The Thrasher

So we tried to go to Stations of the Cross tonight. As soon as we walked into the church, the thrashing started. Then the random loud yelps and screeches. I ended up standing outside in the narthex with the culprit and heard exactly, oh, ZERO of the Stations. Oh well, it was a good try.

Before we get too far away from the little Bud's 10 month birthday, let me tell you about his recent accomplishments. He's standing on his own for a few seconds, and now he says "Hi" and waves, in addition to his other four words (Mama, Dada, Tee tat, and ball.) He waves at EVERYONE, and everyone comments on what a sweet, smiley baby he is. Of course they don't see him every time I'm trying to cook a meal, hanging onto my pant leg and screaming his fool head off. He is pretty cute though.

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The best thing we've ever done for our house

The carpet before (and we were cleaning the room so stuff is piled everywhere!)

The playroom. And I didn't even take pictures of the kitchen and dining room, but picture awful linoleum and more awful carpet.
AFTER!!! I LOVE it!! Dining room:
Looking from the playroom into the kitchen and dining room:
Playroom:
I love our new floors!!! I feel so much better about having John Paul have the run of the downstairs. It's easier to keep clean (especially since I got a Shark!) It just makes our older home look so much nicer. Thank you Uncle Sam :)

Now to get everything put back together.....

Rough week around here

At Grandma's funeral, John Paul was pretty irritable and didn't look like his usual smiley, happy self. He went downhill from there, and today spiked a 102.6 fever. I spent the day holding a whiny, cuddly, runny-nosed baby. (It wasn't all THAT bad :) Also our floors aren't done. I would have gone to my mom's house today but since the Bud was sick, we were stuck in one room. I did call the doctor, and the nurse told us to come in tomorrow if he still has a high fever. I'm praying no one else gets it. I think he got it from Ken, who had a "man cold" while we were gone to Florida (thank goodness we missed THAT one! :)

The floors look fantastic, even though they're not quite done yet. I cannot wait for it to be all done and to put everything back to normal.

John Paul is 10 months old now, and I haven't done his post yet. He turned 10 months on the day of Grandma's funeral. I sure have a lot of stuff to blog about.

We decided to give up meat for Lent. I got a few new vegetarian cookbooks and I've been trying out some recipes. I have to say, with all the delicious food I've been making, it might not be that much of a sacrifice! I might have to come up with something else in addition to the no meat. If anyone is worried (MOM), don't worry. I'm making sure everyone gets plenty of protein and all the necessary nutrients.

A lot can happen in a week

We flew down to Florida on Monday, and my Grandma died on Tuesday. So we ended up flying home Thursday and went to the funeral home today, and we'll go to the funeral tomorrow.

We did have a great time in Florida, and it was really nice seeing family today. I'll have some more stories and pictures later, in the meantime please pray for my Grandma Irene. Apparently she went around to everyone in the nursing home on Tuesday saying, "I was just coming around to say goodbye, I'm going home today." The nurses said she must have said that 20 times, and she died that evening. She knew.

Destination Jesus and Valentines Day

We had a great weekend, even though as usual for Valentines Day, we spent most of it at Destination Jesus. We didn't get a picture together this year, so here is our Valentines Day last year. This is the same table I worked this year, but this time I got to leave Bud at home with Grandma :)
I worked the 8pm-12am shift last night front door security. It was slow for the first few hours, so I actually got to attend the last of the Eucharistic Procession, and even hit Reconciliation and hang out with a few Franciscan Sisters. After that though, it got crazy as we had to get all the kids (900 of them) on buses with their chaperones to go to their sleeping locations.

Earlier in the day I had taken Madeleine and John Paul over there for a half hour to see Ken play in the band. Madeleine was so funny and had a great time. She started dancing in her little uncoordinated way (think Elaine on Seinfeld), right next to the bleachers filled with kids. They were all smiling at her and then they all started dancing just like her! It was so funny! I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. And boy did she love all those kids dancing with her! She did not want to leave.

Today they got dressed up for Valentines day and we went to mass with the Bishop. I figured out a way to get a good picture of Madeleine - I have to say, "Don't you smile!"
Waiting to go in to Mass. Bud had a shirt that said, "Mom's little Love Bug" and his bib says "Future Pope" which was quite a hit with the priests and sisters!
This was the altar they set up in the gym at Guerin Catholic high school. It was absolutely beautiful.
Madeleine has a friend Olivia who is the daughter of the drummer in the band. She LOVES Madeleine and always wants to dance with her. This was last year.
and dancing with Olivia this year. She had a great time although she got really dizzy!
So, we are headed to Florida tomorrow for the week while our new floors are installed. I'm really excited about seeing Madeleine's Godparents and their kids. I'm also quite nervous about traveling with both of them again. We did ok in November going to Florida but we have some new issues now. One is that Madeleine is still fairly newly potty trained. I'm going to make her go before we get on every plane, and as soon as we get off. I am really hoping to avoid a situation where we can't get to the potty, or worse, that I have to bring both of them into the bathroom on the airplane. The other thing is that John Paul is really mobile now and doesn't like to be held for extended periods of time. I am hoping he gets his own seat at least part of the time....

