Art museum day

Today we took a little mini field trip to the art museum. Here are the kids with a "steel worker"-


What I quickly learned about the art museum is that it is no place for this guy here-



The "guards" were everywhere through the museum and wouldn't let you talk, skip, anything childlike. They just glared at me like "how dare this breeder come in here with this riff faff." I ended up calling Marc at work (nearby) and said, "can you run over to help us?" He took Tucker, I took Charlie and the big kids went on a tour with a guide and some other homeschoolers. They looked at art from all times and places including sculptures and modern "art". Don't get me started on that. Here is Julia with her favorite girl- Margaret- these two have been close since before they could walk-



Caught Julia staring at St. Sebastian with her hands on her hips- wonder what she was thinking?



Marc and St. Barnabus-



Marky studying the Battle of Pavia- fought by Charles the V- one of Charlie's many namesakes- (of course he's really named after Marc's great-grandfather) :)



After the museum we went to Jim N Nicks in 5 points with Daddy and had a fun time. My kids could live off cheese biscuits alone. This is how Marc eats most of his meals when we go out- he did it with the other three too. Just prop a baby on the left knee and continue-


It makes the babies so happy to be out of the bucket seat!



Happy Little Punkins- everybody loves Daddy-



And crazy little man with his cup of milk that he drinks at every meal- if drinking milk is wrong he doesn't want to be right. :)



Happy Day with sweet babies- and finally some good weather! We've had rain for days and days as evidenced by my front door-



Walking past these makes me happy and makes me feel very blessed. Happy Weekend to you!

First Confession

Tonight Marc had his first reconciliation. He was nervous, but it was precious. It's weird- sometimes he seems so grown up and other times all I see is his sweet toddler baby face.


When we got there the kids lit their candles they had made for tonight-



Then they sang a song- "share the light of Jesus". We also sang "we come to ask your forgiveness, O Lord" that was especially beautiful. The words were "sometimes we hurt by what we do to others, sometimes we hurt with words that are untrue, sometimes we cause others pain by what we fail to do and we ask your forgiveness O Lord."





Then after doing an examination of conscience the kids picked which priest they wanted to go to- there were 6 to choose from. Marky got in line to the priest we know the best and then realized there was no screen b/c it wasn't in a confessional room. He got out of line and said, "I need to go where there's a screen" and I said, "you can do that sweetie, but you have nothing to hide- the priest is happy to lead you to Jesus and help you" and he said, "okay" and went to the first priest. Here he is waiting in line thinking "nobody else's mom is taking all these pictures". :)



Time to go back-



In preparing this afternoon he asked me to help him write out his sins on paper. I said, "you don't want mommy to do it- you should do that on your own", but he insisted. He carried the paper in with him- it was important to him that he not forget. He memorized his act of contrition- he actually memorized two versions- but this is the one he chose to use-

My God,
I am sorry for my sins with all my heart.
In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good,
I have sinned against you
whom I should love above all things.
I firmly intend, with your help,
to do penance, to sin no more,
and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.
Our Saviour Jesus Christ suffered and died for us.
In His Name, my God, have mercy.

He did it! And he said, "it was easy- I shouldn't have been nervous." :) Glowing with grace-


Marc and I knelt with him on the altar to say penance, and then he blew out his candle to come home. I grabbed his paper of sins and tore it up and said, "these are gone forever" and we both smiled.



Such a precious, precious night. It's just reminded me that God has a relationship with Marc that is outside of me. I'm just so involved with his every day life it's hard to remember that he has a spiritual life outside of me. He will be convicted of things I won't know about. He will be inspired to do things by the Holy Spirit that may surprise me. He will pray to God prayers I won't know about. God is going to guide him through his life in ways that won't involve me. He's coming into his own now and I don't have to lead him by the hand through every prayer or act of worship. My baby is in God's hands. Have Thine own way, Lord.

Getting ready for his first confession

Tomorrow Marky will have his first confession, also known as reconciliation or penance. This whole experience is so surreal for me- it's a right of passage. A coming into the fullness of our faith- coming into the "age of reason" where God will hold him accountable for his actions. I've been preparing him for this for some time. We've focused on hating sin and on what perfect contrition for sin is (as in I'm sad because it's offended my perfect and loving God, not because I got caught).

