May and June Birthdays

I overlooked Sam's 12th birthday on the blog! He is our May baby and trying desperately to be taller (though not wider) than his mother! Measuring in at 5'2" he has a few inches to go.

I cannot believe he is going to be in 7th grade this fall! We are going into junior high.... at home!

Merry is our June baby and he turned 4! Merry's choice of food was pancakes for breakfast. Peanut Butter and Honey on Mommy's Bread (awwwwww, sweet boy!) for lunch and Bones for supper (that is, steak but he gets a bone!)

The 9 car train cake gave everyone a chance to decorate with candies. (What a messy project!)

Happy 13th Anniversary to Us

Birth of St. John the Baptist

The Lord has called me by name from my mother's womb, and He has made my mouth a sharp sword. Under the shadow of his hand he has protected me, and has made me a chosen arrow. Isa. 49:1,2



We celebrated our 13th Wedding Anniversary on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. An apporpriate day for a wedding as we remember the words of St. John the Baptist He must increase, but I must decrease. When we let Christ increase, we allow Christ to unite our family and work toward the Greater Honor and Glory of God.




We have been greatly blessed in our 13 wonderful years with each other and our 9 beautiful blessings.

As a special surprise our dearly beloved priest, Fr. Kunz (may he rest in the Peace of Christ) arranged for the beautiful Pilgrim Virgin Statue to be at our church at the time on the day of our wedding.

Here is the prayer we prayed that day:

Consecration of a Newly Wedded Couple to the Holy Family

At the threshold of our new wedded life in Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we come to consecrate our marriage to You, Most Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. You knew trials and tribulations.

You were poor in the things of this world but infinitely rich in grace. Obtain for us the divine wisdom never to permit our marriage to be directed by the spirit of materialism. May we realize that our chief vocation is to assist one another in Holy Matrimony in becoming saints, and to thus assist any children God may give us.

We are open to receive from God whatever children with which God wills to bless us, believing that He will enable us to support and educate them. We pray here that our marriage be fruitful in time and for all eternity. May our love for one another never deviate into selfishness but always be directed to give of ourselves in charity to each other in Jesus Christ under the Mantle of Mary’s love and the protection of St. Joseph.

May we be open to communicate always with each other in our joys and sorrows and thus carry one another’s good fortunes and burdens in Mary and Joseph. We intend to live our married life in holiness, through daily prayer, and the frequent use of the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist.

While we each have a Guardian Angel, we ask for a special Angel over our marriage and future family.

We consecrate our married love to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary under the prayerful protection of St. Joseph.

Amen.

Our marriage has been greatly enriched by family, friends and most especially our priests who provide the Sacramental Graces that keep our marriage joyful and happy in this vale of tears.

Sts. Peter and Paul

Simon:
Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God....
Christ:
Blessed art thou, Simon BarJona, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father who is in Heaven: and I say to thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven...

And in honor of Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI ... Be sure to view this blogging from WDTPRS Slavishly accurate liturgical translations & frank commentary on Catholic issues - by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf o{]:¬) *snicker - love it* and note the pictures as you scroll down of the Holy Father distributing Our Lord to the Faithful *on their knees* and *on the tongue*.


Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?

Yet, inspite of Saul's outright persecution against Christ... God Himself chose St. Paul as one of His greatest saints:

The Lord said... for this man is to Me a vessel of election, to carry My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for My Name's sake.

None the less, this shortly after the death of St. Stephen aided and abetted by none other than our dear St. Paul. I often wonder what the meeting was between St. Paul and St. Stephen at the Pearly Gates!

And thus begins the Pauline Year (to which I am still doing my homework). All you talented home-educators do share your ideas, with those of us less talented!

WAHHHH!

Bilbo says "Da-da-da-da-da"

...as Uncle Andrew said in the Magician's Nephew "But what about ME?!"

Please Pray

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Paul who died suddenly at work.

Eternal Rest grant unto Him O Lord,
and let Perpetual Light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the Faithfully departed,
rest in Peace.

Also pray for his dear wife Kristina and their 5 young children as they suffer this devastating loss. Our heartfelt prayers are with you, Kristina.

Bilbo 6 Months

Bilbo is now a 1/2 a year old. Where does the time go?






Good grief, driving already.


Pulling himself up.


Woops!

Square Foot Gardening

After years of my poor gardening skills I decided we'd try Square Foot Gardening. I spent the winter thinking about this. In a timely manner the railroad behind Aragorn's building happened to drop off a rather large pile of railroad ties. Long story short, *they* said we could have them. It seems silly but I was nearly giddy over this.

Railroad ties are surprisingly heavy, even in 4 or 5 foot lengths. So perhaps our boxes are not quite perfect but they'll do.

First we did this incorrectly, naturally. I didn't realize we were suppose to dig down first so this is Sam smoothing out the dirt.

Every helpful Pippin finds a worm to give to the "oosters". (roosters)

Still in the incorrect step of our gardening attempts we mixed the "ideal" soil.

Need I say that the boys just dove right in and started mixing that soil up.

Wallowing is not a problem around here...

