranky and screamy than normal. It has been pretty rough on all of us. I know it is just a cold. I do wish we could just have the sick people lay in bed for the duration like they did back in the day, but that does not normally work with little kids and why don’t we do that anymore?

Anyway, when I managed to get my pregnant self out of bed this morning to see M off to his last day at work for the semester, tried to sneak in coffee and breakfast before the kids woke up, and failed at that, I decided it was time to sit on the couch and look at the lit Christmas tree in the dark of the morning. So, G, L, and I put on some Nat King Cole, snuggled together and did just that. F somehow slept through it, so, she missed out.

Then I decided to do minimal school: G read us her reader from the library (Fred and Ted Go Camping), and then we had breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning making Christmas cookies.

Before cookie girls.

I don’t know if you have ever made cookies with a 5, 4, and 2 year old all wanting to help, but it is certainly interesting and a test of patience. This is actually an area I could do better as a mom. I would much rather do it all myself than have to guide children through “helping” me. I prefer not to do the activities that take a lot of time or make a huge mess, but I also realize that those are the kind of activities that they love. They are the ones that make me grow in patience, and they are the kind of ones that the kids will remember.

They will remember that I let them use crazy amounts of sprinkles on their Christmas cookies, even if I sent them out of the kitchen so I could sweep.

G will remember that I let her stand at the stove and melt chocolate in the double boiler, and L will remember that I let me form her own peanut buttery filling balls all by herself.

That is the recycling bin, not the trash can, I promise.

I write about these things because it reminds me that I need to do this more. Sometimes we just need to skip the mom’s group at church, stay home with our colds, and make cookies, no matter how big the mess. And the best part? When we were done making the cookies, the children played happily until lunchtime, without fighting, and giggled the whole way through lunch over silly things little girls say and think.

_______
Bonus Baby Bump picture (for my sister who asked):

16 weeks along.

I think I must be growing.

Seven Quick Takes: Friday, November 7

1. My (philosopher) husband just called, and I asked him if I should write quick takes today. His response?

“There are no Quick Takes; Only the Mind.”

2. Two years ago right now I was in labor with this one (the one that looks 2, not that other one):

A realistic depiction of a child: frizzy hair and food on her face.

Now she eats corn dogs. I have never had all of my out-of-womb children over the age of two. Does that make sense?

3. For her birthday, I decided to replace the long destroyed toy stroller cover. I sewed it in about 90 minutes last night. No, I am not opening an Etsy shop, though I know you all really want hand made, badly machine stitched, toy stroller covers. I am pretty pleased with the result, and so is F. We let her open two presents first thing because she would have just about lost it if she could not find her stroller all day. She is happiest about having a buckle.

NOT for sale. I love this fabric pattern.

4. F and I finished weaning this week. We were down to naps and bedtimes and well, being pregnant makes barely nursing not very nice at all. So, we decided it was time to be done. Two years is the longest I have ever nursed a baby (17 and 19 months for G and L). She seems cool with it, and we make sure to be cuddly before bed during our old nursing time. And for the record, I have now been pregnant and/or nursing for 6 1/3 years straight.

Things I made in this picture (all recycled from previous years): St. Joan’s armor/vest, St. Gemma’s cloak, St. Lucy’s skirt.

5. Here is our All Saints picture. I did not have time to take one before the evening Mass we went to, so we only have a poorly lit, after party, past bedtime, high on sugar photos.

6. When I got home from the grocery store last Saturday, the children spent about 10 minutes pretending to be cows and pushing around gallon milk jugs before I decided that the milk should probably be put away. Who would have thought milk could be so much fun?

F is getting so big.

7. So, did I just prove that there actually are quick takes and not just the mind? I don’t know. But you philosophers out there can debate that amongst yourselves. I am going to go have some snickers bars now… (fun size)

Linking up again with Jen at Conversion Diary.

http://www.conversiondiary.com/2014/11/7-quick-takes-about-co-hosting-with-lino-rulli-cool-book-covers.html

Working Vs. Staying at Home: The Decisions American Women Face

G hard at work at my desk years ago when I took her to work with me.
There was an outrage on Facebook last Saturday about President Obama’s statement about stay at home parents:

 “Sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make.”

In context, he was talking about having tax payer funded preschool so as to allow parents to not have to choose between a job and having children. And while perhaps he did not mean to reject entirely the idea that parents should stay at home with their children, he pretty clearly stated that he thinks that working is the best choice for everyone.

I understand that when a parent makes the choice to leave a career and stay at home with children, she is making a life-long financial sacrifice. She is losing the chance for career advancement. But the choice between a career and staying home is much more complicated than the issue of money.