I've been using this amazing book written in 1926 and it has been a learning experience for me. The priest who wrote the book takes sin so seriously. He reminds the children that St. Louis's mother, the Queen of France, told him daily "My child, you know how much I love you. I love you so much that I would willingly give up my life for you. Yet as much as I love you I would sooner see you fall dead now at my feet than to have you commit one mortal sin." Do you think we take sin that seriously now days?

He talks about all kinds of suffering- physical pain, illness, enemies after you, and he says

"I am going to beg of you to think about sin, so that you will always remember that it is the worst thing that can happen to you. Every day of your lives you will be asked to do something that God forbids. The devil will ask you, and what is called the world will ask you, and sometimes you will desire of your own selves, to commit sin. This means that every day of your life you must fight against this great danger, ... You must therefore prepare for this fight every day. If you begin now to stand up against sin you will grow braver and braver, so that in the end sin will be more afraid of you than you will be afraid of sin.
...

When you start in to stop hating sin you begin to love it. ... Your worst enemy can not begin to hurt you as much as sin. ... Sin will never spare you. Sin will never have mercy upon you. Sin will never be satisfied until it makes you its slave.
...

The chief grace of the Sacrament of Penance is being made clean in your souls, in your thoughts, in your words, in your actions; the great grace, the special grace of Confession, is being pardoned your sins, is being made holy, is being made just. Sin makes the soul ugly. Sin soils, sin spots the soul. The grace of the Sacrament...will whiten your souls and take away all your spots.

It is the thought that in your first Confession God is going to dress your souls in the beautiful robe of His grace. Beg of Him to help you to keep that robe as beautiful as it is when He puts it on you when you make your first confession, to keep it beautiful always, so that when you lie down in death there will not be a stain upon it, there will not be a rent in it, but it will still be a garment rich and lovely enough to pass through the doors of heaven with and to be glad among the angels forever and ever.

Marky has been amazing during this preparation and taken it very seriously. I have explained to him that Jesus longs to have us confess our sins and lay our burden down. One priest says when he heard his first confession as a young priest he could almost hear the chains hit the floor. God's mercy is infinite and new every morning and tomorrow my son is going to experience it in a special, sacramental way first hand. What a grace this is to me as a mother! My heart is overflowing with joy and gratitude. Thank you, Lord, for Your mercy to my child.

Bumbo Boy

Who's that happy little boy in the bumbo seat?



Such a happy little boy and he's got two teeth!



With two more teeth coming as we speak-



I love my happy little boy in his bumbo seat!



And what a sweet sister he has too!

Little Flowers January

We had our fourth Little Flowers meeting today and it was precious. We studied the virtue of loving your neighbor and the life of St. Jane Frances de Chantal and the flower was the rose. As always, we started with the girls coloring a picture of the saint we are studying as I read about their life.


I have loved learning about her life because she was both married and a nun and holy and above reproach in both vocations. St. Francis de Sales said in regard to St. Jane de Chantal: “Madame Chantal is the strong woman that Salomon was not able to find in Jerusalem.”



After learning about our dear saint and her love for others regardless of their station in life we talked about our memory verse, I John 4:12: "No eye has ever seen God. Yet if we love one another God dwells in us, and His love is brought to perfection in us." We played the CD and sang the song that goes along with the verse.



We talked a lot about the golden rule and pondered who our "neighbors" are and small ways we can love and serve them. Then the girls worked on their notebook pages.



After the notebook pages we had snacks and then they played outside. I was distracted with teaching today and forgot to take more pictures. But it was a lovely day learning about lovely things with some lovely little girls.



P.S. I just have to add this pic of Charlie, upset the oatmeal is gone. "Where is da food?" he wonders. And Aunt Amber gave us these awesome bibs that cover the sleeves and whole outfit so he stays clean while he eats like a wittle pig.

Sunday Pictures

Marc asked why we have to take these and I said "one day you will be glad I did." :)













This little guy is going to receive the sacrament of reconciliation this week. We are all so excited!

Race is over...

Well, we finished the race today. It was a lot of fun. We didn't have the fastest car at all, although Marc won a heat or two (it was a round robin with each car getting in four races). It was very precise- all done by computers with the cars coming in 1 10,000th of a second- that's VERY close! See Julia and Tucker on the front row- they were beside themselves and cheering!