Mind you this was percisely 1 hour before Sam was to serve for a Traditional Latin Mass Wedding!

As I was thinking this seemed like awfully lightweight soil, I realized we were first suppose to dig down 6-12 inches and mix that dirt in with the soil we had already prepared. Now this is alot of work believe me! But the enjoyable kind of work.

So finally our first 5 boxes are ready. I really enjoyed planning out the square foot garden. The sticks are laths and those are just used initially to divide up the sections so you know what is coming up where.

Merry filling up our peat pots so we can get some sensitive-to-the-cold basil started in our crude warming bed. (the basil never survived the peat pots as *someone* knocked them all over spilling the entire contents, oh well, basil can be bought in pots at the farmer's market so that is what we did!)

Eowyn planting some seeds.

Lo and behold we found some parsley that had come up from last year! We also found some onions... mighty potent onions I might add.

You can see here the digging process *phew*

Aragon made a big *L* shaped box (since the chain on the chain saw broken when making the other 5 smaller boxes we couldn't saw up any more ties) This time we started correctly and dug down and then mixed in with the prepared soil.

One month later we have some greener growing. At first we grew quite a bit of grass (in the gardens not the front lawn).

The peas were starting to get taller so we added in some trellis for climbing.

We found a piece of corn from last year that had sprouted and we found it rather fascinating.

It was just so neat how the piece of corn was still there and the stalk and the roots were coming out of it. Really amazing.

Planting Crops

Rain, Rain, and More Rain

We were pounded with ridiculous amount of rain... one day alone we had 3 inches and this was only the last day of the storms that kept coming.

This is usually dry

This was the beginning of the first washout of the driveway.

Stream filling up



Pippin kept calling it "chok-lit water" but the children had just watched the *old* Willy Wonka movie.



The dog taking a swim.


After many days of rain the children couldn't take the indoors much longer and went outside and got a little giddy.






We're to overflowing at this point.


Galadriel retrieving some leftover game items before they were washed away.


A heavy wind storm blew through for a short period of time. It seems the only purpose was to blow down the last working windmill.


The garden boxes were flooded.


The funniest sight met my eyes when I saw the children had taken out the sleds and were attempting to "ride the rapids" through the play area.


Normally there is no water here at all but we had a regular waterfall going. It was very difficult to get any pictures to focus properly as it was pouring rain while we were outside.


Our damage was relatively very little.


The windmill landed very conveniently right between the parsley and cilantro and didn't hard a single thing in the garden. (must be we have a good garden angel...)


However, not all the destruction is due to the storms but to the town who is insisting a ridiculous amount of trees/brush be cut down.


It's a bit unnerving to see our lovely roadside turning de-countrified... this is what happens when city dwellers move to the country :(

We decided to take a drive to see some of the very local damage. We are now the state of 10,000 lakes. These pictures are all corn or crop fields *not* originally lakes and ponds.





Yikes!


We made our way to the local dam and was it ever roaring away. There was some fear that it may burst like some others did. Only 1/2 hour or so north of here houses were completely washed away.


The dam


This was all that was left of the "beach" where Grandpa would take the boys fishing.

The river was pretty deep. A ways north of here a river was 14 FEET above normal (or so that's what I heard anyway)

We decided to drive by our favorite swimming place. This is the other side of that lake.

This cracked me up!!! This man was toting his lawn mower in his canoe. I guess they must have had to evacuate and I suppose they are trading their lawn mower in for something useful like a motor boat.

The beach where we swim just isn't there at all!

Galadriel and Bilbo

Our driveway washed out pretty nicely so we called for some reinforcements.

Waiting for another load.

Two loads of the wrong item arrived.

But like ants on an anthill it made no difference, it was a great place to play!

2 loads of the right thing....

Aragorn working to rebuild the driveway.

My little mud puppy, Pippin

2nd wash out and worse yet, this was after 5-1/2 inches of rain in 2 days.

Delectible Merry

Our road was closed as part of it washed out pretty badly I guess.

During Rosary one evening the little boys fell asleep, one on either side of me. When I got up they fell in this pile!

Now this was the neatest sight! To the south the sky was just black with storm. The rumbling thunder was just constant.

To the north the sky was a beautiful briliant blue with lovely fluffy clouds. The line between the 2 sights was just right directly above my head!

Aragorn and Sam working on the new windmill.

Frodo and Bilbo looking on.

Getting ready to raise the mast so to speak.

At this point the tractor could no longer move as the ground was too soft. I ended up having to drive the big lawnmower attached to the tractor. I guess it was just enough extra to get the tractor out of the mud.

Voila!

Aragorn and Sam working on something or other with cables and whatever to anchor the windmill.

Our only other loss was a partial loss of Aragorn's car. Well, depending on what you call a loss. On the way to chores he hit a sudden large amount of water on the road and off he went, filling up enough of the car to render it useless. It now can be driven but it's not a happy vehicle!

To put things into perspective, I'm putting some pictures someone sent for the destruction just north of here.

The interstate was actually closed as the road was gone in one area.

Wooops!!