Quick Takes #13

1.  We didn't win the bid for the house.  :(  I feel like I'm on a bad episode of Hou.se Hunt.ers now!  I had a cry about it...yes, briefly, to get it out of my system....and we are continuing the house search.  The winning bid was over asking price, and well.....ours wasn't ;)

2.  So now I just thought I was anxious before.  We move out of this house in less than 2 weeks.  And we're really going to change things up!  When we move out, Rob will be staying locally with his mom, and I am taking the kids to temporarily live with my parents in the mountains....about 4 hours away!  When we initially devised this plan it seemed great...we can deal with being apart for the 30-45 days it takes to process the loan on a new house.  But now....it's very uncertain how long we will be apart.  We may end up coming back and renting an apartment.  But we thought it would be a great way to save money (no house/rent) payment in the meantime!  And thankfully we have very generous parents!

3.  Our purple finch baby birds flew the nest this morning!  So happy that they survived since the mockingbird baby didn't fare as well.  It was so fun to watch them.  At the bottom of our stairs is the window to the front porch and the bird nest was in the hanging basket right outside that window.  Every time I would carry Ian down the stairs, he would do the sign for bird!  It was so much fun for the kids to watch those little guys hatch and grow.

4.  Am I the only mom out there nervous about swimming lessons??  I guess it's because I hated swimming lessons as a child.  Isabel desperately needs them.  There are children younger than she is swimming across the pool and she is still in those arm floaties in the deep end!  Yikes!  I know I need to get on the ball with this!

5.  And yes, back to houses....(uh broken record?)  Well I think all of this may be another move by God to get me to relinquish some of my controlling ways ;)  Like oh, back when I used to think I could control when I got pregnant??   Well, since we are moving in 2 weeks, it is unlikely that I will be here to really "find" the house.  That's pretty much going to be on Robert to go out and look at houses (although I will be obsessively stalking real.tor dot com.)  And that is driving me a little bit crazy.  Because looking at homes is alot of fun for me.  It's really enjoyable to walk through a home and ponder what you would do differently, what things you would keep, what color would this wall be painted, which rooms would the kids get, etc... I guess God wants me to let someone else be in control of all that.  I mean, some people by houses sight unseen!  Now THAT is trust....or maybe a little crazy ;)

6.  With many toys already packed, the kids are having fun using moving boxes in mysterious ways.  Of course there is the moving box as house, moving box as tunnel, and moving box as car, but yesterday we cut up a moving box and made it into pirate swashbuckler swords and scurvy gold.  Okay, I have no idea if those words all make sense together, but the afternoon turned from packing into pirate-treasure-finding-adventure-fun!  Then I took the slipcover off an old chair that we have in the master bedroom, and apparently it was like a brand new (errr... too old for them to remember) piece of furniture treasure and they were all over it.  With Ian able to climb up on the couch and chairs now, life is really getting dangerous interesting!

7.  It's going to be HOT today.  We have an excessive heat warning and are expecting 104 today, with a real feel of 108.  Yuck. 

Quick Takes #12

1.  Packing, packing and more packing...that's what has been going on around here.  I am a planner/organizer/list maker by nature ;) and I am so thankful that I started packing WEEKS ago.... we decided to forgo the POD because renting a storage unit and hauling everything ourselves is cheaper...by HALF!  We just couldn't waste that much money to go with the portable moving containers.  So I've been slowly moving minivan loads of boxes to the unit.  Wow.  We have too much stuff.  What's funny is that now that the "stuff" is packed, I am not really missing anything that has been packed up, and half of it I can't even remember!

2.  I'm really slightly stressed at the moment because last night we got a call that the foreclosure home that we have fallen in love with is in a multiple offer situation at the moment, and if we want to make an offer, then we must submit it by Monday.  Yep....fantastic.  Now I'm really kind of nervous about this, because it seems like it is absolutely tailored to meet all of our needs, but God will really have to work it out for us, if this is in fact the house He wants us to buy, because we truly have a price that we cannot go over, and I'm very worried that if there are multiple bids then one of those is going to beat ours.  Ugh....I feel like an episode of House Hunters!  Did you hear that that show was rigged???
In my head I am repeating that the Lord is in control of all of this and He will put us where He wants us, but in my heart I am kind of battling it out with nerves and wanting to do crazy, irrational things like sell a car and all the furniture in my house so that we could put down extra money to guarantee that we get this house!  *sigh*....okay, not really, but...just....have...to....TRUST!

