Recipe for a Merry Family Christmas Celebration

Combine the following ingredients:

-homemade Christmas cards

-little elves to help decorate the tree

-a Christmas Eve spent barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen

-a vomiting 5 3/4 year old excited about her new sunshiny nightgown

-two very groggy (and therefore extremely well-behaved) girls at Midnight Mass

-a Christmas morning present-opening frenzy...



-and its aftermath

-a scrumptious yet non-labor-intensive Christmas feast

-and two lovely girls (who got dressed just before dinner) with their favorite presents, one of which was broken 8 hours after it was unwrapped.

Mix the above together and enjoy!
(Note: vomiting 5 3/4 year-old and broken favorite toy optional--certainly not recommended)

Question

If you take chocolate-drizzled peppermint caramel corn, mix in honey roasted peanuts, and then add mint M&Ms, does it really count as trail mix?

Congrats to Dad B.!

What my Dad wore on his last day at the office:


He's worked hard all his life and put up with a lot of $#*&! so he deserves to wear a shirt like this. :)

So now that you're retired, you'll be taking lots more vacations, right Dad? Like, to see your adorable grandchildren?

Sylar Was Here

Christmas Meditation

Our Lady said yes.
She said yes for us all.
It was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched.
The wind of the Spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass with the tiny hands of flowers, flung golden seed against it, even, in hours of storm, lashed it with the boughs of a great tree--the prophecy of the Cross--and yet the Spirit was outside. But one day a girl opened the door, and the little house was swept pure and sweet by the wind. Seas of light swept through it, and the light remained in it; and in that little house a Child was born and the Child was God.
Our Lady said yes for the human race. Each one of us must echo that yes for our own lives.

-from The Reed of God by Caryll Houselander

(photo credit: "Nativity" by Giovanni Pittoni from art.com)

When Gingerbread Men Go Bad

(totally lifted from Notes from the Trenches, which you really should visit if you haven't yet)

<100!

In case anyone's paying attention to our counters down below, we're now under 100 days 'till Baby #3's due date! Just wanted to point that out...

Pretty soon we'll start taking bets on actual birth date & gender, in case anyone wants in. :)

Miriam's letter to Santa

She insisted on writing all the words herself (with Mom dictating letters):

And elf came down the chimney (leaving a mess of ashes and glitter on the hearth) and picked up the letter last night.

All I have to say is that Santa's going to be in the doghouse this year.

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UPDATE

Well, maybe Santa won't be in as much trouble as I thought, based on a conversation I had with Miriam this morning...

Miriam: "I hope Santa brings me everything I want."
Mrs. P: "What if he doesn't?"
Miriam, smiling: "Then I'll just be thankful for what I have."

Can I just say that I LOVE Veggie Tales' "Madame Blueberry"?

I always knew it!

...there IS a good housekeeping fairy!

Bonus points

to whoever can guess which movie this cast of characters is from:


(photo credit: Miriam)

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UPDATE:

WHAT?!? No one guessed? Isn't it perfectly obvious that this is a representation of some of the main characters from "The Great Muppet Caper"?!? See Kermit (on the left w/the weird eyes), Miss Piggy (she's the one w/the ears), Nicky the irresponsible younger brother, and Marla, Darla & Carla (all in black), the models-turned-thieves.

Miriam LOVED this movie. It elicited several belly laughs from her -- mostly caused by physical humor. (she's still in the Three Stooges phase)

Belly pic!

I'm sure some of you are perhaps wondering how the baby belly is looking these days, so to satisfy your curiosity I offer this very accurate representation by Miriam:

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas...

Wish I could convey to you all what our home smells like right now... (think Christmas spicey-yumminess!)


The finished product (shot by Miriam, hence the angle):


Well, along with the rest of the civilized world we're up to our eyeballs in Christmas preparations. So I missed my blog-catch-up window! I'll try to post now and again though until I have a chance to breathe once more (and sleep -- sleep would be good too).

