Our Magnum Opus

Last Schola Rehearsal for the Year and Concert

They sing so beautifully!  It makes my heart full of happiness.

Lydia is 12!

LOL It appears that someone ate the strawberries off one side of the cake.  And we are always birthday candle challenged....

More Babies....

Defending the babies, and their mamas, from abortion

mischievous grandbabies playing 'pigs in the barn' after visiting N Kids Farm

baking baby

my babies enjoying the snow

St. Nicholas 2020

Lydia helped decorate a double batch of gingerbread St. Nick cookies.

If you live at home, you still get a wooden shoe filled on St. Nicholas Eve.

 

The Good Bishop himself made a vigil visit to the our grandchildren and friends at Cottonwood.

The Feast Day landed on the second Sunday of Advent, so we had the usual gathering of the clans to celebrate

Beautiful mama

Like her siblings, Idalena had her first home bath in my kitchen sink. (The chrism oil smells so good, one waits till the holy aroma is gone to bathe the newly baptized.)

Easter 2018

Beautiful Easter Vigil Mass

 

Christmas Baking

This year we are baking a few of our regular treats and trying some new grain free, sugar free recipes to keep Kevin and me on plan over Christmas.  Our regular treats are: snickerdoodles (because the younger kids love them and can do them by mostly themselves), buckeyes (because... well, yum), gingerbread for St. Nicholas Day, and traditional fruitcake (because my husband asked).  Also whatever is gifted into the house.

I baked a cake and two pumpkin silk pies, chocolate cookies, fudge, cranberry wassail, eggnog, cranberry sauce (I did both,regular and sugar free), low carb sourdough for the stuffing, and keto rolls.  All on plan for Kevin and I, good for the children, and, so far everything tastes very good!

I can't imagine not baking for Christmas so I'm grateful to be able to bake and cook food that is actually nourishing, and also celebratory!

 

 

Christmas Tree 2017

an over zealous chaperone

the baby cut the tree down :)

Victory!!

Miriya and Shelagh

 

All Eight Children

All of our children learned to read from the Little Angel Reader series. I loved the snuggle-on-the-couch-teaching-reading times.  OK, sometimes there were tears of frustration and sometimes the poor child had to follow me around the house while I worked so I could hear the reading lesson, but I loved every bit of it.  Lydia, the baby, just finished her last lesson in the series.  She is ready to move on to chapter books!

Lydia's first chapter book will be Little House in the Big Woods. (Lydia and her sweet friend, Cordia, as Mary and Laura)

The Retirement of the Dress

All four girls wore this dress sand veil for their First Holy Communions, and usually a Mary crowning, and Corpus Christi procession.  All four.  Glorious memories. Today Lydia wore it for the last time.  I'll have it professionally cleaned and stored.  Maybe one day a granddaughter will wear it.
_{excuse the enormous, blurry picture.  i cropped it down and can't seem to resize it.}

Feast of Corpus Christi

Our parish does a wonderful Corpus Christi procession.  This year we were blessed to share it with our two new priests; our pastor Fr. Tom, and a visiting priest, Fr. Joseph.  All our men were on canopy, Dominic served, Blaise sang, and Lydia strewed flowers with the other First Communicants.  (We are an organizer's dream: one phone call and you get all four canopy bearers, roughly the same height. LOL)

The Divine Praises
Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be His Most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.
Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her Glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints. Amen.