3.  This morning I took the kids to the pool and we have a play structure/slide on the kiddie side.  Well Ian proceeds to climb under the slide and of course I'm there but I'm trying to let him be a little independent since he's learning how to toddle around in the water (so I'm an arms length away) in the 4 inch water and he goes under the slide and is squatting.  I say, "watch your head!" and he stands up and bumps his head on the slide, then instantly goes down to the water -which of course gets his face wet and sends him jerking back up, which bumps his head again, and that in turn sends him back face down in the water.... can you picture it?  Okay so it lasted for like a split second but seemed like it was an eternity before I swooped him out from under the slide where he was caught in the vicious cycle!  Poor guy....he was very traumatized for about a minute, and then was okay.

4.  Now back to the house we want to buy...because clearly it is still on my mind.  You see, I just don't think all of this is coincidence.  This foreclosure that we want popped up the same day we got an offer on our house (which is the same day I buried St. Joseph!)....and on Thursday, Rob tells me that he talked to our real estate agent.  I then casually tell him that I would like to go back out to look at the foreclosure home one more time.  He then sets up the appointment without my knowledge for that afternoon.  I find this out after I had already promised Isabel a trip to the pool at that time.  So at that point I was a little frustrated, but decided he's made the appointment to see the house, so we need to go.  Then our agent just happens to touch base with the foreclosure agent that night and that is how we found out that we just barely have time to get in on a multiple offer situation.  All of those things had to happen for us to be able to KNOW it was time to make the offer.  I think that is God working, so I really want to believe that He wants this house for us!  I guess we really just have to make the offer and wait and see.  If you feel led, would you pray for us over this house situation? 

5.  This bishop of Raleigh celebrated the Mass to kick off the Fortnight for Freedom at our new parish, St. Joseph's, last night.  It was my hope that our whole family would attend, but Ian did not take an afternoon nap yesterday and the Mass was to begin at 6pm.  He usually goes to bed by 7pm and without a nap....ewww....you just didn't want to have him at church for that.  So Rob took Isabel and I stayed home with the baby.

6.  Speaking of the baby....he's not much of a baby anymore.  What baby dresses up like Mr. Potato Head?

These are clearly toddler antics.  *insert sobbing here*  Come on NFP, work for me!

7.  The new profile pics for our family were taken last weekend at my sister-in-law's wedding.  She got married on this beautiful farm in Chapel Hill, and she was absolutely gorgeous!  I'll have to see if she'll let me post some pics of her (she's currently on her honeymoon -so don't want to post without permission) ;)  But we had a wonderful time and are so excited to welcome her husband into the family. 

Quick Takes is hosted by Jennifer; go to Conversion Diary to read more!

Moving Out: Baby Bird and More!

Well, I don't think the bird made it.  We watched it get this big:

And then a few days later, the nest was kind of disheveled and the baby was no longer there.  Maybe it grew the rest of it's feathers really fast and flew the coop, but we are thinking something got it :(  Sad.  But within a few days we had purple finches nesting in the hanging basket on our front porch, so that has been a blessed distraction!

But really this post isn't just supposed to be about the birds.  It's really about what God has been doing in our life lately!  Our house has been up for sale since the beginning of February, and while we've been waiting for a buyer we've been praying for the sale of our home.  And of course I had heard about burying a St. Joseph statue in the yard....but this seemed like a lot of Catholic nonsense to me!  I mean, here I am making a point every time I speak to someone who may be unfamiliar with what we Catholics actually do to let them know that we don't pray TO the saints, we ask for their intercession.....and we DON'T WORSHIP Mary, we honor her as Jesus' mother, etc., etc.... Well, taking a statue and burying it upside down in the yard to help your house sell sounds a little,...well, superstitious?  Ummm.....rich with Catholic craziness??  But on May 25th, after a friend lent me her statue of Jesus' foster dad, I decided that I would bury the statue and MORE IMPORTANTLY, start a novena....that is 9 days of prayer asking for St. Joseph to intercede (that is to pray to our heavenly Father) that we might in fact sell this house! 