Actually, our home smells like an interesting combination of gingerbread and tempura paint, but the ginger is gradually conquering, thank heaven! (A while back Miriam wasn't allowed to use tempura paints for about, oh, 14 weeks.) :)

SO true

From the "Belly Laughs" section of my latest BabyCenter email:

Things you'll never want to see again when this is all over:
• Saltines
• Your maternity "lingerie"
• The inside of your own belly button
• Your OB's scale
• The word "Kegel"

a-MEN.

View out our kitchen window

or as Miriam said this morning, "It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! Oh, I'm so happy! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! I'm so happy I'm laughing! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!"

Miriam reciting

(turn up your volume)



I just love her expressions.

The Mother of Invention (not to mention creativity)

After our experience with those sorry Advent candles last year, I've been thinking about ways to make Advent candles last longer than one week each, aside from only burning them on Sundays, that is. So this year we're using....

Advent pillar candles! If these don't last, nothing will.

Naturally, I waited until the last possible second (Sunday morning) to procure Advent candles, and equally as naturally you can't find pink or purple candles anywhere. So we're going with plain white decorated with the proper colors. (Well, I tried to find plain white, but could only find scented. Oh darn, I guess my whole house is just going to have to smell like yummy vanilla!) I tried burning last year's candles and using the melted wax to paint a design on, but only succeeded in scorching the toothpick I was using. (I'm new to this whole candle decorating thing.) But Crayola markers worked exceedingly well. :) FYI the 3 purple candles say "Veni," and the pink one says "Gaude."

Veni, veni Emanuel!
Captivum solve Israel!
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio.
Gaude! Gaude! Emanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.

Teaching Moments

The beauty of homeschooling, I'm coming to find, is that learning isn't confined to some place or some time -- almost every moment is an opportunity for a small child to learn. I'm coming to think more and more that this is as it should be -- it's more natural to family life. "Learning in the heart of the home," as Elizabeth Foss says.

Last week I took the girls to visit a lady from our parish who was recently diagnosed with bone cancer. It's a real shocker, because she was always extremely active. She was one of the "church ladies" -- one whose presence was almost required to make anything a proper church function. :) She was the church choir director's right-hand-(wo)man, and that's how I got to know her best, since I sang with the choir for a couple of years. Another friend of mine termed her affectionately "a cranky old bear," and she was that -- I always thought it ironic that her name meant "lamb." But you couldn't help but love her, even while you gritted your teeth -- she was so hilarious in her crankiness.

I was really encouraged to visit her, since she went from being totally active church member to totally bed-ridden in a nursing home. I brought the girls with me -- Miriam had painted a picture earlier that day for her. They mostly just stood around and looked cute and shy while I talked with my friend. It was good to see that, despite that she can't ever get up again and that any movement is painful, her spirit was still there, although she's gentled a bit. (Just a bit.) :) Her acceptance of her suffering was really beautiful -- at one point she looked at the crucifix on her wall with love and spoke of how she knew that her suffering wasn't anything compared to what He suffered. And then she said, "But then sometimes, I start to think, enough is enough already!" Who was it who said, "I think I could be a martyr if they killed me real quick"? I feel the same way -- a slow martyrdom, or death by cancer, would be a real test of faith. As we were approaching her room, I overheard her crying to the nurse that her arm hurt and that she just couldn't ever feel comfortable. But when I asked the nurse if it was okay for us to visit now or whether we should come back, my friend called us in right away and seemed happy to see us.

So we had a good visit, and Miriam was full of questions on the way home. I think the topics we covered included the nature of bodily illness and death, the fall from grace and effects of Original Sin, the four last things, God's mercy, the Sacraments, the redemptive value of suffering, the purgation of sin, and the importance of the works of mercy, to name a few. It was a 20-minute car ride so we had lots of time. :)

I realized that moments like that afternoon were grace-filled for everyone involved -- for my friend, to have some visitors from the outside to talk to; for my children, to learn about all these important life questions and to plant some seeds in their minds & souls; and for me, to see the interaction of suffering and grace, as well as to be reminded of the important things myself. I had had a terrible week, so this was a good way to end it -- to remind me of what blessings I have in my life, not the least of which are the gifts of my faith, and of good health in my family.

