{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life...

After a busy week of VBS followed immediately by a birthday party for Ellie I'm still feeling quite spent.  So I'm forcing myself to blog.  One of these days I'll find the time to blog about Ellie's American Girl birthday party and VBS.  Today just isn't that day.  At least, I don't think it is.

{Pretty}

My beautiful Elisabeth poses for a picture with her Elizabeth doll and her American Girl themed cup cakes before her party.  I have the hardest time believing that eight years have passed since she was born.

{Happy}

I so seldom make it into pictures that I was surprised when I noticed this picture of me in the uploads from the final day of VBS.  I had asked my friend to take pictures of the kids during the closing show. Apparently she got me, too! I'm really happy that she took this picture.  And look at how content Katie is to hang out with my friend.  All week long she went from person to person. She was so happy to be passed around the week of VBS.  In fact, she enjoyed it so much that when I had a spare minute and went to hold her she didn't want to go to me.  

{Funny}

One of the days of VBS I decided to pass my camera off to another good friend and join in on a relay race with the pre-K kids.  I got my team all hyped up and I heckled the team next to me (mostly the high school boy who was their classroom aide).  Unfortunately my team lost, but we had a lot of fun.  I'll be in the gym for a rematch next year!

{Real}

Deacon Al (Alias: The Cowboy of God) frequently tells me that I can sell refrigerators to eskimos.  I can also talk a deacon into wearing an inflatable cowboy costume very much against his will.  You know how Jesus said "Ask and it will be given to you?"  Well, I asked, was shot down and kept asking and this was the result.  The kids loved it and so did I.  It made all of the hard work involved in organizing VBS worth it.  I tell you that you could not have slapped the smile off my face that first day of VBS.

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Miss Me?

I've been MIA for about a week and a half now, right?  I feel like I've abandoned the blog.  Last week was our parish VBS so I was pretty busy with that from just before the 4th of July when I began setting up the school and tying up some last minute VBS items.  Once I made it through an exhausting week of VBS I had to jump right into putting together an American Girl party for Ellie's 8th birthday.  I really need to realize that throwing a birthday party at my house just before or right after or even during the week of VBS is nothing short of overwhelming.  Add in taking my sister-in-law to create a baby registry (for her, not me) and you can call me exhausted.  On the whole it was a great week (8 days if we want to be specific) filled with lots of good things that kept me busy.

Since about last Wednesday I've been feeling like I just can't get enough sleep or rest.  I wake up in the morning and I feel like I'm going to pass out within two hours and spend the rest of my day feeling like I'm dragging.  I was hoping to spend some time relaxing today but that never happened.  No rest for the weary!  The heat wave that we just entered isn't helping either.

I have lots I want to blog about, but it's probably going to be another couple of days before my poor neglected blog has any sort of interesting content.  I am wondering how some bloggers who seem to be busy all the time manage to crank out amazing blog posts with gorgeous pictures all of the time.  Maybe they don't sleep.

Simple Saturday

So the girls went on another ride where I was on the verge of freaking out as I watch my kids spinning around at warp speed.  Ok, maybe I played with the settings on my camera to make the ride look a smidge faster than it really was.  I don't recall the f-stop for this picture but it had the aperture set to 1/60.  I like playing with fast moving rides and the camera settings.  Would you believe both of the girls really liked this panic inducing ride?

When we went to the boardwalk Ellie was having a bit of a problem getting on rides for 48" and up at first.  So Madeline was a nice big sister and went on this exciting tug boat ride with her little sister.  Can you tell that Madeline felt a bit ridiculous on the kiddie ride?  Fortunately we were able to convince Ellie to stand tall when getting measured for all of the other rides and she was able to get on those 48" to ride attractions.

I'm still not sure I get the point of this hopping kangaroo ride, but the girls seem to have enjoyed it.  

I love this picture of Bryan and Katie walking along the path on our little beach walk.  I do miss living in my hometown and being able to go for walks on the beach whenever I feel like it.  Maybe someday we'll buy a summer house down there.

Visit House Unseen for more Simple Saturday posts.

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} Beach Blast

Celebrating the context of contentment in everyday life...

This past weekend Madeline's soccer team participated in a fun soccer tournament called Beach Blast on my hometown island of Wildwood.  

