Congatulations to Rikki-San!

You may have seen my friend Eileen (Rikki-San) on here, commenting away (she really needs a blog, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time...). She just had her first baby by birth, ever! She and Eric are the proud parents of Michael Felix Savoy, born Dec. 27th around 7am, 7 lbs and 21 inches of healthy baby. Mariah and Josh are here at my house (they are currently foster, maybe someday adoptable, kids), and I get to take them to see baby brother as soon as Francis comes back. Hooray for them!! We are soooo happy for them, and I can't wait to see this loverly baby!

Please also pray for my Wieber friends, who might be having a fairly emotional day today. God bless and give you hugs, my friends.

In addition to all that news, it snowed today! Hooray!

Feliz Navidad

Merry Christmas, everyone. I was going to write a quote from Madeleine L'Engle perhaps, but I got stuck wrapping packages and loving my baby, who has decided that standing is very cool, but having to actually crawl to mom and dad is not. And going to sleep is not cool, because there is so much to do! However, going out on a drive to look at Christmas lights is so cool, he did go to sleep for that.
Ur?
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

description of my husband's job

Ok, I admit it, I'm stealing this from my friend Jamee's Facebook page. Did I mention this blog is going to have lots of stolen objects included in it? I'm a collector of somewhat useless but entertaining information. Aha! So that's MY job description.
My husband works for a tech company, and even though his description changes drastically, what he really does is customer service, cleverly disguised as "product operations". Where do they come up with these titles, anyway?
Here goes:

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:

"Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says, "Yes you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Engineering or Information Technology," says the balloonist.

"I do," replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "Everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone."

The man below says, "you must be a Program Manager."

"I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."

The kids are asleep!

I know I should correct papers, but the kids are asleep! We still have barf. I thought it was over, but it isn't. Grace just really holds on to that kind of thing. Which brings up a weird thing that happens around here at least once a week. Perhaps it happens at your home as well.
This is what happened at 11:30 am today:
I decided to help the kids make the gingerbread house we bought at Trader Joe's. I started making the "glue" and the baby decided I wasn't allowed to make a move without him. So he was in the jumper, screaming his fool head off. I decided to ignore this, because the kids deserve some of their mom's time, and besides, Josh was coming over soon to be babysat, I didn't want to attempt this project with his two year old body around. As I was spilling stuff all over and the baby was screaming, Grace very suddenly threw up. Thank goodness, not on the couch full of clean laundry, where she had been resting up til then, and not on the gingerbread house, either. Just herself and the carpet. The baby was still screaming.
So I cleaned her up, picked up the baby, and called Eileen to say that I could take Josh, but it was a risk, considering the cooties in the house. Happily, she found a way to make things happen that turned out to be better for everyone anyway.
And by noon, all was back to normal.
How do things like that happen? Why do they all happen at once? Cosmic sense of humor? I just don't get it.
Do you?

the taboo subjects

My friend Joe has a description of what his house is looking for in a roommate, and it states that the roommate-to-be must put up with conversations on "taboo subjects" like politics and religion and personal lives. I really laughed, because that's exactly what I enjoy talking about the most! In "polite conversation", supposedly these topics are not to be broached. Especially if you know you are surrounded by people who violently disagree with you. That happened at dinner one time. We had a couple over who generally is more liberal, and we and another couple have made it pretty clear that we are open minded, but we really do stand for certain things and tend to vote conservatively. It was odd that they even brought up that they didn't like our current president, and they bashed him pretty hard, but we didn't even intend to have that conversation. It kind of felt thrown in our faces, because they brought it up as everyone was leaving. It was just odd.
And yet, I do like those conversations, you just need to know that everyone else in the room feels like talking about those things, too. In college, 2am is a great time for those conversations. Who knows why, I guess like alcohol, lack of sleep loosens one's tongue a bit.
So, in the name of being a rebel, here are some fun ideas I have in my head about politics and religion.
Politics: I have no idea who I'm voting for, but if it's Hillary vs. Rudy, I am going to cry, because I'll have no one to vote for. So far, Ron Paul looks mighty appealing, as does Huckabee, so we'll see if one of them gets the nod. I like Ron Paul because as far as I can tell, he's the only honest, consistent person. He is a strict constitutionalist, even if one does not agree with everything he has to say. I like people who really do try to follow that, because, why bother having a constitution if you aren't going to follow it? That constitution made freedom possible for many countries by its example, so throwing it away just should not be an option. Like Church law, it's there for a reason, and should not fall apart because the current fashion is to not take anything seriously. Direction is good. I like people who are honest and consistent, not haphazard. At least not people who affect my freedom and that of my country. So, I give a tentative nod to Ron Paul. I know how these things go, and anything could happen in a year. We also need to get paperwork done so my hubby can vote. He is still Canadian, and *gasp* has never voted. But it will cost us $600 to simply apply for citizenship. And that is a whole 'nother political discussion...

