You know....

You know you are a Catholic homeschooling family when you are studying abbreviations in English and you get to "St." and they say "Saint" instead of "street".

Urgent Prayers

Please pray for a local beautiful homeschooling-large-family friend of mine, Laura Jeanne who needs urgent prayers after the delivery of her 8th baby.  She had excessive bleeding, needed emergency surgery and is in ICU for transfusion monitoring.

St. Gerard, pray for us!

Just the Way It Is

So the point of the video was to see Kili starting to crawl, apparently there were more interesting typical things going on in the 3 Stooge department.

Happy Birthday Frodo and Other Winter Goings On

 Happy 14th Birthday Frodo!  For his lunch out with mom and dad, Frodo chose Hu Hot Mongolian Grill.   At home for his meals he chose homemade lasagna for dinner, cranberry coffee for breakfast. He and Sam redeemed their Groupon for a local climbing gym that day and had a great time, albeit sore arms.

Frodo's cake choice was mint brownies.  Each of the 3 layers has a stick of butter in it!  Only a farmer boy can handle that.

 We hosted a sledding party with our homeschooling group. Since our priest who leads our catechism classes was there we asked him to bless our barn and the animals that hadn't been blessed yet.

 The bunnies are huge.  Said priest spent most of his life in Spain and asked if we eat them.  Oh my.  No.  Perhaps we'll have to go into raising bunnies for their eating pleasure. Being a beef, chicken and pork kind of gal, I have no use for eating bunnies, squirrels and other wild things.  I have grown to eating venison.

 Love the cassock!

 Love the cassock on the sledding hill!  That contraption is the "barrel thing" which races down a hill like 60.

 The boys pulled out the snowmobile... which is not a fancy snowmobile but probably, most likely a craigslist special.

 Studying with Dr. Who.  So we are Dr. Who geeks, "bowties are cool" and so are we... sorta... ok, maybe not but Dr. Who is cool bowtie and all.

 The Moms had a little gift exchange at the sledding party and I won a gigantic box of chocolates. Gigantic boxes of chocolates in our house are like small boxes of chocolates in most people's houses... do the math.

 Kili is exercising his powers to get up and go. He sort of does a bit of a crawl and I'm scared once he gets going. He pulled himself up to standing a couple times.

 This was just a pose, he didn't actually pull himself up in this particular picture, babies don't like to cooperate when they know you want them to.  Boy, he looks so much like Eowyn did when she was that age.

 Galadriel making riccotta cheese.  Thank goodness for our professional hand-milker Frodo who provides us with plenty of milk from our cow.

 Hanging the bag o' cheese.  It makes for a great lasagna!

 Sam's experiment with balancing Keva Planks.  He was hoping to balance this on just 2 but it was too big.  But still, an amazing feat on even just 4.

 Frodo's Keva House. I love the bookshelves, neat or what?

 Frodo received this awesome jig saw (or something like that) from his God Parents.  A perfect gift.
(ok, a friend said it as a scroll saw... is there a difference between a jig and a scroll? Probably)

 I'm not sure why there is a picture of the inside of our wood boiler but here it is.  I guess it's a reminder to avoid hell.

 Ok, so my girls love story telling with paper dolls they make themselves.  There is no paper doll on the market that rivals their homemade ones.  And such stories they do tell.

 These are the little listeners taking lessons in proper ways to tell stories with paper dolls.

 We were in dire need of storage shelves for our boxes and boxes (and boxes and boxes and boxes) of clothing.  So Sam's been working on building them.  We had to convert our little chapel into the storage area so we will be making little mini-chapels in each person's bedroom with little home altar and kneeler.  Some day, my hope is to have a little chapel in the wood.  Some day.

 6 boys in one room is like containing a tornado in a single dwelling so we are "building" a 2nd boys bedroom in the basement (yes, there is a window, 2 in fact, yes, there is a door, yes, I've been asked that more than once...!)

Sam and Frodo are working on this on their own with some help from Galadriel.  They've been doing a great job.  When rooms are rearranged it will be Sam, Merry and Pippin in this room (yes, it also has a bathroom... I know, great... two boys bathrooms... just great) and Frodo, Bilbo and Kili in the current one.  Frodo is a neat freak so he'll be glad to have his own room (3 boys to a room is one's own room in this house!)