{Pretty}

On our way to our team's first game we walked the boardwalk with some of our friends.  One of the moms decided that we needed a picture of our pretty girls with the not so pretty soccer zombie ref.

On Saturday night Bryan and I took Katie for a walk on the beach.  She had a lot of fun running all over the place.  She doesn't seem to like having sand on her feet so she wouldn't let me take off her sandals.

{Happy}

While the big sisters played their soccer games the little sisters sat on the sidelines building sand castles. The girls had a lot of fun and I did my best not to think about the questionable materials of foam head wraps and bathing suit straps that Ellie found on the beach to use as sand castle decorations.

{Funny}

I'm not sure how Katie was comfortable sleeping like this.  Oddly enough we didn't realize that she was napping until we were ready to take her out of the stroller.  Not wanting to disturb her we abandoned our plans of not letting the stroller touch the sand.

{Real}

These are just a few of the pictures I have of Madeline in action on the soccer field.  Most of our pictures from the first game have the oh-so-classy port a potty area in the background.   And then when I got to the second game and pulled out my camera to take pictures I discovered that I left the battery in the charger back at the apartment where we were staying.  Arrgh!  I was really annoyed with myself.  On Sunday morning I made sure I had the battery and memory card in the camera before we left for the game.  I wasn't waking up super early for an 8am game and not getting pictures!

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Awwkwaaard!

Ever have those moments where you're the stand alone odd-ball?  I have them more often than I care to recall.  I guess it goes with the territory of being me.  Today I got treated to one of those moments early in the day.

After Mass two days a week our parish has two devotions that I'd say fall under the "optional" heading.  On Wednesday it's the Miraculous Medal novena and on Thursday it's the Litany of St. John Neumann.      On both of these days I leave the church right after we pray the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.  Ordinarily there's a handful of people who are also leaving when I leave so I don't feel awkward leaving.  Today, however, was different.  Somehow, at a daily Mass that was pretty well attended, I managed to be the lone person who opted to get up and leave.  Awwwwkwwaaaarrrd!  Nothing makes you second guess your practice of opting out of the optional quite like this!

Here's the thing, as a convert to Catholicism there are some things that just don't resonate with me the way that other things do.  Take the rosary for example.  I'm all for it.  I love it and it's one of the aspects of Catholicism that really drew me in like a tractor beam.  Novenas....not so much.  I honestly think I lack the attention span for them.  As much as I've tried to get into some different novenas they just don't click with me the way they seem to with others.  I suppose that's one of the awesome things about Catholicism.  There are so many different optional devotions from which you can pick and choose.  It's like a buffet of spirituality.

As I think about this morning's awkwardness I wonder if there was another aspect involved in everyone but me staying.  There was a relic of St. John Neumann on the altar.  Can you guess where I'm going with this?  Relics.  Yeah, you could say that I don't quite get relics either.  Actually, they really weird me out....particularly the ones that are body parts (1st class relics).  Want to make me uncomfortable?  Introduce me to the bone fragment, fingernail clippings or scab of a saint.  My thoughts don't run to the awestruck "This was a part of St. _________!"  No, instead my thoughts are more along the lines of "Why did someone save his scab?  Who does that?" or "Did they purposely dig up St._________ and hack off bits and pieces of his bones to distribute as relics?"  I'm ok with 2nd and 3rd class relics since they don't have that element of being macabre.  I should note that 1st class relics that are say in an altar stone don't bother me, it's more or less relics that are on display that make me uncomfortable.

So there you have it.  Put two devotional aspects together that just don't resonate well with me and you have the perfect formula for an induced bout of awkwardness.

What We're Reading Wednesday

Here's a new link up that's perfect for me since I seem to always be up to my eyeballs in books when I'm not attached to my laptop.

Since it's "What We're Reading Wednesday" and not what I'm reading, I'll give you the run down on what the girls are reading or trying to avoid reading, too.

I'm reading an advance copy of Lino Rulli's new book, Saint.  It's a funny book that picks up where his other book, Sinner leaves off.  This time, instead of detailing what a sinner he is, he's putting forth his case for why he should be canonized.  I'm throughly enjoying the book.  It's certainly one to add to your Amazon wish list.  You do have an Amazon wish list, don't you?  How else will you remember what you want to read?  Also, if you don't have an Amazon wish list people won't know what to buy you for your birthday or Christmas.  Having the list certainly helps cut down on creative gifts like crocheted toilet paper cozies.  I can tell you that I haven't gotten anything like that since I created a list ages ago.

