Urgent Prayers

Please pray for my dear Aunt Mary who had surgery and was intubated and put on a respirator; she has been in ICU on a breathing machine. One lung is collapsed; a bronchoscopy was performed by the Pulmonologist. He found a tumor in the large bronchus that was obstructing and causing the collapse and pneumonia. The tumor started to bleed, so they were not able to biopsy nor remove the mass.  She is in serious condition.  In all things, may God's Will be done.

Easter Day

 Bow ties are cool.

Team Demolition

Since we moved into our house 8 years ago we have bought about 60 door knobs... it's part of our budget. If you need a demolition job done quickly, we hire out for reasonable rates... and the tykes work quickly!

Feel free to donate to our door knob fund.

A Most Blessed Easter to All

 Christ has risen! Indeed, he has risen! Alleluia!

Adoration of the Paschal Lamb

What is the Pascha? 
It obtains its name from its characteristic: from suffer (pathein) comes suffering (paschein). 

Learn therefore who is the Suffering One, and who shares the suffering of the Suffering One, and why the Lord is present on the earth to clothe Himself with the Suffering One and carry Him off to the heights of  heaven. It is He that delivered us from slavery to liberty, from darkness to light, from death to life, from tyranny to eternal royalty; and made us a new priesthood and an eternal people personal to Him. He is the Pascha of our salvation.

St. Melito of Sardis - "On Pascha"

Waiting and Waiting

Lent was long... winter was long and cold... Holy Week was forever.... though I will say that we have had some very beautiful Masses, so for that we are exceedingly grateful for our dedicated priests! So here we are on Holy Saturday and the Paschal Fast waiting for the Paschal Feast.  So what better time than the present to get caught up on all my long lost pictures.

 Kili is total mischief.  He loves electrical cords, cupboards, doors fascinate him and he loves the great outdoors. He's now 11 months old.

 The children decided... once again reminded by a listening of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe... that it would be a good idea to make some Turkish Delight. I'm very much not turkish and I didn't find it delightful.

 Enjoying some springy weather.

 We had a litter of kitties.

 Sometimes it is best not to spy on your children as they play on the front yard.

 Poppy wanted to do a portrait of me.  I see a very strong resemblance.

 Yes, we had snow recently.  Really. Snow. Mid-April.

 Working on some Palm Sunday crowns of thorns made out of the fresh palms.

 We had a wild hail storm and then another time was seemed like a shredded foam storm, it looked just like it does in our living room when the kids get ahold of a piece of styrofoam packing material.

 We watched the lunar eclipse... yes, we were crazy enough to get up at 1:30 am and watch for a couple hours.  It was incredible.

Our Lord was crucified on the First Friday after the first full moon of the spring equinox.  This year's full moon included a full lunar eclipse.

Jersey Cow

We got a second milking cow.  Poor thing came with a horrible case of mastitis and bad kicking habits but Frodo has been great in persevering through it.  I kid you not when I say that one pitcher of milk had 25% cream on it.  Great butter making cow.... I think I'll call her Buttercup.

Egg Dying

 St. Mary Magdalen and the Red Egg

I read on Catholic Icing about the tradition of dying eggs and found it interesting so I browsed around.  According to tradition, some time after the Resurrection of Christ, St. Mary Magdalen went to the Emperor tiberius Caesar and announced to him that Christ had risen from the dead and explained how this all took place.  After she finished Tiberius notice a man next to him holding a basket of eggs. Tiberius challened Mary that if what she said was true, then the white eggs in the baseket should be turned into red eggs.  And, indeed they were.

 One of the moms in our small homeschooling group taught us how to dye Easter eggs using silk neckties or silk boxer shorts.

 First we had to take apart the ties and cut them (or the boxers) into pieces about 8" square though ties don't really go square.

 Wrap the egg with a piece of silk tie.

 Tie it tightly with a twist-tie.... around here I think they say "tie wrap".

 Wrap that with a piece of white fabric and tie it off.  I think you can use 1 twist-tie to do both pieces of fabric so long as it is tight and secure.

 Place the eggs in a pot.

 Cover the eggs with water and hard boil the eggs.  10 minutes once the water comes to a boil.

 Then we un-wrapped them.

 Incredible!

These are Pippins made from yellow silk smiley-face boxer shorts. (really, who would wear silk, bright yellow smiley face boxers?  Don't answer) anyway, this is one with a white egg and one with a brown egg.

If you have 100% silk ties to get rid of... we'll take them! :D