Thalia

It is the end of Thalia's birth month. We have been celebrating for almost 3 weeks!! A full 2 days before her birthday she was accepting gift from loving family in Pittsburgh. On the very day (July 13) we had cake with the Delorenzo's.

A week later we had more cake at the beach party.


Then we got her gift (chess set) in the mail and got to celebrate again. THEN we got the book that goes with the chess set! I think we are all done now!

Timely Find

I went looking for a sample of my writting for the "I write like" website and this is what I found:

Reality vs. Fantasy

There are many benefits of being a mother with several small children and husband to care for. Often they are hidden in all the mundane tasks to be fulfilled. At the end, or even the beginning of the day I do not have a lot of time to consider the ideal. What could this house look like, what should this child be doing? I am ever, refreshingly, and exhaustingly pulled into the moment by the immediate task at hand. With faith this life of the moment becomes a blessed thing.

My times of prayer are sometimes meditative and abundant, sometimes at the sink with soapy water and fleeting. It is in the blessed moments that I am able to remember the love for Christ alone is my motivation to act. Every act for love of Him keeps me in reality rather than the fantasy of “if only I had this” of “if only we did that”.

Magazines and television bombard us with the fantasy world. The lives of celebrities and the happiness objects can bring us are stories that are fun to believe, but ultimately bring us the emptiness and pain of envy, self-hatred, and discouragement. I am blessed by having four little Christs who need to be clothed and fed and loved every day to remind me of the power of Love. But whether we have children or not, we are all given chances to encounter Jesus everyday in the people he put in our paths. Real love involves sacrifice, self-denial, humility, and is painfully real. Real Love brings us to the cross, where we look at the manifestations of Jesus’ profound love for us.

What a good reminder I just gave myself.
And I write like Leo Tolstoy!

Library Trauma Averted!

Fines happen, right? They happen to me quite a bit, despite my efforts at being really grown-up and able to return things when I say,or at least call up and renew books before they are due. What I really struggle with is my desire to have a no-fine library. But since that's not reality yet, I have to think of creative ways of dealing with fines.

Sometimes I pay them a couple of dollars at a time. Sometimes I have the kids pay their own fines out of their $ or the results of car seat diving. Sometimes. like today, I snag the ever sweet and patient librarian Jackie, and ask if I can trade my fines for two high quality movies (Finding Nemo, and Pre-Natal yoga). She always says yes!

Mothering Secrets

After leaving two boys in the lobby on our way to dinner, (they were playing chess with a cousin and didn't notice being left till we came back)and loosing a 3 year old on an elevator (Aunt Sally rescued him and took him to Mamma), I thought it best not to broadcast my lack of diapers while at our Fallingwater dinner. Instead I used Mary Catherine's bag from the gift store, and a combination of papertowels and toilet paper. After a few hours in his get-up, Blaise was still a happy boy!