We had a showing that morning.  I buried the statue around 3pm, and by 5pm our real estate agent called to say that the people who had come to look at the house were going to make an offer....and they did. 

I about fell out of my chair. 

I think God was smiling at me that day.  It wasn't so much that I needed to bury a statue in my yard to sell our house.  I think it has more to do with God wanting me to devote some serious prayer time to this petition (more so than my bedtime "oh and please send a buyer for our house"), and that he wanted me to ask other people to pray too (particularly St. Joseph)!  Well, it gets better than that.  We had decided awhile ago that we were going to be changing parishes, and had fallen in love with the atmosphere of respect and reverence that we found at a parish by the name of (none other than) St. Joseph's!  The 9th and last day of our St. Joseph's novena, we attended our first Sunday Mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church as parishoners!  I didn't even plan that one out!  But what a cool way to end the novena, starting out at a new church! 

So our house is under contract and fingers crossed that all goes well and we get to close it in mid July.  In the meantime we are packing and figuring out living arrangements, and all kinds of other fun stuff.  God is definitely working out all the details!  And if you want to pray that it all goes according to His plan, I would be grateful!! :)

Nesting....vicariously.

So there have been an abundance of pregnant ladies around lately, and I have been loving it!  Remember back in the day, when I was not loving it?  When it was so hard.  I'd try to put on a smile and while I was happy for them, I was a wreck inside.  Losing baby after baby...not knowing if God planned for me to carry another little life to make it home to the waiting crib.  It was hard.  But God saw me through that pain and suffering, and brought me another little one, Ian.  And the joy of his little life has opened back up that joy that I have for other expectant mothers!  It's been a real journey, and to be back to a place of joy for not only myself, but true joy for others is quite a blessing.  I feel like I've come back around full circle to the beginning when I got pregnant with Isabel.  And it's putting that spark in my heart and that longing for another baby.  But for now, I'm nesting vicariously. 

Through the pregnancies of my friends!  And also through this little mockingbird family in our backyard.  Errr....what used to be our backyard.  You see, we had to move our fence line.  Apparently when the guy built our fence, he built it just over our property line.  And now, our new construction neighborhood is finally starting to build behind us and notified us that our fence was not on our property.  So we Rob, began to embark on the mission of moving the rear portion of our fence.  However, there was a  problem.  You see, this mockingbird pair had already begun building a nest in the jasmine which is attached to the fence.  And then, before we knew it there were 4 brown and blue speckled eggs.

So we moved the fence....all except for the piece to which the jasmine is attached.  The mother mockingbird was really concerned, but eventually she figured out her nest and eggs were just fine even though the surrounding fence had shifted. 

Then, the unthinkable happened!  The fence move took several days.  At one point, the 5 foot section of fence fell over onto the jasmine, knocking the nest.  All four eggs were cracked.  Oh, I was heartbroken!  So we kept an eye on them and that same day, the mother kicked one egg out of the nest.  When Rob told me, I couldn't stand it...I had to go out there and find the egg and see at least at what stage of development the baby bird had been.  And when I found the egg, the bird was ALIVE!  And covered with ants!  So I picked up the bird, still in its egg, and the ants kind of crawled out.  Isabel wanted to hold it...

So we put it back in the nest and have been checking on him.  And the mother accepted it back!

Three days went by and the little guy was doing well and I was starting to have hope for the other eggs that maybe their cracks were due to them getting ready to hatch instead of the unfortunate fence accident....at one point I even saw a beak stick out of an egg, so I knew that at least one more baby bird was still alive! 
And then....we checked the nest and this is what we found:

Our little survivor, beak wide open....but all the other eggs had been tossed.  Not just tossed in fact, taken away!  I know this because I was on my hands and knees at the base of the jasmine, looking through all the vines and leaves to try to rescue them...but could find not a one.

