Snow N Stuff

I just needed a pair of jeans for Merry. The reason I was looking for pants was because all his pants looked like this.....

..... and this. Why is it that if you had 1 child and he was wearing jeans like this it would be "cool", fashionable, acceptable but if you have 10 children and they wear this style (even if we made them ourselves....) we would be slovenly. One of those unsolved mysteries.

Speaking of fashion statements. Stripes and polka dots only a 1 year old can get away with.

Our children's choir sang quite well for December 8th for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Afterwards we had a terrific dinner and what a spread! Everyone was so generous.

Pippin ready to hunt some orc.

This storm earlier in the week brought us about 4 inches of snow. The children built this great (huge) sledding ramp (that I did not try out). I thought it was way too big but the hill in front of the house isn't very big so they weren't going fast enough to do any bodily harm.

This won't be happening over by our bigger hill as they get going pretty fast down there. But this worked.

Then we had the blizzard. It is definitely very beautiful but wow, what a raging wind and swirling snow. Needless to say we are stuck inside as we can't get out of our driveway even if we wanted to and I haven't heard/seen the plow go by yet. It's a disappointment... to say the least... to have to miss Mass.

Yesterday I went to a lovely little mini-retreat that our priests give for Advent. Just a few hours with talks, confession, Mass, Adoration, Benediction. It's just perfect. Since the first talk was a beautiful talk on Serenity, the following event I am about to tell had me with a case of the giggles on several occasions, even though the circumstances are rather unfavorable. We got part way through the 2nd talk and I noticed my phone was vibrating. Aragorn had called twice and text'd once. "Oh dear, someone died." But no... worse! Eleanor was throwing up. The message was bring bleach ASAP.

It is very obvious that I'm the wiser of the two of us. So I stopped for the necessary supplies which entailed 2 big jugs of bleach, 2 pedilyte, 4 bottles of gingerale, a couple boxes of jello, many loaves of bread, a handful of bottles of anti-bacterial disinfectant hand stuff, rubber gloves, saltines, papertowels and 7 (more) dish-pans that are kept special for barf-buckets. (don't worry, we don't wash our dishes in them too, but we did find one under the sink one day that must have been catching a leak and there was a mouse drowned in it. That one went to the dumpster. Ewwww.

Within 24 hours I had 9 out of 10 vomitting children to celebrate Gaudete Sunday. You know Joyful Sunday. Methinks this is another one of those practical jokes from Heaven. That perhaps St. Francis was trying to send me a "Perfect Joy" message. I am hoping that Poppy will avoid this. If she doesn't she will live in the bathtub til it is over!!!