Sisterly Love

Random Photo Dump

Some random cute photos from the past couple months:

how can one little person need so much sleeping room? (this is why she slept in her own crib from pretty much day one...)

must be pony laundry day.

regarding having helpers when the new baby's born, this is the result of Katie helping Mommy empty the dishwasher. (she's gotten a little better since this photo was taken, thankfully)

our little bookworm, IN the library book crate. (don't you sometimes wish you were that small again?)

Mystery Photos Continued

Mom B and Joe guessed correctly. The first is a study in chaos theory. A glass pot cover was soaking in dishwater, and after a few moments, this minuscule line of bubbles appeared. It was pretty cool how orderly they arranged themselves.


The second is indeed our old camera's final gasp before it officially perished. It had been acting funny for a while, sometimes taking pictures of blurry streaks, sometimes just being fuzzy, but it usually behaved itself after the ol' never-fail turn-off-wait-5-mins-turn-on trick. (Of course, we lost lots of precious shots this way.) But when it steadfastly refused to take any more decent pictures, we decided to retire it. Now we've got a brand spankin' new Canon PowerShot SD850, which is really nice for a point-and-click. The old Canon let you do lots of fiddling to get the perfect shot, but since we never learned how to use all that stuff we though simpler was better (not to mention cheaper).

So, to show off the superiority of the new camera, here is a series of professional-quality shots demonstrating a wide variety of artistic effects.



As you can see, the image stabilizer and light-adjustment properties work extremely well in a variety of action shots and light situations.

(Another title for this series is: "What Happens When Your Five-Year-Old Gets Her Hands On Your New Camera.")

Mystery Photos

#1:

#2:

Should I be alarmed...

...that my sweet 5-year-old daughter finds this utterly, gut-laughter-inducing, rotf hilarious?

The latest Ohio trip

Next stop in our "way belated Pickles vacation posts" journey is another trip to Steubenville, Ohio. This was a doubly fun trip, since it was a) Homecoming weekend at the Alma Mater, which coincides with b) the annual Franciscan festival, plus there was c) a new cousin's baptism, which involved d) a mini family reunion!

Once again we opted for our ingenious idea (well, I'm sure it's not original to us) of leaving early in the morning and arriving around lunch-time. This gives us plenty of recoup- and play time in the afternoon (as well as time to wash the carseat of a certain person who had to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW when we were in the middle of nowhere).

Miriam and Edy were once again happily reunited, with Katie playing tag-along as usual.

All the other fun stuff aside, I think the girls would have been perfectly happy doing this all weekend -- coloring under the trees (and playing hide-and-seek) (and drawing with chalk) (and going to the playground across the street) (etc.).

Edy looking glamorous and medieval.

Ahhh, the requisite face-painting.



Does it really count as a proper fair if you don't have flowers, hearts, stars, or some combinations thereof painted on your face?

And of course, the whole reason we were there in the first place...

our new cousin Lucy's baptism!

Unfortunately, our camera wasn't behaving itself, or else it was out of memory, (or OUR memories weren't working very well) so we weren't able to get any other good pics of the weekend. It was a real cousin fest, with Mrs. Pickles' cousins and their families. For dinner at Aunt Terri's house there were 8 people age 5 and under, including a walking 10-month-old. We also got to see freshman Aunt Katie in her dorm room, but that picture came out all grainy. :(

Yet another great family weekend! The trip back was eventful, unfortunately -- about 1 hour into the trip Katie had a spectacular diaper disaster which necessitated hosing her off at a gas station in the boondocks with icy cold water, and merited another trip to the washer for the carseat. But what's a little extra laundry on a great trip like that? :)