Monday, August 31, 2009

St. Peter, pray for us!

Our day was filled with physical science, american history, catholcism, biology, algebra, pre-algebra, general science, nouns and verbs, spelling, writing, reading, phonics, counting, and play dough! (oh, and of course, the ice cream we had before bed as a thank you for a job well done!) Can you guess what we did today?? One day down.... more than 100 left to go! I am proud of the effort my children put forth today! Today's schedule is complete (except for a couple math pages I still need to correct!) and I actually heard a few laughs while they were busy working away! I think we are off to a good start with our school year!

You may wonder why I invoked the prayers of St. Peter. Well, he is the patron of our school. A few years into this homeschool endeavor, Paul and I decided we should name our school. I asked Paul if he would pray about it and name our school himself. All I asked was that he would tell me why the name was so chosen. One day after some time in adoration, Paul came home to tell me he had the name for our school. It would be St. Peter's Catholic Home School. Paul went on to explain that since our desire in home educating our children is to give them a firm foundation in the faith first and for most, what better patron than St. Peter; the very foundation on which Christ chose to build His Church. I had to agree!

Our daily morning prayer:

O Holy Apostle, because you are the Rock upon which Almighty God has built His Church, obtain for me I pray you: lively faith, firm hope, and burning love, complete detachment from myself, contempt of the world, patience in adversity, humility in prosperity, recollection in prayer, purity of heart, a right intention in all my works, diligence in fulfilling the duties of my state in life, constancy in my resolutions, resignation to the will of God and perseverance in the grace of God even unto death; that so, by means of your intercession and your glorious merits, I may be made worthy to appear before the Chief and Eternal Shepherd of Souls, Jesus Christ, Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns forever. Amen

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Sweet Sorrow


Sweet: the many wonderful memories of almost 16 years spent married to the man of my dreams.

Sweet: the hugs and kisses given me today by the 5 beautiful children my marriage blessed me with.

Sweet: the time spent today praying in front of the Tabernacle.

Sweet: the friends with whom I will spend some time laughing this evening.

Sorrow: the absence of his physical presence here with me to celebrate what would have been our 17th anniversary.

Loving you today, Paul, and always. Thankful for all the blessings that our marriage gave to my life!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Sunday Afternoon Tea

I was invited to tea today. I brought dessert! We had a splendid little visit!


Tuesday, August 18, 2009

A visit with the MI "cousins"

A trip to Michigan had to include sometime visiting with Kari's brother's family. Their family became our family when Dave and Kari were married. Our kids have just considered each other cousins ever since. Kevin and Bridget's family are a great family to be "related" to and the kids always enjoy spending time together.




Being impulsive can be fun!

I'm not quite sure what got into me; but, last Monday I just decided to call my brother-in-law and his wife and see if they were up for a visit! An impromptu visit to family... not usually a big deal, right? Well it is when they live 4 states away and you decide to pack up 6 people and a dog on the spur of the moment! When I called on Monday evening, Dave and Kari happened to be driving home from a long weekend vacation themselves. Still, Kari answered the phone with "Hello, so are you planning a trip out?" My reply, "Well, actually, the reason I called was... what if we showed up at your house on Wednesday?" All she said was, "start packing!!!" I even had to ask if she wanted to run it by David first. "oh, I'll just let him know you're coming, just get packing and start driving!" So, pack we did! We had a few things scheduled for Tuesday morning so I knew we wouldn't be able to leave MN until mid-afternoon. I planned to drive to the Chicago area and find a place to sleep for the night and finish the drive on Wed. This worked out perfectly.

We arrived Wednesday, a couple of hours before Dave and Kari arrived home from work. This gave us a chance to rest up a little before the fun began. We had a nice visit Wednesday evening, the kids all got reacquainted, and we settled in for a few days!

Thursday we headed for the park. The playground was built to resemble a castle with plenty of towers to climb and tunnels to crawl through.

James and Madison struck quite a pose. Can you guess which playwright's story they have thoroughly enjoyed this past school year?

Myriah has always been the first one to start climbing, so it didn't take her long to find the highest stop and climb on up. It provided a great place for a group photo.
Here is Magdalene with my sweet little nephew Will.



Lawrence had a lot of fun climbing and crawling.



It was a very hot day and it wasn't long before we all gravitated to a near by creek to cool down.






The creek proved to be a great spot to take some nice photos. We were able to get a great family picture.





I was also able to capture quite a bit of Will's personality as he splashed in the water. You can see more over at Will Wonders.

To be continued......

Monday, August 10, 2009

3rd Annual MN Bloggers Tea

This past Saturday I had a great opportunity to meet some fellow MN bloggers IRL (in real life.) Even though this was the third Tea, this was the first year I was able to join them; and I'm so very glad I did.





We had such a lovely time drinking tea, eating lunch, and of course, snapping pictures (after all, we needed pictures for blogging, what kind of bloggers would we be if we didn't plan to blog our tea?) We shared stories of our faith, our families, and our home schooling; our joys, our successes, and even our struggles.


Starting clockwise from me we have:

Meredith (a very dear friend IRL for the past few years) Heavenly Perspective

Sarah (who won the door prize for the farthest traveled) With A Hopeful Heart

Jamie (a very pregnant mamma) Lord, Make Me A Saint

Josefa (who brought her sweet little guy for us all to enjoy and who won a beautiful rosary made by Tracy's husband) My Farm and Home

Margaret (who has a great post up of our tea on her blog) Minnesota Mom

Tracy (our wonderful hostess whom I "met" through her blog last year after sending her an email when I saw her wedding picture she posted and noticed I went to high school with her husband) Pinewood Castle

Tracy, thank you for organizing a wonderful tea. Ladies, it was such a pleasure meeting you all and I am looking forward to next year's get together. Hopefully, we will not have to wait a full year for our paths to cross again. It is always such a blessing to be able to spend time with women whose company you enjoy and, as Margaret worded so well, "whose hearts & minds are in accord with your own."

Vacation Bible School

VBS is always such a busy week. But we always have fun as well!! Here are some random shots.

These first 4 shots are of the kids performance piece at the pie and ice cream social Thursday evening. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the videos to post. When I have some time, I'll see what I can do to get them on the blog. They all did a great job!