I personally began to think about the choice between stay at home parenting and having a competitive career when I was in high school. A young woman thinking about college, adulthood, and discerning religious life considers all the possibilities. At my highly competitive, all girls Catholic high school, the issue of working and raising children often came up. A motivated, intelligent young woman does not know if and when she will get married, but she does know that she is expected to go to college and choose a career. My personal goal at the time was to become a sports journalist. When I applied to colleges, I planned on being a communications major. I even got into a pretty good local school known for its journalism program, Webster University. It was five minutes from my house, and I was offered a nearly complete tuition scholarship. I could have succeeded academically there, and I could have made my way into the world of journalism. But when it came down to it, and I imagined life as a journalist, I realized that it would not be compatible with my dream of family life. I could not be the beat writer of the St. Louis Cardinals and be the type of mother that I wanted to be. I had no idea if I would get married and have children, but I hoped that I would. I made a choice to move away from a lucrative career back when I was 17, not when I decided to stay at home with my children.

By the time I got my financial aid package from Franciscan University, I was already wavering on whether to go into journalism. I could have chosen a lucrative career path, but went instead with the college that I thought would best form my character. I started off as a communications major, switched immediately to undeclared, and within three semesters had switched to theology and philosophy and was participating in the Great Books program. I am so glad that I made these choices.

My college experience formed me into the person I am now; I am not sure what I would be like without this experience. I learned to value virtue, family, and religion above material wealth and worldly success. I learned to discern what God had planned for me, and it was made pretty clear halfway through college that I would marry the man I was dating. While I focused on that, I always thought that, if for some reason I am unable to have children, I would pursue a doctorate. However, within a month of marriage, I was already on track to be a stay at home mom.

It was not easy to be a stay at home mom, even with my 12 hour a week, bring the baby along part time job, on my husband’s meager graduate student income. But we knew that it was important for our family for me to be at home. During my first years of marriage and parenting, I had close female friends who were all making economic sacrifices to stay at home with their children. Some of them had part time positions that they could work from home, and some of them had free grandparent childcare. I lived in the subculture of college educated, single income, stay at home moms. If anything, it reinforced my choice. My pro-life Catholic friends all valued spending time raising their children more than their careers.

When we moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to advance my husband’s career (we moved for his tenure-track academic job), I became friends with a number of moms who had Ph.D.’s. Most of my husband’s departmental colleagues who have young children at home have all made the choice to have one parent at home with the children, whether it be the mother or the father. In philosophy, the decision of who stays at home is often based on who has the tenure-track job. All of the academic parents who stay at home also adjunct classes and write. I have spent many a play date with these Ph.D. moms discussing the life and career that they had thought they would have until they met their husbands in graduate school. They are fully aware that by staying at home they are setting aside chances at a successful career in philosophy, but they realize that their children will only be young for so long and that it is important for them to raise them.

I am not claiming that it would be wrong for both parents to work and have their children taken care of by someone else. I think that having a thriving career is a good thing and that many women are meant to have competitive and lucrative careers. I am so thankful for my doctor, who is a mother of six, and who delivers my babies and looks into my children’s ears. I am thankful to my mother for keeping her nursing career going while my father pursued a new career path. Both of them had a strong presence in the lives of their four children. I am sure there are many mother journalists who are happy in their lives and jobs and have growing families. I really think that we cannot make a sweeping judgment about what is best for “Americans.” Every family makes a decision about what is best for their family.

And some families decide that a parent spending the weekdays with his or her children is more important than how much money they make later in life. Couples decide that, yes, they can make ends meet with a single income, and they go for it. It is not an easy decision to make, and career advances are sacrificed. But if anything is worth sacrificing income for, the care of a human being is. The life and formation of a human being is far more important than the salary one brings home. The salary provides the material needs, the parent at home provides so much more. The working parent, hopefully, finds fulfillment in work and home life.

Other families have both parents working. Some arrange schedules to have one parent at home at all times. Others have grandparents who can help with the childcare. Others hire childcare. I do not think that it means that these parents value or love their children any less than those who are able to stay a home. I have spoken to working parents who wish that they could stay at home, but they cannot make that sacrifice.

For a mother or a potential mother in a society that values so highly education and then “doing something with that,” the tension between work and family is always there. Feminism has brought this upon mothers. But no mother who stays at home should be made to feel that their choice was not worth it. Because, while children change ones life forever, human lives will always be more valuable than worldly success.