Katie has been having me read the same two books to her over and over for the past several months.  She's in love with Tomie DePaola's The Clown of God and Pascual and the Kitchen Angels.   Can I tell you that I sobbed as I read The Clown of God to her the first few times.  I thought it was the book version of the movie Up! (Just thinking about that movie can make me cry.)  Anyway, now I'm desensitized to The Clown of God and can read the book without feeling like I need to stop and cry for poor Giovanni.  And when I pick up Pascual and the Kitchen Angels I find myself wondering how I can get God to send me a kitchen angel.  Katie loves both books so much that they're already quite worn after having them for less than 6 months.  I think I'm going to have to order new copies soon.

Last week the price on the Read Aloud Book of Bible Stories dropped down enough on Amazon for me to buy it.  I wanted it so I could read it to my religious ed students during our circle time.  Katie saw the book and kept bringing it to me so I figured I'd read her a story and see if she was interested in it despite there not being many pictures in it.  She liked the book enough to bring it to me four more times for another story.  She happily sits and listens to me read the stories.  I hope the kids in my class like it as much as she does.  I think the stories are nicely done.  I suspect Katie and I will take a couple of weeks to read the whole book since I have to read The Clown of God and Pascual and the Kitchen Angels between each story.  Have I mentioned that I read those two books a lot?  I really need to get hard bound copies of those titles.

Ellie has been reading The Lemonade War for her summer reading.  I started off by having her read the book to me since it was supposed to be at a higher grade level but she had no issues with reading the book so now she's reading it on her own.  She seems to be enjoying the story.  She's also been reading me the stories in the Devotional Stories for Little Folks, Too book.  I love these stories.  They always have such great lessons.

Madeline is doing her best to avoid reading her summer reading book for school.  Together we went over the list of approved books on the summer reading list and we chose The Crossing: How George Washington Saved the American Revolution.  I think the book is pretty dry.  Having read loads of history text books for fun in the past I think I can say with certainty that this is probably one of the least exciting history book I've ever paged through.

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Book Review: Bambinelli Sunday

Ok, before you look at your calendar and start scratching you head wondering why I'm writing a book review for a Christmas book in July, hear me out.  My eldest daughter has been playing Christmas music on her flute for the past three weeks and my middle daughter who also happens to be in the Christmas spirit has been singing Christmas carols.  Sometimes you just have to go with it.  This is one of those times.

The other day an advance copy of Bambinelli Sunday, Amy Welborn's new children's book, showed up in my mailbox.  We have other children's books written by her that I really like so I wasn't about to wait for a more seasonally appropriate time to read this book.  As the sounds of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing wafted through my house I paged through Bambinelli Sunday A Christmas Blessing and momentarily forgot that it was in the 80s outside.

Bambinelli Sunday is a sweet story of a little boy named Alessandro who is staying with his grandparents who have a shop on the Via San Gregorio Armeno in Naples where it is Christmas all the time.  As the story unfolds children learn not only about the lovely Italian Catholic tradition of Bambinelli Sunday (Gaudete Sunday) where the Holy Father blesses the children and baby Jesus figurines they bring to the Sunday Angelus, but also they learn about honesty, compassion and love through Alessandro's experiences.

The story is geared to children in the 7-10 year old age range, but I think this book would even appeal to slightly younger children, as well.  After reading through the book I decided that this book would be a perfect for my kindergarten religious education class.

The illustrations in this book are quite lovely.  They're water color paintings which is something that seems to capture the attention of my toddler.  My almost eight year old thought the illustrations were really nice and she liked the bright colors.

Bambinelli Sunday would be a sweet book to share with young children during Advent.  In our house we have several Advent and Christmas themed books that we read during Advent to help prepare our hearts and minds for the Christmas season.  This book will be a nice addition to our Advent picture books.

I was provided with a review copy of Bambinelli Sunday by the publisher, Franciscan Media, in exchange for my honest review.  You can preorder this lovely hardcover book or take a peek inside at Amazon.