Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you, dear St. Joseph!!

Yesterday we closed on the sale of the old house! I am so, so grateful and just in awe of how much we have been blessed during this move. When we moved into the old house in 2004, the relocation was a huge drama (long story for another post, or not) and not at all what we had planned. All we could think was that it was God's plan for us to end up in that particular house, and then I proceeded to bring my two brown-eyed baby boys home there and have the happiest years (so far!) of my very happy life there.

So even though we never loved that house, leaving it was, to say the least, a big decision. As we were looking at houses over the past months, I've prayed about it so much; I really do want to avoid moving for the sake of materialism or my own comfort or any of that kind of thing. Lots of prayers and soul-searching during these months, even talking it over with spiritual advisors, etc., believe me. How can I really justify moving into a bigger house when there are homeless people in my very own city? I mean, really, do any of us really need a 3-car garage? :) But on the other hand, we do want to raise our family in a nice home that we can all reasonably fit into, and a house is obviously a huge investment and part of prudently managing the resources that God has given us, right?

We are just so amazingly, abundantly blessed that things have gone so smoothly! To have had a contract on our house a week after we put it on the market, when plenty of others in our neighborhood have been for sale for quite a long time, and especially since we had taken a risk to purchase the new one without selling the old one first--well, I'm just so humbly thankful and full of wonder at God's goodness. And of course, as I said before, we got the little St. Joseph statue for real estate, although I couldn't bring myself to bury him in the yard and I kept him on the mantle. I'm positive that his intercession helped us this fall, no doubt! And I found this sweet St. Joseph novena, which is perfect for thanking him for helping take care of us. It has lots of interesting theological points about St. Joseph, who is so amazing and worthy of devotion--the patron saint of families, fathers, the church, happy death, and so many other things. Here's a bit of it from today that I especially liked:

Saint Joseph, you were the man chosen by God the Father. He selected you to be His representative on earth, hence He granted you all the graces and blessings you needed to be His worthy representative.

You were the man chosen by God the Son. Desirous of a worthy foster-father, He added His own riches and gifts, and above all, His love. The true measure of your sanctity is to be judged by your imitation of Jesus. You were entirely consecrated to Jesus, working always near Him, offering Him your virtues, your work, your sufferings, your very life. Jesus lived in you perfectly so that you were transformed into Him. In this lies your special glory, and the keynote of your sanctity. Hence, after Mary, you are the holiest of the saints.

You were chosen by the Holy Spirit. He is the mutual Love of the Father and the Son -- the heart of the Holy Trinity. In His wisdom He draws forth all creatures from nothing, guides them to their end in showing them their destiny and giving them the means to reach it. Every vocation and every fulfillment of a vocation proceeds from the Holy Spirit. As a foster-father of Jesus and head of the Holy Family, you had an exalted and most responsible vocation -- to open the way for the redemption of the world and to prepare for it by the education and guidance of the youth of the God-Man. In this work you cooperated as the instrument of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was the guide; you obeyed and carried out the works. How perfectly you obeyed the guidance of the God of Love!

Hi honey, how was your day?

Got this cute story from Barbara Curtis' great blog MommyLife.

A man was sick and tired of going to work every day while his wife stayed home.
He wanted her to see what he went through so he prayed:
'Dear Lord: I go to work every day and put in 8 hours while my wife merely stays at home.
I want her to know what I go through. So, please allow her body to switch with mine for a day.'

God, in his infinite wisdom, granted the man's wish.

The next morning, sure enough, the man awoke as a woman...He arose, cooked breakfast for his mate,

Awakened the kids,
Set out their school clothes,
Fed them breakfast,
Packed their lunches,
Drove them to school,
Came home and picked up the dry cleaning,
Took it to the cleaners
And stopped at the bank to make a deposit,

Went grocery shopping,
Then drove home to put away the groceries,

Paid the bills and balanced the check book.
He cleaned the cat's litter box
and bathed the dog..
Then, it was already 1 P.M.
And he hurried to make the beds,
Do the laundry, vacuum,
Dust, And sweep and mop
the kitchen floor.
Ran to the school to pick up
the kids and got into an argument
with them on the way home.
Set out milk and cookies and
got the kids organized to do their homework.
Then, set up the ironing board and watched TV while he did the ironing.
At 4:30 he began peeling potatoes and washing vegetables for salad, breaded the pork chops and snapped fresh beans for supper.

After supper, he cleaned the kitchen,
Ran the dishwasher,
Folded laundry,
Bathed the kids,
And put them to bed.
At 9 P.M. He was exhausted and, though his daily chores weren't finished, he went to bed where he was expected to make love, which he managed to get through without complaint.

The next morning, he awoke and immediately knelt by the bed and said:
Lord, I don't know what I was thinking.
I was so wrong to envy my wife's being able to stay home all day.
Please, Oh! Please, let us trade back.. Amen!'

The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied:
'My son, I feel you have learned your lesson and I will be happy to change things back to the way they were.