Originally published in full at Truth and Charity…

Seven Quick Takes, Friday, October 31

1. I am going to rally my spirits and try not to get distracted or become lazy and give you all some quick takes. First trimester is rough, let me tell you. And I know I am not the only one having trouble blogging during it, because two ladies, Mary and Blythe, who write blogs that I follow have confessed to the same lack of writing motivation. Blythe has even gone to far to convince her husband to keep her blog up for her for the next 30 days.

2. While I am not quiet willing to give up the blog entirely while I am tired and nauseated all day, I did offer M an opportunity to guest post once a week. He refused in the same manner that he refuses to grow a beard. His colleague T and I have been encouraging him to try a beard again (he last had one in college), and he stands firm. In the same way, he resists blogging for me. No amount of pressure will work. In fact, the more pressure you put on him, the less likely it is that he will do it. So, there we go, M will not be blogging here and will not be growing a beard, much to all of our disappointment.

I am getting a new memory card in the mail next week, and then no more grainy iPad pictures…

3. I had been putting off buying a pumpkin all October, and yesterday I realized that we did not have one, and it has been a necessary tradition for M to carve a pumpkin with the girls. So, I ran out to nearby house that has a random urban farm in their side yard. It turns out that they also grow pumpkins up north. I found a nice pumpkin and brought it home. M did the carving with the girls and I took my Thursday shower. I would take a picture of the finished product, but that would require going outside in the cold, so I won’t. Imagine two triangle shaped eyes, a diamond shape nose, and a toothless, crooked happy smile. That is our Jack O’ Lantern. We don’t get super creative, but we keep the tradition.

4. I have been delighted this month by my friend Anna’s series on things she has learned from her parents. There are 31 of them over at her blog for the month of October. Today was the last one, and I am going to miss them. Is it weird that I have a sort of parent crush on them now?

5. Last week, I bought an extra blue hubbard at the farmers’ market. On Monday I decided to roast and puree both the farmed one and our home grown one. It turns out that ours was not fully ripe. I really have no idea what we did wrong or if we did anything wrong. I really did not look into how long it takes squash to ripen or anything. Oh, well. I still scraped out the green stuff, but we only had four 15oz. bags of puree this year. I think next year I will just use the garden space for something else and by a bigger farmers’ market squash.

6. This has been a daily requirement for my stomach. I am addicted to naturally flavored carbonated water.

7. This has been a fun last week of visitors. M was at another conference over the weekend and his mother came to town to help with the kids. My patience and endurance have decreased significantly since his last trip only two weeks before. Pregnancy hormones really mess you up emotionally, I tell you. (No more conferences until next Fall!!! HOORAY!) Then my brother came to visit. My baby, almost 25 year old, first day of work as an engineer today, brother came to visit by himself for the first time ever! He has come with my parents to St. Paul once as god father to F, and I think he came to Buffalo maybe 3 times total during our 4 year stint there. It was a real pleasure to have him here. I am pretty sure he came just for me to cook for him, because he brought a new cookbook of his made by the chefs on America’s Test Kitchen, which is one of his favorite shows. However, since I have no pictures of his visit, I can not prove to you that he was here. (I suppose I could photograph his unmade bed, but that would require getting up…)

Bonus: Did you here about the Advent journal being sold at Blessed is She? Order your copy today!!

http://blessedisshe.net/product/advent-devotional-journal/

And lastly, I am linking up with Jen, the wonderful hostess of Quick Takes!

http://www.conversiondiary.com/2014/10/7-quick-takes-about-last-minute-halloween-costumes-a-great-new-book-for-fall-and-popping-the-dom-on-a-tuesday-night.html

What We Can Learn from the Family of the Little Flower

A slide depicting the Martin family at home.

For the Feast of St. Therésè of Liseux I was thinking about making a dish that called for “a little flour.” However, since when I use flour I like to use a lot of flour, I am going to just go ahead and link over to an article that I wrote in April about St. Therésè and her family life, comparing it to that of the Bennett family in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

St. Therésè, Jane Austen, and Raising Saints

A Year for Recovery

We are at the beginning of our second straight school year without the birth of a new little Spencer. It is the strangest thing for me to not have a little one coming every second school year. (Our lives always have and always will revolve around the college school year, it is kind of a big deal here.) During the four years M was getting his PhD we had a baby every other school year and our first school year in St. Paul we had our third.

This December we were hoping to have another, but God had other plans as He called our little JP home in April. The truth is that I did not feel quite ready for another during my pregnancy with JP. We had no grave reasons to postpone the bringing of a new life into our family, so we went ahead and trusted God. God gave us a baby, and then He took our baby away. It was hard. It is always hard to lose a child, no matter what age.

