Moving Day: Goodbye Old House!

Never Enough Hours in the Day

“Lack of prayer is the cause of lack of time.”
– Peter Kreeft

First Snow!

Just a little dusting, but there was plenty of excitement around here this afternoon! :) (We actually did get a bit more than this--maybe around an inch?--after I took these pictures.)

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

Trick or Treat!

Go, MPD!

MPD was quietly--way too quietly--playing in the basement by himself one morning this week. When I went to check on him, look what I found!

He had carefully lined up all the matchbox cars in a line across the floor. He was so proud of his work! What a cutie boy!

Friday Quick Takes

~ 1 ~
Confession time: I am a Halloween Grinch. I just hate it. I didn't always hate it, but it wasn't always this much work. In fact, I don't have a lot of religious or philosophical complaints about this holiday, as many people do here and here. For the most part, to me Halloween is harmless fun, as long as little trick-or-treaters avoid getting run over or swallowing a razor blade hidden in a Hershey's bar. But I don't like, at all, dealing with costumes--I never have--and it seems so dumb to decorate the house just to un-decorate it again a few days later, when I'm pretty much perennially de-cluttering already. I also particularly loathe carving pumpkins--messy, boring, and stupid. (Kids, if you're reading this, I am SO sorry!) We don't do gory or gruesome or very scary costumes or decorations of any kind, either--there is so much gross stuff out there! And all that candy--yuck! I can't imagine letting my kids eat all that; they each get to fill a ziplock sandwich baggie with their favorites, and it usually lasts them at least until Christmas, and we give the rest away to candy tithing at our church. (They send it to Iraq and to college kids.) Mostly, Halloween just seems to be to be a kinda stupid waste of time--totally secular, nothing meaningful to celebrate, just plain consumerism in every sense of the word. Not to mention that I have so little self-control that I will totally pig out on candy myself--double yuck!

The one thing I do like about Halloween is the fall decorations that are cute and kind of folk-artsy. Those, I'm a sucker for. And of course I like taking pictures of my kids in their costumes. Stay tuned for that post tomorrow! :)

~ 2 ~
Our move is now less than three weeks away. I feel something akin to being at the end of labor--I know how it's going to end, but between now and then, it will be SO painful! I have been finding it almost impossible to get started packing, for various reasons (see #1, above, for one!), but the time for procrastination to stop is right now, this weekend. Really. Just after I finish this blog post.

~ 3 ~
I discovered a recipe using leftover soup or chili that I think is so cool! It's a cornbread version of chicken pot pie or shepherd's pie, from the Dairy Hollow House's soup cookbook. Why didn't I think of this by myself? Yummy!

~ 4 ~
MPD is now really for sure weaned. <> It's time, I know--as I've said before, I am not one to nurse a toddler and beyond...but my little sweetie boy is growing up. It's funny, too, because his personality seems a bit different now too. He's more independent and opinionated. Great, because we don't have enough independent and opinionated people in this family!

~ 5 ~
Yesterday WWD went to an open-house visit day for the middle school we're considering. He loved it. <> It's between this school, which is a very small, very Catholic, college-prep school for grades 6-12, and homeschooling. I have no idea which way we'll go--after all, last year at this time I never would have imagined that we wouldn't be homeschooling everyone right now! Thy Will Be Done!

~ 6 ~
This fall I have started a Little Flowers Club for the girls at school. It is a little bit like a Catholic version of Brownies, but there is no national organization--it's just a tiny little club, almost like a bible study group, with my 2 girls plus 10 friends from school. It's so great! Each month they study a virtue with a corresponding flower and female saint. Each girl has a sash on which to sew their badges, which are each flower petals, and by the end of the year the flower will be complete. So cute and so much fun! I am trying to keep this as simple simple simple as I possibly can--at my house, after school, once every other week for an hour and a half. We do art, crafts, games, reading, prayer, discussion, and, of course, snack. It gets quite crazy, really! It is a challenge to fit all the fun ideas for each virtue and flower into this small amount of time, but so far it is just right. Our little group is so blessed, and I am really loving getting to know all the girls at the school (most of them are signed up.)! It is certainly helping me get my homeschooling ya-yas out too!

~ 7 ~
The kids have a break for a 4-day weekend this weekend--hooray! I love when there's no school, almost more than they do. It is very rainy--supposed to clear up for trick-or-treat tomorrow--so we are having a cozy indoor weekend. Don't you just love trick-or-treat? I can't wait--NOT! And any minute now, I'm going to start packing...