Some of our own "little birds" have made it, and others we've lost.  It's strange how I've been able to connect with a mockingbird (!) on hatching babies and raising them to leave the nest!   I'll keep you posted on this little guy's fate.

When Right is Wrong and Wrong is Right.

This is the time in which we live.  Right is now wrong.  And wrong is now right.
Things are backwards.  And many are confused.
It has left me not knowing how to blog about this....so I've said nothing until now.

We are about to vote on Amendment One here in North Carolina.  The measure states,
“Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into
contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from
adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts."




If you are a Catholic in NC, your bishop is urging you to vote FOR  Amendment One this Tuesday.
There are many people who are opposed to Amendment One.  For anyone undecided, I urge you to check out this link

I have been appalled by some of the people who are against this amendment, and it has frankly left me speechless, sick to my stomach and very upset.  It makes me upset because I feel like this very dim lightbulb and the darkness seems to be creeping in around me.  ("I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8) I've had to temporarily remove myself from Facebook because I literally felt like the only one who was going to vote FOR this amendment, and I was overcome with this grief for people who are lost.

Because there is not another explanation for this.  They are lost.  Without the light of Jesus, without the Truth of the Gospel, they are like seeds caught up in the breeze and floating through the sky....to wherever the wind takes them.  They have no roots.  No good soil in which to plant themselves.

In the midst of all of this, I read a blog post.  This is for your discernment, but it certainly made sense to me:

2 John 1:9 Anyone who is so “progressive” as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.
“My beloved, cling firmly to the truth, for I am the Truth. Those who teach false doctrines, those who water down the wine of salvation belong neither to me nor to the Father, but are pawns of the enemy. My children, do not stray from the teachings, but embrace them, cling to them. Waver neither to the right nor to the left but let the teachings of Christ in his Church be the rudder that steers your life on a straight path to everlasting life. I have given you these teachings so that you will not be lost. Let the Church be your guiding star. Then you will never have to fear becoming lost.” 



And then I came to this blog and read the following: 

I believe few realize the prophetic thrust of Pope Benedict’s words that were carefully chosen on the eve of the winter solstice—the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.⁴ He was comparing the decline of Rome with our generation. He was underlining how “the key principles of law and of the fundamental moral attitudes underpinning” our society, are beginning to collapse:

…our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function… Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk… In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake. —Ibid.

And I realized that is EXACTLY what has been troubling me.  Moral consensus is collapsing.  What was right is now wrong, and what was wrong is now right.  And the question is not only where that will lead our society....but where will that lead the individual?  Where does it lead you, my friend?

When it is all right to kill your child in the womb.....it's okay...it's her choice.  
When it is all right to for men to have sex with men and women to have sex with women...... why not?  Don't impose your religious beliefs on everyone else.  Keep your religion to yourself.  

Well guess what?  It's not...just...religion.  One day you will discover this.  You certainly don't answer to me.  You don't answer to the person next door.  You only answer to God Almighty.  And you will find out then.   But in the mean time, I am praying....I am praying that our merciful God will open hearts and fill you up with His grace.  Because He is the Only Way, the Only Truth and the Only Life.  This may mean nothing to you now, but I-will-pray-for-you.

"Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him."  Ephesians 4:18

Quick Takes Friday #11

 1.  Ian is walking!  And he had his 1 year well visit on April 12th and only weighed 17lbs 14oz....bless his heart.  That puts him in the -5th%....Isabel was around 15lbs at one year, so at least he is beating her weight! ;)  Oy, what can I say?  We make tiny children.  Ian's length and head circumference were around the 50% though, so that is great and the doctor was not really concerned with his weight considering he has an older sibling who did the same.  It is such a difference this time around...with Isabel we had test after test after test, and the pediatrician is so much more laid back with Ian's growth.  But it's interesting too, because Isabel was not a big eater.  Our ped used to say "some kids live to eat and some kids eat to live".  Isabel "ate to live".  Ian, however, "lives to eat" and so it seems a little bizarre to me that he does not weigh more than he does.