My hopes for the next year dissolved, and now each month we are wondering if and when a new child will join our family. But the thing is, I feel more ready now. I look at the ages of my children and realize that everyone is right when saying the first three are the hardest. If we are blessed with another, I know that I will be able to handle the transition well.

As I prepared for our home schooling year, I realized that we are going to be baby-less the whole school year. I saw that I could plan a full year without the break a newborn would naturally cause. And I began to wonder, maybe this year is a gift for me and my family.

It is a year to recover from all the change we have experienced in our six years of marriage. It is a year to recover from losing a baby. It is a year to recover from two bouts of PPD in 17 months. It is a year to recover from the fear that we were going to lose my Dad in January, and a year to focus on supporting and praying for his full recovery. It is a year to enjoy our new home, post basement renovation, post decor hunting, post exterior work and painting. This year I can focus on my life, now, as it is. I can enjoy teaching my children, without the added stresses that we have had.

I know that new stresses could come unexpectedly, but for now I see this time as a gift. Maybe I will get pregnant and have to deal with the tiredness of pregnancy. Maybe another family problem will arise. But as I have been praying, I really feel peaceful about what is to come, no matter what it is. I held a friend’s sleeping newborn the other day, and I did not feel the ache and longing I sometimes feel when I hope for another baby. I felt a thankfulness for the children I do have and for the time I have now with them and a hope that one day we will have another to hold.

We are so incredibly blessed by all that we have, and I feel I do not deserve it all. But isn’t that the way God is, all we have, all we are given is grace. And I am so thankful for the grace of this year.

Seven Quick Takes: Friday, August 8

Our rainbow…

 1. So, the reason that I did not write quick takes last week was that we have been extremely busy since the last time I wrote them. I finished my last ones talking about how we decided to repaint the exterior of our house. Minutes after I published it, M found rotten, disintegrating wood around four of our windows. The wood was under a metal cover that was put on when the windows were last replaced. We did some Google searches of rotten wood and stucco houses and saw some pretty awful scenarios. We were envisioning two whole sides of our house having rotten wood underneath the stucco, and then having to spend all of our money and more to fix the house. As it turns out, we found a really nice carpenter to come out assure us that it was just the wood around the windows that was bad, make a good offer to fix it that same week. So, we took him up on it, and while he did the work he told us that the stuff (I don’t know what it is called) behind our stucco is made of some indestructible material they used to make back in the day and even if water did get back to it, it would never rot out. And the day that we learned that the wood was not rotten beyond the windows, a rainbow appeared in the sky.

2. We went ahead with the painting, but first there was power-washing. Our awesome friends T and F own a power washer, which they lent to us in exchange for garden lettuce (well that is not exactly how it happened, but T sure likes our lettuce). Here are some post power washing photos (the paint was not this bad before:

Back of the house

South side of the house

Up close

3. We started painting Tuesday afternoon, doing the first coat on one side. Then we did all three other sides on Wednesday. M worked on the second coat and the windows yesterday. Tomorrow M, my sister S, and my brother-in-law are going to finish the second coat and the house will be repainted! Hooray!

The South side with one coat.
The back all finished up!

I did not realize how bad it looked until we did the painting. We have been getting comments from neighbors that we have not even met yet on how good it looks. So, of all the good things to come out of our repainting, besides maintaining our house, is that our neighbors really like the way it looks and our house will blend in really well with all of our snow.

 4. Remember my best squash friend, good old mother blue hubbard?

I was inordinately excited two weeks ago to discover female flowers on my squash plant. And now we have three baby blue hubbards. I am so excited for grotesque looking squash to grow in my garden and to make delicious pies, breads, and soups.

Tiny squash!
This one is trying to get out of the yard.

The biggest so far. And my does my plant need some water….

5. In addition to painting this last week, I have been getting ready for our summer visit from the W’s (my sister M, her husband J, and their four lovely kids) and my sister S. It is a lot of work to get a whole house ready for guests with a broken toe (which still needs the funny shoe but not hurting anymore). We had a birthday cake for three year old B yesterday and went to the zoo today. Mostly, the kids are just happy to be with each other. And the weather it absolutely lovely outside in the shade. We are going to try for a sisters’ outing one of these evenings. Hooray!

6. I think I can handle home schooling this year, and I am determined to follow a schedule. People tell me again and again that I do not need to do much for kindergarten, but the thing is, my kids do better with a little structure in their lives. And I am pretty sure and hour of structured school time for a five year old will not ruin her experience of childhood. Not that anyone is saying that it is, but it seems that a lot of seasoned home schooling moms think that kindergarten should be really laid back. We are going to stick with simple science, math, and catechism, and solidify reading and printing. I think that this kindergarten year is largely for me to realize that I can do it. I can teach and help my children learn. It is very intimidating to take home schooling on, and I have been trying to get a mental handle on it for over five years.