Retro Thursday

Halloween 2002--KLD's first Halloween! Can you believe I actually made this little train for them? It was so funny--it certainly slowed them down for trick-or-treat because they had to stay together and walk slowly. Nowadays, the kids make their own costumes in our house--and dress up their little brother too!

Fall-ing

Still Waiting for My Ice Cream!

Thanks to Ang for forwarding this funny civics lesson!

From a third-grade teacher in the Nashville area...

The presidential election was heating up and some of the children showed an interest. I decided we would have an election for a class president. We would choose our nominees. They would make a campaign speech and the class would vote. To simplify the process, candidates were nominated by other class members. We discussed what kinds of characteristics these students should have.

We got many nominations and from those, Jamie and Olivia were picked to run for the top spot. The class had done a great job in their selections. Both candidates were good kids. I thought Jamie might have an advantage because he got lots of parental support. I had never seen Olivia's mother. The day arrived when they were to make their speeches.

Jamie went first. He had specific ideas about how to make our class a better place. He ended by promising to do his very best. Everyone applauded and he sat down.

Now it was Olivia's turn to speak. Her speech was concise. She said, "If you will vote for me, I will give you ice cream."

She sat down. The class went wild. "Yes! Yes! We want ice cream. "She surely would say more. She did not have to. A discussion followed:

How did she plan to pay for the ice cream? She wasn't sure.

Would her parents buy it or would the class pay for it. She didn't know.

The class really didn't care. All they were thinking about was ice cream.

Jamie was forgotten.

Olivia won by a landslide.

Sound familiar? :)

Sick Day

JPD had fever in the night last night--again--so he didn't go to preschool today. Actually, although it's hard to tell, since the pediatricians aren't running cultures, it seems that we have H1N1 going around here. One by one, the kids have been going down with the symptoms--which at least for us aren't such a big deal.

Anyway, so JPD was too sick for school today. But fortunately not too sick for this:



Or this:




Don't you feel sorry for my poor sick boy?! :)

Just What I Needed to Hear!

"Just as the keeper of the vineyard keeps his eye on the fig tree and eagerly looks for the first fruit buds, so God looks at every sinner and at each one of us.  He scrupulously keeps and eye out for what could touch our heart, and looks for the secret stirrings of repentance and conversion.  To that end he gives us time.  God knows that humans are by nature slow and even slothful, and that it takes a long time for us to become mature adults and finally to bear fruit.  It has not been given to humans to reach perfection overnight; our conversion requires much time.  Nor can we (for no apparent reason) suddenly take the wrong road.  Humans are simply that way and god completely understands this, for this is how he made us.  For this reason he waits very patiently and gives us time; he lets time do its work.

For that matter we know all too well that we can only make progress with the aid of time, by trial and error, three steps forward and two steps back.  We tend to make many resolutions which we quickly forget and which quickly go up in smoke.  Every time we begin anew and quietly take our time.  We need not be afraid if we misuse the time God the Father has so generously given us in his infinite mercy.

For all the time given us, every day and every hour, are a marvelous gift from God:  it is the time of his grace, whose intent is that we should go to him and let ourselves be seized and turned around by his abundant mercy like so many who have gone before us.

God keeps an eye on us sinners, not in order to let us die, but to give us time so that we may repent and find the abundant life.  Let us give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, and his love endures forever!"

~Fr. Andre Louf, O.C.S.O

Freezin' Season

THIS is what fall soccer in Wisconsin looks like!!

What a cold and rainy fall we have had this year--come to think of it, a really cool summer also.  They're predicting a warmer-than-average winter, but I'll believe that when I see it!

This weekend was the end of fall soccer.  Time for Halloween and getting ready for the holidays!  We are all ready for our weekend schedules to slow down a bit, so we can have time to work on moving and getting settled in the new house. 

Both KLD and JPD love soccer so much, and have had a great time playing this fall!  If it weren't for all my less-is-more rhetoric, along with what I just said in the last paragraph, I'd look at signing them up for indoor soccer over the next few months.  Perhaps in January...

Happy Birthday Bill!

Bill's 48th birthday was the last day of his two-week vacation--one week camping, one week painting the new house.  So he spent most of his birthday on a ladder, working on painting the garage.  We brought his cake over to him! 

The new house is looking great and we can't wait to move in!  A few weeks to go...