2.  Isabel's 6th birthday is coming up in just one week!  We are having a little party at a local playground, and hopefully it can be more about just a joyful, play-filled celebration with cake and ice cream and kids having fun, rather than a present-focused party.  Inevitably as the first of January rolls around (or basically as soon as Christmas is over), Isabel starts to ask about making her birthday list...that is all the gifts she would like to receive for her birthday!  Yes, 4 months before her birthday this starts!  Every store we visit, it becomes "mom, can you put this on my birthday list?"  I thought about countering this with the idea of asking guests to bring a can of food to donate to a food pantry/homeless shelter, in lieu of bringing a gift....and Isabel thought that was a great idea, but then I started thinking that seemed almost like "charging admission"....ugh...when did birthday parties get so complicated?  We ended up just putting "No need to bring a gift, just join us for cake, ice cream and play!"  Hopefully that will work!

3.  I tend to over-think things.  So this Consecration that I'm doing, it's really giving me trouble.  The thing is some days I think I'm doing pretty good, and then other days I'm distracted during the prayers and it just seems like it's not good enough.  I keep hearing people say, "Oh I wish I had done it better"...or "more perfectly", and so some days I feel like I'm already failing at it!  I know I can't do it perfectly because I'm just a human!   So the days that I get distracted, I try to offer that up and hope God understands.  But I'm still thinking in the back of my mind, "could I have done today better?"  I guess the answer is always, yes! ;)

4.  I'm trying out a homemade recipe for laundry detergent thanks to Hebrews.  I actually got it many months ago from her and I've finally run out of my real detergent.  So it was time to make it.  And so far, I love the homemade stuff!
1 bar finely grated fels naptha
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1 cup oxiclean
Combine it all and use 2 Tablespoons for a regular load.   How easy is that?  None of that liquid mess where you have to let it congeal overnight or something.  My mom has tried the Duggar's recipe and wasn't very impressed with it (it's the liquid kind), so we think that the oxiclean is the secret ingredient to making homemade detergent work well! 

5.  Our ancient (read "not cool antique, but old and busted") dining room chairs started breaking one by one about a week before Easter.  Not good because we were hosting Easter dinner.  So, I found these old ladderback chairs off craigslist.  We are craigslist stalkers.  I swear I must look on there about 20 times a day, and Robert is just as bad.  So I found these chairs and drove out to a true farm, down a dirt road and up to an ancient (read "not beautiful, but old and busted") farmhouse which they were "remodeling".  I was a little bit scared to go inside because I thought the porch might give way as I stepped through the door, oh, through the cobwebs of the doorway...I don't think there was an actual door.  Anyway, once we somehow stuffed them (very creatively) into my minivan and I got home, we dusted and cleaned and scraped off spider egg sacks (it was pretty creepy)....and they turned out to be quite pretty....

 

2 captain's chairs and 6 with no arms....for $10 a piece.  No joke.  I thought this was a steal!  Especially when you see all the detail the chairs have.  No maker's mark, and some of the seats are more worn than others, but I'm just tickled with them!  I think they are gorgeous.  We are keeping our old and busted table until we sell our house and then are hoping to buy a big farm table :)  Then I'm hoping to have many more children to fill the table ;)  Well, I guess first things first. 

6.  Isabel told me again today, "Mom, I want to be a saint."  And then her eyes just instantly filled with tears, even as I was saying, "Isabel, you can be a saint!  We are all called to be saints."  Of course I hugged her close and asked why she was so upset and she said, "It's just like St. Therese.  I feel like it's impossible."  So we had almost the same conversation that we had before....that with God, all things are possible.  I reminded her she could ask Him for help any time, and He would give her His grace to do the right thing and to love Him with all her heart.   After that she was okay....but it was just so strange how she just was overwhelmed with emotion at wanting to become a saint, and the seeming impossibility of it all.  Bless her heart.  She truly has the innocence and love of a little child.  It is so precious to see.  God, help me in my vocation as her mother!  She made this beautiful little resurrection garden right before Easter.