On your mark, get set, go!





Marc did win the award for "holiest car". Ha! They did a bunch of these funny awards. He was proud and had fun!



And here is sugar pie honey bunch sweetest wittle baby with the sweetest spirit (and the one who looks the most like Daddy)-



These cheeks were made for kissin- they are delicious!

Get your motor runnin.....

Well, we finished our first pinewood derby car. We learned a lot (like don't use acrylic paint- it crackles and use the premade weights not buck shot), but we had a great time. Tonight they had weigh in and the race is tomorrow. Even though our car weighed just right on our home scale, when we got there it was too heavy. So Daddy had to sand it down on the bottom and now we have a cavern there that we are sure will slow the car down. But I admit- the process has been fun and bonding for the two Marcs and totally worth it.



Painted by Marky-


Leave it to my son to put the Jerusalem Cross on his car- his love of ancient history spills into everything-


Some of the competition- such creativity!

R U Serious?

This pine wood derby car has been a big deal. It's taken a ton of work to figure out how and wear to drill it- and then fill the holes- how to paint it and with what- what type of metal to weigh it down and how much of it. Then today at art I hear moms talking and saying "oh- you can buy the weights at Michaels- you just screw them in. They also sell $8 paint kits just for derby cars."

Are you serious, Clark?

Why have I not heard about this before. I called Marc and said, "we reinvented the wheel- there is a much easier way to do this." And he said, "I love the way we've done it- it's the way I did it as a kid and Marky's learned so much."

That's the idea I guess. It does seem a little cheesy to just buy it all prefab and throw it together (but I'm pretty sure that's what we'll do next year now that we've "learned" all about how to "really" do it- shortcuts welcome now thank you). :)

In other news I took the three little kids to eat lunch at Chili's today and they didn't bring me the "light" chicken rollups with brocoli- they brought me the full fat chickien roll ups with fries. I just kind of stared at the plate. Hello, full fat old friend- I no longer eat you- but here you are. Hmmmm....a weight watchers conundrum. Solution- eat 1/2 the wrap and a few fries and decided you will do extra walking tonight. I do NOT cheat- unless forced to by careless waiters.

Christmas poster 2011

Here is Marky's entry into the "Keep Christ in Christmas" parrish-wide poster contest. I got home, put the poster on the counter and told him "we are going to work on this for church" and then grabbed Charlie to put him to bed. When I got back down about 15 minutes later it was complete- he did it all by himself. I'm quite proud.

2 weeks in....

and 10 lbs lost! Holla if ya hear me!!!

In other news, Tuckerboy had a tough morning. We were at the Southern Museum of Flight playing, and instead of playing with the toys he just lay on the floor with his hands behind his head looking at the ceiling. I said, "sweetie, don't you want to play?" And he said, "no, I will just lay on dis floor." I should have known he was "off".

In a few minutes he threw up all over his clothes and the floor of the playroom. I got him cleaned up and had to buy a t-shirt at the museum b/c I had no extra clothes. On the way home he threw up again in the car all over his car seat and new t-shirt. I got him home, bathed, in footie jammies and he slept for about three hours. Then he threw up in the bed. Geez Louise. But he woke up at 3 and from them on has seemed fine. I guess it's over and happy of happys- it didn't spread through the house! :)

Marky had a basketball game tonight and so we took the kids to the nursery at the Y and kept Tucker with us. He was still in his footie jammies which were tucked into tennis shoes. He was happy as a clam and just sat in his stroller and cheered for Bubba. Precious angel boy. Even when he's "off"- he's sweet as pie.



In other, OTHER, news, it's pinewood derby time with scouts. What a mess! They literally give you a chunk of wood and say "go get 'em!" We don't know what we are doing. We cut out the car design and sanded it down Monday and bought the paint, nails, graphite, putty, etc. you have to have.



Now they are weighing it down with metal to make it heavier, but still less than 5 oz. And when I say, "they", I, of course, mean Daddy with Marky watching. Boys can't use band saws last I checked. Marky did design the car, though, and he is the one who sanded it down. I think he's really enjoying this. I'll be curious to see how he ends up painting it. Momma is just sitting back and keeping her 2 cents to herself on this one- this one's all up to Marky-