'You'll just have to wait nine months, though. You got pregnant last night.'

I feel I must add the caveat that rarely do I do all that stuff in a day. But they do fly by anyway! Also, since you may be wondering due to the end of that story: No, I am not currently pregnant. :)

Silly Thought for the Day

Sometimes I feel like this:

or even this:

When I wish I could feel like this:

Or especially this:

Life is Good!!

Quick Takes Friday

Look for more Quick Takes over at the wonderful Conversion Diary.

~ 1 ~
Sweet MPD is just a heart-warming sight to behold, I have to say. I will NEVER get tired of looking at little ones sleeping in their footy pajamas with their bums in the air! Could anything be more precious? Can't I just keep having babies straight up until I start having grandbabies? :)

~ 2 ~
Loving the Lemonade Detox Diet! I have been doing it for all of November so far and I am a whole new person. (A new person whose jeans are too big and rings are falling off!!) It is amazing what a total addiction food is and how much of my energy goes to planning it, preparing it, eating it, digesting it, daydreaming about it(!)... I am so inspired by what Barbara Curtis has to say on this topic here(click on categories, then diet)--basically that eating more than we need to really is the sin of gluttony, and should be treated like any other sinful behavior--confessed and then avoided. Sins of the flesh, right? She makes the point that we should strive to let God--not food--fill up our emotional emptiness. Powerful stuff!

~ 3 ~
So I'm thinking of ditching Facebook. Not just "too much time," although it is so addicting, don't you agree? And I have so loved finding friends--so many wonderful old friends who I'd figured were lost forever! But how about those high school people who are so excited to find you, while you're thinking "Who?" And then there are other old friends, who you haven't really kept in touch with, because if you'd been motivated to keep in touch with them, you would have done so. And the ones--I hate to say this--but the ones who you didn't like that much in the first place, and they didn't like you, and now they just bring back uncomfortable memories? And do I really need to know all this stuff about these people? Either I see them all the time, and already know it, or haven't seen them in 20 years, and don't want to know it.

Now I know you guys are really thinking I'm a grinch here, just like with my Halloween rant last week, but I'm just saying. Some of these old contacts just bring up way too many emotions, overall. That, I think, is the core of my issue with Facebook. (MY issue, certainly!) Some of those emotions have been packed away and closed up for years and years--and then, Facebook opens them all right back up, in a time and place where they don't belong. I can't handle it. This week, of all things, I spent two whole days crying--literally crying, which I never, ever do--over a path my life didn't take. I don't have time for a mid-life crisis this week, really I don't! I guess the thing is that one lifetime really just isn't enough for all the people we want to spend it with. Know what I mean?

~ 4 ~
Today I had to pick up JPD two hours early from school because he was getting way too wild and making some of the other kids in his class cry for various reasons (knocking down another kids' tower, pushing during dance time, etc.). (I can't even type this with a straight face it is so funny!) When I arrived to get him, he was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he had taken off running towards the busy street, having decided to walk home by himself, and the principal had sprinted after him to stop him from getting into the highway. Around in front of the church I found them--him throwing himself onto the ground and crying because he wasn't being allowed to walk home, and her quite ready to hand him off to me.

I guess this is probably Strike One for JPD towards getting expelled from preschool. To tell you the truth, I'm surprised it's taken him until November to create this big of a fuss. His teacher and I concluded that he's just getting a bit too overexcited about knights and archery, which is contributing to his wild behavior. So on the way home we returned his Robin Hood video to the library.
I love you JPD!!

~ 5 ~
The thing with moving is that it really forces you to re-evaluate every last scrap of your STUFF. As in, do I really want to move this (fill in the blank: treasured kids' craft, stack of old magazines with good recipes in them, tiny bottle of shower gel from my honeymoon resort)? It's PRIME purging time around here!

~ 6 ~
As a rule, I never break out the Christmas music until Thanksgiving. I feel strongly about saving it, which makes it that much more precious and exciting--and even so I must say that by the time Christmas comes around, I'm about ready to be done with it for another 11 months. But this year, I'm really wanting to get it out now. I think I will.

~ 7 ~
Moving day is now upon us. Monday night will be our last in this house. What a fun weekend lies ahead--NOT! But our new house is going to be so great...someday...if I ever get it all unpacked...

Retro Thursday

Although this month is going to be a good one in many ways (of course), overall I'm just in denial that winter is here already.
So here's a Retro photo of an Eastertime past, April 2007:



I love these sweet pictures, which we took after Easter brunch at a restaurant on the bluffs overlooking Milwaukee's lakefront. Two-yr-old JPD was a wild man ("was"--as IF that's past tense!! Ha!) and even in the one where he stood still, look for me hiding behind the big kids, holding him still. :)

Sainthood: Such an Everyday Thing

"If we make a daily effort to become saints, each of us in his own state in the world and in the exercise of his profession, in our ordinary lives, I have no doubt that our Lord will enable us to work miracles, and, if necessary, miracles of the most extraordinary kinds."

~ St. Josemaria Escriva