2010 Quick Takes - 4

1)It's been raining, raining, raining. I listened to it all last night. While I love the sound of the rain, it concerns me a little to see the ponds appearing in the back yard.

2) While the birds and squirrels don't seem to mind, I find it funny that Clare's school considers rain inclement weather. They don't cancel school or anything, but pick up and drop off are completely reworked to make sure none of the kids get the tiniest bit wet.

3) Speaking of Clare's school, this week she asked me if she could shop at the school's holy store. This expression confused me and she replied "you know, the God store - where we can buy stuff at lunch." I finally got it, Clare meant the "St Monica Spirit Shop".

4)The picture in the photo below has caused an uproar in our house. The children insist that it is either Thomas or Corrina. They refuse to believe us when we say it's Clare.

5)Potty training is going great for Gregory. He knows what he wants and is willing to use the potty to get it. We've been accident free for a couple of days now. I wish I had some stellar ideas to share with other parents, but for Clare and Gregory both, they just decided to do it and
after a little work never looked back.

6)Yesterday was the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, who is one of the saints we named Thomas after. In light of this, and knowing that St. Thomas was a larger gentleman, I can't help but post a cute chubby picture of our roly-poly. May he imitate St. Thomas in more ways to come.

7)Lastly - a longish quote from I Believe in Love from this week:

Psychiatrists attribute most of the neuroses and mental disequilibriums common today to the suffering caused by feelings of guilt. The remedy proposed by unbelievers is to suppress the notion of sin, to remove from man the sense of sin. This is obviously a radical remedy. But it does not succeed. The conscience is still there. They may succeed in partially and temporarily stifling
it, but they cannot kill it any more than they can kill God.

No the remedy is the peace which Jesus gives us in the certainty that we are forgiven because we are loved.

There are many more quick takes over at Jen's.

8 Months

Thomas is getting so big. He wants to stand everywhere and has figured out a convenient form of crawling for himself. He only crawls, however, when he wants to find me and I'm not in the room.

He still only has 1 tooth but the next 3 are causing havoc in our house - I can see one little white line on his bottom gum and the bulges on the top. Poor baby, it doesn't seem like fun. Thomas takes it like a champ and only fusses at night, the rest of the time he is the sweetest, happiest baby.

Today is also National Chocolate Cake day. To celebrate we made Microwave Magic Cake in a Mug. While it isn't the tastiest chocolate cake in the world it is small, quick and easy. Plus the kids love watching it rise in the microwave.

Too much

Today is Clare's 100th day of school. She is very excited about the day, but I found her comments yesterday more telling about how she feels about education.

When she got in the van:
Me: When we get home you can do your homework
Clare: Do I have to do my homework? When I get home I would like to just relax and do nothing.

Seriously? Kid, you're in kindergarten, your homework is fun. What are you going to be like in a couple of years?

2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back

I have unpacked all of the boxes. I have also stored all of the empty boxes in a spare closet for our next move and have packed up a car load full of stuff for Good Will.

While this is good news, it is also a step backwards in the organization of our house. It was so neat with everything in boxes and now it needs some major work. There is stuff everywhere.

I am working on paring down as I go. Even if this phase goes slowly I will actually be simplifying our lives and keeping what we need.

While these 3 items don't exactly fit the spaces in the bookshelf John put together, I think they still make it into the 'things we need' pile.

2010 Quick Takes - 3

1) I have no follow through. This is a problem. I don't consistently finish things - for example the Pope's encyclical as the blog can attest. I am going to work on this - so I am forcing myself to do quick takes and blog consistently.


2) In an effort to work on my spiritual life I am reading I Believe in Love. In an effort not to burn out I am doing just a little bit day by day. So far it is good. It intrigues me how often we focus on doing things with more love and how many quotes we see from St. Therese and Mother Teresa and other saints, and yet we still don't seem to get it.


