Engaged!

My little sister's engaged! Yay!

I've been promised some pics from the actual day, but until then here's one I took Monday night of the happy couple. Aren't they cute?

Becky and Kerry

Of mowing, gardening and decapitations.

Friday we got the chance to go outside and take care of some yardwork. (Not all, of course, I still have more than a few plants to get in the ground, and the weeds keep coming back.)

Before mowing, Jim had to pick up the massive pile of weeds that I left in the yard after pulling them out of the flower bed.

Maria and Amelia helped me plant some flowers. Amelia really enjoyed dumping dirt as we filled a planter. She also decided that I needed to have more dirt on me, and dumped a pot full on my back. Sorry, no pictures of that. Maria is really starting to be a good helper in the garden. Here she is patting dirt around a newly planted calla lily.

Amelia soon got bored with dirt and decided to play t-ball instead.

Maybe one day she'll be able to hit the ball more than a few inches from the tee.

While we were having fun with flowers, Jim was down near the soon to be ground-hog buffet, I mean, veggie garden, clipping the high weeds surrounding it. I heard him give a shout, but he wouldn't tell me what happened until the girls were out of earshot. Apparently, while clipping the grass, he accidentally decapitated a snake, only seeing it after the deed was done. He chucked the body off into the weeds, but the head is still down there somewhere for me to discover.
Fun, fun.

The second decapitation of the day came later, when the girls and I were out on the deck. Amelia picked up the turtle bird feeder and dropped it. I'd say it was a banner day for us.

Nobody nose the trouble I've seen...

and her name is Amelia.



When Maria was younger, I thought that she got into trouble and did lots of strange things.

Now I know that she was a very good baby.

In the last week Amelia has fallen down the stairs (totally fine except for rug burn on the bridge of her nose), eaten copious amounts of sand and finger paint, and "discovered" the contents of her diaper and shared it with me.

I thought she'd slow down a bit after that list of accomplishments. But no, she had to top it all. Last night at dinner, she looked at me, rubbing her nose, and said, "Nose!"

Which I took to mean that she had a boogie in her nose. So, as any good mama would I looked in her nose only to discover... corn. Yep, she'd shoved it up there pretty far. Luckily, I have an assortment of tweezers and was able to retrieve said corn.

Being a mom is so much fun. ;-)

Another spring day.

Too Cool!

Danielle Bean just added me as her one of her Facebook friends!

Facebook is too fun.

Painting.

This was Amelia's first experience with painting. I think she enjoyed herself. The girls made pictures for their grandmothers for Mother's day. A good time was had in the process.

A sunny day.

These are about a week old or so, but I wanted to get some more kid pictures up. And maybe one day a sock picture or some other knitting.

I just want to say, too, that I am not responsible for Maria's attire in these pictures. She insisted on wearing that sweatshirt over a long sleeve shirt, even though it was a warm day. I didn't feel like arguing. And don't mind the tall meadow like grass... it's cut now, though the garden is still overrun with it. Maybe someday soon I'll get out there and weed.

A Mother's Day post.

I found this post, When Mom was a Kid, and enjoyed it throughly, so I thought I'd share. It's worth reading the whole thing, really.

My Retreat.

I was going to do a nice long post about my retreat last weekend. But that's probably not going to happen as I've been very busy all week doing stuff for A Baby's Breath. (We're finally getting clients at the new center. Now all we need are more advocates. Volunteers? Anyone?)

I will just say that it was a lovely weekend, the musicians were talented (even if the song writers weren't), the talks were excellent and I'd definitely go again if given the chance.

The grounds at the retreat house are quite nice, and I got some good nature pictures, including this shot of a wrinkly mushroom. I love taking pictures of mushrooms, don't ask me why, I just think they're neat.

Lourdes Grotto

Random Kid pictures.

Another picture of Amelia falling asleep while eating. This time she was This is what happens when mommy's busy cleaning out her closet.

Yes, Maria's dressed in her Mrs. Santa dress...
Amelia's in Maria's old Easter Dress, so they had the two major holiday's covered.

Another picture of Amelia falling asleep in the high chair, the only difference is here she was eating breakfast (note the pj's). This is what happens when you stay up all night partying.

I can't believe that my husband added this link to his blog without telling me.

I was just checking Jim's blog and found a link to this site, Stuff Catholics Like, in in his links list. I don't think that he ever told me about it, but I went there today and it's just great!

Here's a link to one article on clapping at Mass. It's sooooo funny. And scary at the same time.

Mary's month.

( statue at Malvern Retreat House)

It's May again so it's time to pull out all those Marian devotions that you've been ignoring. :)

Since I told Rob that I would, this post will include links sites dealing with Marian prayers, devotions, and apparitions.

I'll start with Our Lady of Guadalupe. I learned a lot more about her this past weekend at the Women of Grace retreat. One of the speakers, Dan Lynch has written several books about her, and Our Lady of America, the only appearance of Mary in the U.S. which has been approved. You can find out about Dan, his books, and the missionary images here.

This is another good site for info about the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego, as well as prayers, pictures and other links.

Since Rob mentioned it in his post, here is a link to St. Louis Mary de Montfort's True Devotion to Mary. It's fairly long, so purchasing a copy might be a better idea. It's also not a good idea to hand someone a copy of True Devotion to Mary if you're trying to convince them that we Catholics don't worship her, as the language he uses to describe devotion to Mary is rather strong. However, it helped me to understand devotion to Mary as a new convert to the Faith, so I do recommend it.

In a nutshell, here's my version of True Devotion. As Christians we are engrafted into the Body of Christ. Thus as members of the body of Christ we are called to walk the path that He walked, to do in some limited sense, but to the fullest of our ability, what He did while He was on earth. (WWJD?) Jesus began that journey in Mary's womb, entrusting Himself entirely to her care. So how could we go wrong to entrust ourselves to her, and to have her lead us in His path, the same path she walked with him from the manger to the cross?

(Really, you have to read the book for a fuller explanation.)

I think I posted this link before but here it is again. The University of Dayton Mary page. Click on the link on the top left, About Mary, and you'll come to a page full of links to others Marian sites with prayers and info about Mary and Marian devotions. There's even a link to a printable coloring book.

As for what to do with kids, I'm hoping to pray the Rosary as a family more frequently this month (i.e. at least once or twice would make it more frequent for us). Catholic Heritage Curricula has a nice set of rosary prints, showing all the Mysteries of the Rosary, available in two sizes. I think it's nice to have visuals for kids, especially ones that aren't cartoons.

If all those links aren't enough for you, here's a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on Mary.