7. Finally, I have to confess that I had writer’s block. The piece I wrote for Truth and Charity yesterday took a lot of mental energy and I think it was met with a lot of spiritual resistance. But I persevered, and if you did not get a chance to read it and you care about traditional prayer or charismatic prayer, I hope that you will.

Linking up with Jen! Head on over to find more Quick Takes!

http://www.conversiondiary.com/2014/08/7-quick-takes-about-hiking-fails-questions-about-dc-the-smells-of-the-bible-and-the-best-baby-photobomb-ever.html

Seven Quick Takes: Friday, July 18

1. I have not done Quick Takes in weeks now, but I will do them now since I know people really like them. I am pretty sure that I saw all of my blog readers while on my trip; well at least those of you who are in the family. I was teased by several of my aunts about my writing, but at least they read my writing. 🙂

2. Several people in the family joined in with the Novena to Bl. Louis and Zelie Martin, which I thought went very well. I loved that it did no just have the daily prayers, but a reflection on the life of the blesseds as well. I hope to read more about them soon. The creator of the site which has the novena text, Maureen O’Riordan, contacted me after seeing referrals from LWLP. She was really excited that so many of you joined in the novena. I plan to do it again next year.

3. I said earlier this week that the trip went well, but apparently I blocked out of my memory the children having trouble in the Appalachian Mountains. Their stomachs and the mountains did no agree, and one child neglected to inform her parents of the situation until she was a stinky mess. Yeah, that was fun. And I just realized today that Dramamine could have solved the problem of the mountains and children who will not nap in the car. Next time we go, we will bring the Dramamine! But the mountains were lovely. Apparently, we took no pictures of the mountains, just the people. So, here we have F an I on a .5 mile hike at an overlook. We hiked after we drove to the top of the mountain.

4. The next day we took a real hike: 531 steps down into a gorge and 531 back up with children on our backs. G (5) did them all by herself.

The way down.

At the very bottom.

All I could think about on the way up was how hard my heart was pounding and if my aorta was going to dissect. If it could happen to my father, then it could happen to me, right? It turns out that it is harder to carry a 3 year old on your back than a one year old, and that G is in better shape than us all. M and I were wiped out at the top and G was running around ready for more.

5. The highlight in Ohio was our huge family Fourth of July gathering, where we had all of my maternal grandparent’s descendants except for 5 (of the 17) grandchildren. (In my count I include the one on the way.) The 7 great-grandchildren did their best to make up for the missing grandchildren. We also had a baby shower for my aunt (in-law) who is having her and my uncle’s first child very soon! It was a lovely shower, and my creative and talented mother made an adorable centerpiece. I wish I had her flower arranging skills:

6. Michigan had a couple of highlights, one of them being seeing good friends. One evening, after the kids were in bed, M and I went over to our bachelor friend’s house and we chatted until 1am with four other guy friends. It was just like back in college when the guys would debate and discuss about the Church, morality, charismatics, tradition, etc. It was a lot of fun, but the next day I was soooo tired. I guess I have lost my stamina for late nights… We also had lunch with another friend on a different day. Our last day in A2 we spent with our dear friends, and L’s godparents, from college (and high school for M), and their two cute boys. I tried to convince them to move to Minnesota, but I don’t think they will. They have a great house and all of their extended family there. We will just have to settle for seeing them a couple of times a year and try to plan more vacations with them.

7. The last two days of our trip were spent in Western Michigan at a wedding of one of M’s cousins. It was a lovely wedding in a very modern looking Catholic church. I love that M has lots of head-covering at liturgy cousins and their little daughers in hats or veils. M’s mom’s side is even bigger than my mom’s side. His grandparents had a celebration for their 60th anniversary the day after the wedding, and they are so awesome that they had the caterer make food especially for the kids separate from the adult line. The kids actually ate their food, and my kids managed to not spill the red punch all over their nice dresses even though relatives continued to give them more and more punch. The kids were thoroughly entertained by their teenage boy cousins pretending to put them in the trash cans. F handled the crowded by sitting possessively in her booster seat and then napping in a stroller. Once she woke up, she looked suspiciously at anyone who caught her eye. Anyway, we drove home the next day, the kids only needed one day of cranky transition time, and we are back to our comfortable at home routine.

For more Quick Takes, head on over to Jen at Conversion Diary:

http://www.conversiondiary.com/2014/07/7-quick-takes-that-involve-book-nerdery-visions-of-nightmarish-travel-conference-jitters-and-the-video-that-made-me-sob-for-an-hour.html