3) Here is a quote from the book that I found helpful in how I view what I do everyday:

"Love is life; it is the sun, the light, a divine warmth over our whole life. Without this love, you live a shallow life; you vegetate. Externally you do your spiritual exercies, fulfill the duties of your state in life, but if your heart is not there, life is not there. Without love, everything is painful, everything is tiring, everything is burdensome."


4) I registered the car today...and forgive me if I keep bringing up Texas, but did you know that in this state you register your car and get your driver's license in 2 different offices. They're not even next door. I find this very odd and miss the Virginia DMV. I'm also in shock at replacing my VA license plates.


5) Gregory is potty training!! It's day #3, and we've only had 2 accidents. He's still wearing a diaper at quiet time and bed, but otherwise he is doing great. He gets it and he really wants to go to school. "You can't go to school if you wear diapers" seems to be the biggest motivation he has.


6)The weather is really confusing my senses. It smells like fall outside, feels like spring and is the middle of January. According to my neighbor when we got here it was 20 degrees below average and now it's 20 degrees above average.

7)I want to know what kind of animal licked Gregory's head yesterday while he was sleeping.

The cow lick is quite impressive.

For more quick takes head to Jen's.

At the end of our street

Weather wise, it is so lovely here. It's in the mid 60's and it feels warmer when you're in the sun. I decided to take a break from emptying boxes and head to a playground.

There are at least 2 playgrounds within walking distance from the house. I was on my way to one when a neighbor recommended another. Unfortunately, that one (which looked awesome) was in use by a school.

Luckily we have a nice little nature area/park at the end of our street with a creek, grassy areas and rocks for little boys to climb on.

What a delightful way to burn off some energy.

Our New Look

I totally forgot to post a picture of our new home when we got here.

It's really nice living in a one level house. I feel like I get so much more done since I don't have to drag things up and down stairs.

Gregory's Antics

Our 3 year old is a mischievous little scamp sometimes. Lately it seems like that switch has been on overdrive.

See the black bug thing in the picture above. He turned it on in the kitchen. It crawled behind the fridge. All I knew was that there was something electrical happening back there.

Petrified, I pulled the fridge out to see what had happened. When I knocked the bug out with a broom Gregory exclaimed: "That where my bug disappeared."

The car in the above picture has a story too. It's filled with little candies that Gregory doesn't like. Instead he feeds them as "puppy treats" to Clare.

This morning I made him promise not to give any to Thomas. A few minutes later I found one in Thomas' mouth (luckily, they dissolve almost instantly).

"Gregory, I told you not to feed them to the baby, he's too little."
"That not baby Thomas, that my puppy and [it's] a puppy treat."

Here he is hiding in a tiny end table we have. The only problem...he wants the doors closed. Good luck breathing in there, little imp - mama thinks we'll leave the doors open.

Playdough Cookies

My friend Becky from Charlottesville finds the best things to do with your kids, and then I get to do them. It saves me alot of time and my kids love it.
Aren't these cookies pretty? They are completely edible and yummy!

These cookies were easy to make and definitely made my gloomy day brighter on Friday. Texas may be warm, but when it rains it's gloomy.

Here Clare and Gregory make colored dough.

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Clare enjoys the fruits of her labors.I'm thinking of making another batch with diferent colors, and I think I'm going to make these my bake sale go to, since they are so eye-catching.

Click here for the recipe.

Quick Takes 2010 - Vol 2

We're getting more settled and as we do so I wanted to take pictures of the kids' rooms before we get too settled and they're really messy:


1)Clare's room - what the pictures don't show is how light and big it is, perfect for play dates


2) Gregory's room - perfect for train sets - he's in heaven.

3)John's hours - John's been working long hours at the law firm, but in it all, I have found a perk. He has been getting up first and getting Clare ready to go. He makes her lunch and even does her hair. It's very sweet of him. They head out the door together and I get to stay in bed later if I need too.

4)And I need to sleep a bit more right now because Thomas is doing some serious teething or working through a cold. Poor baby, he's had a rough few nights. Mama and Tommers are tired.


5)Last night Thomas spiked a fever. I have no idea where our thermometer went, so today I bought one of those fancy forehead scanner thermometer thingies. It works quickly and easily. I feel like I have found myself on Star Trek, just scan the kid and you'll know what's up.