Religion: We are Catholic, and were raised that way. We love being Catholic, and we take it very seriously. We are in the minority, even in our own families. We know this, but we take comfort in knowing that our solemnity and joy are not without logic. We read a lot, and we look at why the Church teaches what it teaches, and we know that the Pope's job is to uphold doctrine and dogma, not to invent new things. This is something that is lost on the general public. Also, the Catholic Church has only one Founder, Jesus Christ. Not Martin Luther, not Henry VIII. Peter is our first Pope. And there is a huge wealth of writings from the founding fathers of the Church which almost no one reads. If they did, they would see the reasons behind many things people continue to argue about, like abortion, celibacy, and birth control. There is so much beauty left untapped by the regular people, partly because they don't care to read it or are too busy, but also because it challenges you to be honest about your life and change it drastically. Sometimes that is very hard, as Scott Hahn and his wife could tell you. The book Rome Sweet Home is a great example of how hard discovering the Truth can be for your personal life, and yet how wonderful and freeing it is to trust God completely with your fate.
One thing that I think people have lost sight of is that the "feel good church" is not the goal. Pain and suffering happen. The Catholics and Jews have never lost sight of the power of suffering to fulfill God's will and cause growth that leads to Heaven. It stinks to go through it, of course, but it's much easier if you feel that there is a point, even if you don't yet know what it is, and if you can direct your pain to the alleviation of someone else's, and pray to God to send that energy into someone else's life, it makes the pain bearable. And if it isn't bearable, and one is mad, mad, mad at God, well, He is a big guy. He can handle it. And this, too, shall pass.

And that is my philosophical stump speech for today. Thank you, thank you.
And God bless.
And Happy Advent!

playing with the site

I am SO going to make this site look so much better! That's going to have to wait til Christmas, after I make a LOT of headway into grading papers from tenth and twelfth grade students from Mother of Divine Grace. I really want to play with this, but I really can't let myself, since I'm now a month behind in grading.
The good news is, I did a few things on the to do list I posted previously. The bad news is, I really want to enjoy Christmas, and can't seem to find the time to remember the reason for the season. And the baby is still not sleeping through the night. Not at all...
So, to make myself happy, I'm going to copy and paste something that really made me laugh today from The Common Room. And then I found out my husband hasn't seen it. WHAT??? How did he miss this? "I don't watch Christmas movies, " he says. Bah humbug to that! It is now #1 on our Netflix queue. So ha. By the way, it's so nice to know Brandon is normal. He would totally try this. And we might stop the movie and make our brave attempt to tell him not to. But then again, our metal doesn't freeze here as often as it does in the midwest, where I assume, from my calculations, they live.
Enjoy!

A Christmas Story

Two or three years ago we watched this movie for the first time (I know, we're pop-culturally delayed). Some of y'all will remember this story, but I think it's worth trotting out at least once a
year.When we got to the part where the boy gets his tongue stuck to a frozen flag pole we knew that the First Year Girl would be tempted to lick a metal pole. This wasn't a guess, a suspicion or a concern. It was foreknowledge, though we didn't know just how prescient. We told her not to. We know her so well that we actually stopped the movie to say to her, "We are telling you not to do this. Granny Tea did it when she was little, and it hurt very much. You need to know that if you do this in spite of our warning, it will hurt, you might lose some skin, and we will laugh. There will not be a shred of sympathy, only laughter."I believe it was less than 48 hours later when our youngest two were playing outside in the snow and the FYG came in the house and said to me, "My tongue is bleeding. Only it sounded more like, "by tug ith beedig." She stuck it out, and sure enough, there was just a smidgen of blood where she'd lost a teensy bit of skin. I confess that I didn't feel much like laughing at her just at that moment, in spite of my promise. Well, not too much, anyway. I sternly asked her, "Did you stick your tongue on a piece of frozen metal?"She nodded her head in shamefaced way, and explained, "We were scooping up some snow in a metal pail, and the FYB held it up so I could lick some snow off the side.""And it hurt, didn't it?" I asked. "Just like we told you it would.""Well," she said, "It didn't really hurt that much. I was surprised that my tongue was stuck. But it did not hurt until I yelled and startled the FYB."And why would startling her brother bring so much pain?Because in his surprise he dropped the bucket.... and since it was stuck to her tongue....And, yes, I did laugh.

