Someone's Birthday and the Start of Lent!

Guess who turned 3 today?

IGNATIUS, THAT'S WHO!!!

I can't believe he is 3! He brings us such joy... Every day spent with him is a rumpus adventure, and I mean that in the best possible way. We love you to pieces, Naish! He and his brother will celebrate today with ice cream after dinner. Why not I or Joey, you might ask?

Today is also the start of Lent, a.k.a. Ash Wednesday, which is a day of fasting and abstinence for all Catholics who've reached the appropriate age. There is one other day we fast during the year, and that is Good Friday.

Basically, fasting for Catholics means: 2 small meals + 1 main meal + 0 snacks. Abstinence consists of not eating meat, but eating fish is okay (for a great infograph, check this out). So, this all means... No dessert for Mamma and Daddy tonight! Boo hoo! Just kiddin'. It's really not any more difficult than one day of dieting! We will most certainly survive, and hopefully grow to appreciate what we have as privileged 1st world members of society all the more.

Speaking of Lent, I wanted to do a project with the children so as to help prepare our hearts for Easter. I'm not a very crafty person, but I have a sliver of patience every once and a while! The project is making a crown of thorns out of salt dough and tooth picks. I've actually done this before. I don't think I blogged about it, but if I have pardon my repetitiveness! The idea behind having a crown of thorns with toothpicks is that during the 40 days of Lent, we'll take out a "thorn" every time we do a kind deed or make a sacrifice for love of each other and our Lord. Here's hoping we keep it up, so we have a completely bare crown by Easter!

What would a kiddo project be without a bunch of pictures? 

I tried really hard to let the children do most of everything on their own, but... I couldn't help myself with a few of the steps, like preventing all the salt from pouring onto the table and ground. Ignatius filled the measuring cup halfway and I did the rest. He dumped it on his own, though.

 I keep my flour in an empty oatmeal container, FYI.

Note the bad guy Lego figurines on the side... Julian wanted them to watch him do this in the hopes that some of them would have a change of heart. In the end, he said "Three-headed Bomber and Four-armed Gamboo changed their hearts, but not the others." Haha!

It took several tries to get the pieces for the crown to be the right consistency and thickness, and as you can see I wasn't able to make it as perfectly symmetrical as someone more talented than I. But! I don't care all that much. It's the symbolism that matters more than its pleasing the senses.
 

 Placing toothpicks into the crown.

 I love this picture, because it shows Julian asking questions about Our Lord's sacrifice. Doing things like this is such a great teaching moment...

 Just before popping it in the oven. 

"CHEEEEEEEEESE"

And now, it's time for the finished product!

I put some purple tulle netting around the crown of thorns as the color for the season is such. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Signing Off,

Liz

 

 

The Long List of What's New:

Y'all ready for this?

So, the last time I wrote we were living in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment far away from the husband's work, sharing one car, and I mostly never drove it. That has all changed, friends. All because of this guy right here:

 

Well, both this guy and the Child he's holding, that is. St. Joseph is amazing, and I attribute our current wonderful living situation to asking him to help a girl out. We now live closer to Joey's work, closer to our church, and I get the car most days of the week, while the Mister takes public transit. AND it's a three bedroom, roomy, wonderful townhouse, which we are renting from friends of ours. We couldn't be happier here!

The children are growing up so fast, it's hard to keep up! Julian is a sweet, smart, sensitive, story-telling, Lego-loving 5 year old who loves all things Ninjago, Star Wars, Thundercats, and the occasional Super Hero. He has also made up hero/villain worlds about which he will talk to you at length, and these story lines are fantastically imaginative. I will say, though, that they sound vaguely like a combination of some or all of the above fantasy worlds. We'll let his accidental plagiarism slide for now! ;)

Then there's Ignatius. He is a joyful, quick-tempered, strong, athletic, good-humored, adorably cuddly almost 3 year old boy. He is all boy, that Ignatius. He loves everything Julian loves, especially running around and acting out the scenarios Julian proposes. He loves to scale trees and climb all over his parents. His mother is not the biggest fan of this long-living habit of his, and his father thinks it's great and equates it to a free back massage. ???

Together, they are the best of friends and also the most savage enemies. They are a very emotional duo, and react quickly to any and all slight teasing remarks or negative promptings. They make up as quickly as Mommy makes them, though, and move onward the charming way most boys seem to do. My current favorite pictures of the two of them are these ones. They sum up all that I love about them as brothers:

I mustn't forget another person in the lineup, and that is of our angel baby we named Francis Mary. I only knew I was pregnant for 6 days before our baby went safely to the arms of our Father in Heaven (March 30th of 2015), but those 6 days were such happy days. You see, we were "all systems go" for another child for 6 months before Francis Mary came into our lives, and news of being with child was truly a welcome happening. 

These are pictures taken the days prior to miscarrying. We never told the kids about the pregnancy, but still shared the joy by making special memories like taking goofy pictures on our webcam with mommy.

 

It was right before Holy Week -- the week prior to Easter -- that I miscarried, and living through Our Loss and Heaven's Gain at this time of year was especially transforming. There is so much I could say about it all, but if I were to sum it up in one sentence it would be this: I learned that God loves us, and although He allows sad things to happen in our lives we are given the grace to see meaning through the sadness when we look at life through the lenses of faith, hope, and love. God's grace has carried us through this, and we now have greater reason to find joy in living our lives day-to-day. As I look back and ponder where God has led this family of ours I see the kind, gentle hand of God ever-present and ever-loving. Now with a saint in Heaven I call my child, I ask that child to pray for us and help us -- his mom, dad, and brothers -- on our way to the Eternal Kingdom. 

Overall, we are full of great wonder at our little and incredible life, and thank God every day for the blessings He has given us: we who are most unworthy of our amazing calling.

Easter 2015.

Dusting It Off!

I am really good at blogging. Clearly! Hehe

Okay okay, so I let one year, one month, and two weeks pass by without blogging. I'm glad we all can acknowledge I suck at this, and honestly, I can live with that. I haven't really felt the urge to, and also honestly, my life is pretty blah-zay (is that a word, and is that how it is spelled?).

Don't get me wrong! I love my life a lot. When one's job is to spend time with 2 kids and an incredibly supportive husband as cool as mine, you count one's self lucky. But it's just... every day is much like the day before. I don't want to bore my audience with things I'm posting on Facebook or the Gram, only to repost here to make it extra official that I am, indeed, livin' the stay-at-home mom life.

So what am I doing back? 

I plan to give this space a chance to air out my thoughts and feelings on things. Things which are stewing around in my heart and in my head that need to come out, finally, after years of thinking and feeling them. I have a gut instinct that is telling me: they *need* to be shared, or there really wasn't much point in all the thinking my brain and feeling in my heart's been doing all this time, ya know?

So, come back if you're intrigued! I'd love the company.