Come, O long awaited Savior, Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us, Let us find our rest in thee.

Greetings to you and your family during this Advent Season as we prepare for the birthday of our Savior! Advent at our house consists of daily creating a paper ornament for our Jesse Tree, which sketches out Salvation History, and lighting (and blowing out) our Advent wreath candles – a real treat for the 6 and under crowd!

Sophia, 6 ½ and counting, is in the 1st Grade of our home school, Divine Mercy Academy. She excels at math and handwriting, and has declared herself the smartest girl in our house, with which we don’t argue. Every night Daddy reads her a story and then she reads Daddy a story. She participated in her first season of T-Ball this past summer, which was redeemed by the weekly snack and drink!

Will, 3 ¾ and counting, is fine-tuning his sword fighting skills, which is why the nerf sword is usually high up on the china cabinet. He can pick out letters and sounds, count to ten, and knows his colors. He continually amazes us with his ability to play independently for what seems like hours during the school day.

Nicholas, 23 months and counting, is our happy, compliant little guy. We marvel at his use of the word “pees” and the way he likes to bring you his dinner plate after eating! Like any little person who is zeroing in on the big 2 year mark, he knows the word NO. Oddly enough, when he says NO, he usually is nodding his head yes! Like all of our toddlers, he is beginning to work on giving up his daily nap.

Michael & I celebrated ten years of marriage in June – with tornado force winds. Luckily no damage to our house. We will also be consumer debt free after the beginning of the year thanks to Veritas Financial Ministries and Dave Ramsey’s daily talk show. It has been a long road, but it is very worth it. Michael won the fitness section of the Triathlon in August and is currently training for the Tri in. He also is now a licensed Professional Engineer! I am working on winning the battle over laundry in our house, while home education keeps me on my toes and busy every day. Our Parish family is embarking on building a new church. By this time next year,

St. E. should be nearly ready to move into a new beautiful church!

2009 Trip Synopsis: Celebrated Easter with Michael’s Grandparents, coordinated & attended the Newman Center reunion in June, Sophia had her first overnight with Grandparents, helped to celebrate my Mother’s 70th Birthday in July, hosted Michael’s family reunion, and went camping with friend's in September! It has been a full year of go-go-going, which is part of the reason that we are staying at home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Wishing you and your loved ones a very Blessed Advent, Merry Christmas, and Joy in the New Year through Christ Jesus, the infant King!

Thanksgiving

Well, we spent our first Thanksgiving at home without extended family this year. Our friend from church, Ed, did come to share our 22 lb turkey with us. It was a nice, quiet sort of holiday without any rushing around. Except for the rushing to the Mall on Friday morning to watch Santa arrive on the big red tractor, which he did not actually do. We kept waiting and waiting with the other people outside the mall, then someone let us know he was already inside. BIG BUMMER!

And "quiet" is not exactly accurate either. Our hot water heater leaked on the Sunday morning of Thanksgiving week. So from Tuesday until the following Sunday we lived with 3 gigantic, industrial type fans and a dehumidifier to dry up the water in the carpet and the drywall. We did actually turn the fans off during Thanksgiving dinner and a couple other times.

All in all it was a good holiday with much to give Thanks to God for....like employment, fans to dry carpet, emergency funds for emergencies, good health, ability to educate our kids at home, for our children, and each other!

2 Kid Funnies....

After church today, we took the kids to eat lunch at Pizza Hut. If you've been to Pizza Hut during the Holiday seasons, you know they set out board game cards for customers to "play" while waiting. Great marketing plan! So we were playing this game where you give clues to a word to one person to guess the word. I was giving clues for "belly button" to Sophia. It was a pretty poor clue, I must admit. I said, "You are born with this." Sophia readily guessed - original sin?! We were happily impressed!

Our local Pizza Hut has also installed flat-screen TVs in the corners. Will was busily watching basketball. But what really caught his eye was the Super Juicer! He giggled and said how much he wanted one of those! My children are so innocent as they never watch commercials:):):)

Welcome, Autumn...or Winter!

October was a full month for us here in west-central Nebraska. We had 3 BIG snows amounting to 30" of snow. Keep in mind that our average seasonal snow total is 29"! This probably doesn't bode well for a mild winter.

The first unseasonal snow dumped a ton of snow on our parish's annual Pumpkin Festival. Thanks to last minute scrambling and quick thinking on the part of the committee in charge, we were still able to have a successful Pumpkin Fest INSIDE church. (Start praying now for autumn weather for next year!) The next snow was a couple of weeks later. Kids made a snowwoman, which I failed to photograph. That foot of snow melted as fast as it fell. The last snow pretty much closed down our small burg the day before Halloween. Michael couldn't even get the car out of the driveway to get to work. VACATION DAY! We now know why our town has so many jacked-up trucks ... just to navigate the snow. The city did actually plow our street on Halloween. Not complaining here, but that created a HUGE pile in the middle of the road. Fortunately by Halloween night, it had warmed up and melted lots of the snow so we could trick or treat with some friends.