So if you think about it, say a prayer for us tomorrow morning! We will be back on Thursday or Friday. Happy Valentines Day!

Global warming

We've basically been snowed in since last weekend. Schools have been canceled, they never plowed our street, and other than a quick trip to the grocery store with everyone else in the state before the last big snowfall, we've been here. Madeleine was banned from TV for 3 days (more on that in the next post) so we've been cooking, playing, having tea parties, decorating the playroom, drawing pictures, coloring, doing puzzles, etc. It's actually been pretty fun. I've gotten some knitting done too. Here's John Paul's latest vest. I LOVE it. Poor kid, I make him wear it about every other day :) It has cables shaped like owls on it.

And here are the four snowman hats I made for my blog friend. Now that she got them I can show them on here!
And we've also gotten outside a little, even though it's been super cold. Madeleine enjoyed making snow angels,
playing with Daddy, (while I watched from the screened porch!)
and trying to wade through the snow drifts.
Unfortunately, the Colts lost but we had a great time watching the game anyway (the first part anyway!) Now that the Superbowl is over maybe Ken will quit bugging me to get a new TV :) Actually we're about to make some pretty major home improvements. Ones we WANT to make this time, not like the furnace, dishwasher, hot water heater and water softener. Let me tell you, I LOVE spending money on things like that. Yeah. But next week, we're getting new "wood" laminate flooring in our playroom, kitchen, and dining room! I am SO excited. I should take some before pictures. I can't wait until it's done, I think it's going to make this house look so much better.

Keeping God in the little things

Today I went to a talk at our Mom's group about Keeping God in the little things. I think I had a big grin on my face the whole time because in the first 5 minutes of the talk, the speaker quoted one of my favorite bloggers, Mum2Twelve! (She's really Mum to 13 now.) How cool is that?? The speaker had some great practical ideas about keeping focus on God during the day, even through mundane tasks.

One suggestion I really want to emulate is to put little inspirational quotes, scripture verses, poems, prayers, etc around the house. For example, she read a little poem called "Thank God for Dirty Dishes." I'd love to print that out and put it right by my sink. I'd also like to put some things like this around in cabinets, by the changing table, etc, and keep my mind focused on God throughout the day. My mom had a needlepoint picture that she made the whole time I was growing up that said, "Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow, for babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow. So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep, I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep." I must have read that 1000 times growing up and it stuck with me! (Probably a little too literally, just ask my mom!) So I'm going to ask you guys, can you give me any of your favorite inspirational short quotes? I was thinking I'd put the Kimberley Hahn quote, "I'm changing culture, one diaper at a time" by the changing table. What else do you have for me?

Some other ideas were pray for each member of the family as you're folding their laundry, pray the rosary in the shower, have a special prayer place in your home with books, holy cards, rosaries, medals, etc, pray when you see an ambulance, fire truck, or police car, bless your children before they go to sleep or before they leave for the day.

Another thing I am going to do is put a little statue of Mary by my sink, and light a candle while I'm preparing dinner to remind myself of how the Blessed Mother prepared meals for Jesus and Joseph. I'm sure she did it with love even when baby Jesus was hanging on her leg just like John Paul has been doing to me!

I'm also going to start looking at Catholic Cuisine and incorporating some "holiness" in our meals. In fact I'm going to add that to my sidebar. I'm also going to add Gayle, the speaker today, to my sidebar. She is pretty great!

By the way, I'm totally open to other suggestions to keep my focus on God through the day! What do you have for me?

Pirates

Madeleine is obsessed with them. Why? I do not know. It all started when we got this book from the library.

We got it about 3 weeks before Christmas, and read it probably 5 times a day. She got really sad when it got closer to the time we had to return it, so Santa brought her this book and the first one, Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies. She LOVES these books. She makes me read them several times a day, and knows each one word for word. When I put clothes away upstairs, Madeleine sits in her chair and "reads" them to John Paul. It's really pretty impressive - it's kind of a long book and she doesn't miss one word. I'm kind of getting an idea about doing a "Henry" cake for her birthday. Surely I can do a bunny with glasses, right? :)

Ken got her another pirate book at the library yesterday called Dirty Joe the Pirate. Guess which book I had to read 5 or 6 times today?? What is it with pirates?

In other Madeleine news, she is completely potty trained! She hasn't had an accident for over a month. I was putting pull-ups on her for bedtime but she never got them wet. So I asked her about a week ago if she wanted to try to wear big girl underwear to bed. She has done perfect! It's SO great to have only one kid in diapers! Today I picked up a Winnie the Pooh wooden step stool on Freecycle, and she LOVES it. She calls it her "stander" and has washed her hands about 20 times today, and also washed several of her babies' hands.

So I watched 19 Kids and Counting today (after I taped it last night.) It was about the newest baby, Josie, being born at 25 weeks at 1 lb 6 oz. As Michelle was being wheeled back, not knowing if the baby would live or die or if she would live or die, Jim Bob said, "We praise God in the good times, and praise God in the bad times." Wow.