7.  But lest you think it is all 'sweetness and light' at my house, it's not...these kids are just as wild and crazy as they are precious and adorable.  Like in the morning when I'm trying to do this:

and crawling around my legs through the bathroom is this:

 

I kid you not.  Those are my kids.  Well, it's mostly Isabel in that video, but in the car today??  Oh, if I had had my video camera.  Half the time I was tuning them out, and the other half I was chuckling to myself about how cute they were....all I heard was Ian repeating Isabel and Isabel repeating Ian....bah bah bah bah bah, mamamamamama, uh oh uhhhhhhhh oh, uh oh, uhhhhhhhh oh, gagun gagun gagun gagun.....anything she could get him to repeat and vice versa...they were soooooo noisy!  It was great and crazy all at the same time.   I can't imagine what life would be like with more, and at the same time, I can't not imagine it.

Easter Sin and Cake.

It was Easter Sunday.  We woke up and had a sweet morning letting the kids discover their Easter baskets, taking pictures, having breakfast and actually making it to Easter Mass 30 minutes early (!!!) to get our usual seat.  Ian, (unbelievably) sat through roughly an hour and 15 minutes of the wait and Mass....(this is a record for him!  He's usually out in the atrium before the first 15 minutes of church).  It was a beautiful spring day and we got home to start preparing for Easter dinner and celebrating Ian's first birthday with our family.

I put Ian in his high chair at lunchtime and scrape cut up spaghetti and steamed squash on his plate.  He takes a handful, shoves it into his mouth and starts to scream and cry.  Not because it's hot or painful...but because he doesn't want to eat spaghetti and squash.  How do I know?  Because he begans to scream bloody murder while he throws handfuls of food onto the floor.  Normally Ian throwing food on the floor is no big deal to me, he's a baby, right?... but for some reason, this Easter morning, the screaming and the throwing made me so angry, I was just absolutely overcome with this raging anger.  I told him, "No, we don't throw our food."  And picked him up and set him (gently) on the floor.  To which I got more screaming.  We tried again to eat a few minutes later, and it was more of the same, and I was fuming.  I let him scream hysterically on the floor until Rob took over and calmed him down.  Then I yelled at Isabel when she tried to offer her opinion on why Ian was screaming and not eating...that silenced her, but now she was in tears too. 

I went upstairs and lost it.  Okay, it was the first day of my cycle, but how could I have just gotten so angry at this little baby over eating/not eating lunch?  And how could I have taken it out on my daughter, and oh yeah, I failed to mention my lovely attitude toward my husband during that episode...all on Easter Sunday?!?  I cried and cried.  Then I got it together a little and came downstairs and apologized.  But I was OVERCOME with how awful, how ugly I had been,.... the complete horror of the sinful way I had just acted. 

Thankfully, the baby, my husband and my daughter were quick to forgive me.  As I know God is always quick to forgive, if we just ask.

But I could not shake the horror of it all.

Until I read my Total Consecration for Day 14.  You see, on Day 13 you start a whole new set of prayers, so the night prior I had prayed for the first time, "Holy Ghost, inspire us with the horror of sin." (their emphasis, not mine).  It didn't really mean much to me on Day 13, but when I read it on the night of Day 14, I knew darn well why I was so overcome with emotion. 

The Holy Spirit had in fact, shown me the horror of my sin that day. 

Now as to where all that anger had come from?  I don't know.  Maybe it was Satan.  Maybe it was hormones.  Maybe it was staying up too late the night before to make the beautiful cake that I'll show you below, for little Ian's birthday celebration.  The fact is, it doesn't really matter where the anger came from.  It was what I did with it that was sinful.  Maybe God just wanted me to remember what Easter Sunday was all about....His Son, rising to defeat the sin that we continue to stumble into.

Thank you God, for your forgiveness as I stumble every day, and especially on that most holy day.

And now,
the cake....