On to other family updates, we are in the 12th week of school here. Sophia is making real progress in her reading program this year. When I get frustrated, I know I need to cool my jets and remember that she is a young 1st grader. She is zipping through her math program. Tonight we are going to prepare for her Science Fair Project next week. She has completed one session of a Homeschool PE class at the local gymnastics club. Hoping that the program will continue! She is also taking part in a monthly science presentation at our local children's museum. Some 60 kids participated in the first session in October! Michael has started training for the spring Triathlon. Will is training Nicholas in the art of being a little boy.

Looking forward to a quiet, dare I hope dry November!

Below are some of our pictures from the month of October.

Nicholas as The Dragon, Will as St. George of Merry England

and Sophia as Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

Camping

The weekend after Labor Day we went camping with some old friends. They have five girls aged 10 down to 6 mo, so all of my kids had someone with whom to play. It was a good weekend full of visiting, cooking and eating outdoors, walking, doing battle with flies, playing in the sand, making s'mores, fishing, and having adult beverages after the kids fell asleep. I don't know if this was really the high-light, but the first night we had a terrific rain storm that flooded one tent. The next morning we all had to stay in our respective tents until the rain subsided and some of the water soaked into the ground. Our resident Eagle Scout had the very wet job of relocating 4 little girls to a dry tent and moving the wet tent out of the flooding. Kudos to Matt! Then the real work began of drying clothes and sleeping bags out so they could be used 2 more nights.



All in all it was a superb weekend of building great memories for our kids. We look forward to making this an annual event - minus the flies and flooding!


On Sunday morning we all put on relatively clean and dry clothes to go to Mass:


Matt snapped this great shot of Will (3) and Clara (almost 3). Young Love!
We've agreed to betroth them;)

Tooth Fairy

My 6 year DD lost her first tooth on Saturday. It was quite a full day for us as DH had just completed a 97.5 mile bicycle ride to the next town over. After dinner on the drive home, I noticed Sophia twisting the loose tooth. Sure enough as she was getting ready for bed she brought the tooth in to show us. Every one took a turn holding the precious tooth. Panic ensued when it dropped to the off-white carpet. Fortunately, she found the very tiny tooth.

We put it in her hand-made tooth fairy pillow from Grandma Anita.

The Tooth Fairy was pleased to find the coins she had stashed away for this late night moment.

Sophia was pleased to wake up to find a gold dollar coin.

Here is a picture of the newly lisping Sophia:

1st Day of 1st Grade

My student....

Truly a home school....

Busy Summer 2009

Our summer is sadly coming to a close as tomorrow (8-17-09) we start our second year of homeschooling in our officially christened home school, Divine Mercy School. Sophia will be in 1st grade and Will will be doing a few pre-school activities. But we'll share those details in a later post.

We've had a very full summer. Here are some of the highlights of our busy, crazy, hectic time off.

Sort of in reverse order!

Gardening

Fun in the yard
Coordinating church outfits

Patients First health care rally

Dinner with cousins

Eating lots of watermelon

Family time at the park

Michael's family reunion & Triathlon weekend

Finishing strong at the Tri

Being statues with Grandpa

Slushies with Cousins

Playing at the park with Cousins

10th Anniversary

Mom's 70th BirthdayFrank & Florena's 45th Wedding Anniversary

Goodlooking Cousins

A very Superhero summer

Climbing trees

Showing off Muscles

Totus Tuus water fight -even 3 year old brothers get to join in the fun

Totus Tuus Ice Cream Sundae

Lots of time at the pool

4th of July Fun at Amy & Matt's house

When the sun went down, it was soooooo cold we broke out the blankets to watch fireworks!

Cody Park Fun

Fun on bikes

More fun with Cousins

6th Birthday Girl - even has a loose tooth!

Post Swimming Lessons Snacking!

Reading with the favorite, oh-so-cool older cousin!

Newman Center Reunion.

Chance to see our favorite Bishop!

Some of his spiritual grand-children:)

Well, that's all folks!

Patients First Rally

The kids and I went to a Patients First Rally today. Main message (see the bus pic): Keep Your Hands Off My Health Care, Mr. President. We had 300 people at the rally - including my three budding conservative activists! Quote from Sophia: No Obama No. :)

Sophia

Many of you know that we were married 4 years before our first baby was born. That three plus years of infertility was hard on us. I consider Sophia our miracle baby.

Here are some photos of my Little Miracle in honor of her 6th Birthday.