6)John's starting a book study at the parish this Sunday. The book looked very interesting:The Biblical Basis for the Catholic Faith. Both of us feel pretty comfortable sharing our faith and are relatively good with Scripture, but we're interested in learning more. It's always good diving into Scripture with a purpose.


7)It's been a gloomy day so I decided to make some cute rainbow cookies with the kids - check back tomorrow for pictures and links. They are awesome.




For more quick takes - head to Jen's

Seal of the Confessional

God is good to me. I went to Confession on Saturday evening.

The setup at the Church was a little different from what I am used to. I'm used to 3 doors with a priest in the middle and a light over each door. When the light over the door with the priest's name is red(or even just lit) - that means there's a priest inside waiting for you. The other 2 doors have lights too, green means go, red means stop.

This Church had a door with a priest's name on it, a blank door and 3 lights - one of which was in the middle of the wall.

The light over the door with the name was red. The light in the middle of the wall was green, and the light over the blank door was green.

There was no line so I waited a little while and then decided to head to the blank door.
There was a sign which read - "Please use other door"

Hmmm, I thought...am I going to walk in on the priest, or is there more to this than meets the eye?? Mainly, I was dreading the thought of going face-to-face.

Just as I walk over to the other door and place my hand on the handle, the door opens and a guy steps out. No exaggeration, I had just put my hand on the door to open it...I would have walked in on that guy's confession if I had been even 10 seconds earlier.

God timed it perfectly for both of us. It reminds me that He is really the one who we are going to see, and that He doesn't share our sins with anyone.

Cousins

2010 Quick Takes-1

1) Thomas tells me that he sees light at the end of the boxes, and I tell him that's just the box he's playing in 2) What Gregory's wearing today:

4)One of my favorite pictures from Christmas - my brother Joe, Corrina, Thomas and I while we were in GA

4)The kids on Christmas morning. Since we can't get them all to smile at the camera, at least we can get the big kids to kiss Thomas

5) I love seeing how different food prices are in TX. For example 5 lbs of grapefruits for $2.50, and avocados for 33 cents each. Woohoo!

6)If you like (or even don't like) baked potatoes - try this method to cook them. Clean the potatoes, poke them with a fork so they don't explode, rub them in a little olive oil and then bake them for 3 hours at 350 degrees. They are amazing!

You would think that they would end up as hard as rocks, but they taste heavenly. The skins get all crunchy and the middle basically melts in your mouth.

7)Yesterday was Gregory's spiritual birthday. I love celebrating baptism dates, and appropriately, Fr. Matt is coming to visit this weekend. It should be awesome to see him.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and stays warm.

Lost in the hall

The new house is all one level. All of the bedrooms open off of a long hall with many doors.

It is not uncommon to hear Gregory say as he runs down the hall, looking into each room:

"Nope, not that room"
"Nope, not that room"
"Yep, this room"

Occasionally I still hear "I can't find the room"

Howdy from Texas

We are slowly getting settled into our new house and new schedules and with the new year I thought I would post a list of firsts that have occurred in the past week or so

1st single family home for us
1st day at a law firm
1st day working until after 9 pm (wait until he gets his first all nighter)
1st tooth
1st night in separate kid's rooms (as in Clare and Gregory both got their own room)
1st day at school
1st best friend who lives right across the street
1st time in years I've seen some of the stuff that was packed during law school

So far I love our house and our neighborhood. What would be considered the suburbs in NoVa is considered quite urban here and we have everything at our fingertips. I could go weeks without going further than 5 minutes away.

Clare's school is great and she loves it. It's what I wanted in a grade school. They have really reached out to us. One of the little girls in Clare's class lives right across the street. They have become fast friends and soon we'll have the first playdate.

I'll post some pictures of the house soon, I want to show off the kids' new rooms, but at the moment there is still too much clutter and boxes around.

Now someone just needs to tell the weather that we've left VA and are now in TX. It needs to warm up.