Christmas list

Wow. It's almost Christmas. Why can't I focus on the reason for the season? I seem only to be able to focus on lists. Christmas lists. They are not just to Santa. Here is mine.
1. Clean house (about half done, group effort of Francis, Dave and I)
2. Go over budget with husband.
3. Upload a cute pic to Walmart so I can get photo Christmas cards. No time to get a family picture before then, and honestly, it can wait til next year. I'll work on it in January, so we have a picture with four kids in it instead of three.
4. Get all my information into Francis' old ipod.
5. Bake cardamom bread.
6. Send stuff to nearest relatives for Christmas.
7. Send sympathy cards to three people.
8. Help our friends gut their house.
9. Make a master list of library volunteers.
10. Update boy scout stuff all the way.
11. Grade MODG stuff
12. Do fun holiday stuff with family and friends.

There it is. The twelve days of Christmas. Wow.
Just tell me to stop and take a nap instead.

God bless us, every one.

Meanwhile, please pray for:
my dad and mom as they clean up after "hurricane Astoria" Pearl Harbor Day was their 39th Anniversary.
my sister and her boyfriend, for some wisdom
my aunt, who passed away last week
Francis' grandpa, who passed away at Thanksgiving, and for that whole side of the family in general.
For my grandpa , who just moved into an assisted living facility, and is having trouble breathing. He's 95 or so.
For my other sister to find a job soon.
For Rachel, Matt, and little boy Peter, that their prayers are answered soon.
For Eileen and Eric and their cutie pies, as they welcome the first birth child to their family.
For our godchildren and their mama, who is probably really tired.
For Brandon's birth parents at Christmas, it must be hard.

So many people to pray for. It's nice to write it down so I can't forget.
Have a blessed Advent. TKC (Thy Kingdom Come)!

My very first post

I finally gave in. If you want to know what inspired me... well, here's a funny story. You see, if you ask my husband about something, he's say, "It started with a girl". Never mind it's not usually me. But if you ask me, I'll say, "I know a funny story". Huh.
So, what did I give in about?
Well, I have been meaning to blog for a bit. It all started with a wedding, over a year ago. I went to the wedding of my friend Katie from college, and her now husband, Brian. It was 104 degrees at their wedding, I might add. I shared a hotel room with my three kids and another friend from college, Joe. I saw lots of people I hadn't seen since I left college, eight years before. That was kind of neat. One of them told me about a lovely blog, which is up for nomination in the Homeschool Blog Awards at this very minute. I read it daily now, thanks to Bernadette, and they always inspire me.
I thought to myself, why don't I do that? Like I don't have enough to do... for crying out loud! But I am so pathetic at keeping diaries, and my sister Bonnie read those (without asking, I may add, but she told me later), and anyway, I never finish anything written. But I love sharing stories and reading news that doesn't make it onto CNN, and things like that. And I don't want to correct papers right now. And wouldn't it be nice if I could just post pictures on here instead of facebook, so that people could really see them without giving up all their personal information? And then maybe I wouldn't need to continue forwarding funny things from my "favorite blogger lady" as I refer to DHM at this site: www.heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com. I refer to her as that because my husband can't remember what I'm talking about, and "common room" isn't going to stick in his mind as easily, much as he also enjoys their blog.
So that was my introduction to blogging. I tried it on Facebook, but then the application was erased completely, so that's all gone. I hope that won't happen here. Yikes! Good thing I hadn't gotten very far.
Please do be patient with me while I figure out pictures, links and other things like that.
Wheeee!!! A new toy for me to play with! Oooh... shiny!