Urgent Prayers

Urgent Prayers for Uncle Charles, my husband's mother's brother.

Hobbit Trailer

Happened to run across a new Hobbit Trailer for your Unexpected Journeys here after my husband had directed me to a manual trash compactor at the same site.  Hilarious.

Epiphany

For behold darkness shall cover the earth, and a mist the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light, and kings in the brightness of thy rising.
Isaiah 60:2-3

Happy Feast of the Epiphany!  May we be so blessed as to walk in the Light.

Heroic Virtue

Son, thou oughtest not be turned back, nor presently cast down, when thou hearest what is the way of the perfect; but be drawn the more onwards towards its lofty heights, or at least aspire ardently for their attainment.
Thomas á Kempis

The "way of the perfect" is heroic virtue. I was just thinking yesterday how the saints of old (and new) aspired to heroic virtue and how easy it is to be "cast down" by how difficult that is to attain in this world today. Probably it was always difficult, but we tend to think our little world is the be all and end all.  Virtue, not to mention heroic virtue, in this worldly world seems almost unattainable with so many distractions and complexities.  This quote is a reminder to simply be drawn onwards... in the battle for the Lord.  I think the key is to spend some quiet time in prayer each day... alone, where no one sees but the One who sees within.

Just Awesome

 This picture was sent to me by a friend; it was taken on Christmas during Consecration by someone in the sacristy at the Institute of Christ the King in Chicago.  Totally beautiful, totally awesome in every way.

Some of our homeschooling altar boys.  These are the hope of our future.  May God bless them... and protect them!

IT IS FREEZING

*

At the moment we are having a heat wave... it is 32 degrees.
For my warm-climate family and friends, please,put a jacket on before you even read this....

 A Wind Chill Advisory remains in effect ....

* Timing... wind chills of 20 to 25 degrees below zero are expected
late Saturday night and Sunday... then dropping to 45 to 55
below early Monday morning and again Tuesday morning.

Yeah... it's cold and getting colder... The comical part is that we just got out our ice cream maker to use up some of our excess milk... the excess milk we had before greedy calves and other bovine sizes decided to suck it all up without permission.... we are working on that issue. Anyway,  Ice cream during this kind of weather is like having hot cocoa when it is 30 degrees.  Kinda warms the innerds.

* For Lady M who is going sugar free please note those 3 bits of sugar laden, corn syrupy tidbits on the top, when in the shape of a shamrock, they become a green-leafy vegetable...! :D

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

 A blessed Christmas (Season) and a happy New Year to you!

 We attended Midnight Mass were 5 of my 6 boys served and 3 of us sang in the choir.  Afterwards apparently there was some kind of mix up in suit coats. Pippin was wearing Frodo's and Frodo was wearing a friend of his  and said friend hadn't yet noticed... and still doesn't know to this day of the great switcheroo.

 His Name was called Jesus, which was called by the Angel before He was conceived in the womb.

 Badly needed haircut was finally done... after this picture!

 Frodo was working on a house similiar to ours.

 Kili enjoying the items in his stocking. Not sure what he'll do with a ruler...

 Baby Jesus, Baby Kili and a sonic screwdriver.  During our family gift giving there seemed to be a Hobbit and Dr. Who Theme going on.

 Mr. Fatty here just barely squeezed into this suit... albeit the snap to the pants wouldn't close.... broke in fact.

 Buddy ol' pals

 Ornaments always taste good...

 I've got some hat lovers in my bunch.... and I'm ok with that. My grandpa used to wear a hat and he was one handsome man... wish I could find the picture.

 We had opened our presents within our own home on Christmas and opened "imported" gifts on New Year's Eve.  Was that just last night? It's been a long year already.

 Someone gave Eleanor a pair of hobbit feet slippers.  Apparently Hobbits also have very large feet.... not just hairy ones.

 Someone gave Frodo 3 deer. We found it rather comical since those are the only 3 deer he got this year. Ha...ha.

 Someone gave Kili an Insanity Claus Suit.

That's not a beard... that's a 2nd chin.  Ho ho ho.