Join Me in a Novena for Marriages!

M and I praying for our marriage on our wedding day. There are five married couples beyond us!

I am so excited to share this with everyone. I have been planning this and bursting with the desire to share it with you all! I am going to pray a novena for the sanctification of marriages, and I would like to pray it for specific marriages and would love for you to join me!

I have been writing a lot recently about holy families and holy marriages, taking much of my inspiration from the example of Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin. You can read about their holy life together here. They lived out their marriage beautifully, centering the family around prayer, and both living lives of heroic virtue. As I wrote my articles, I realized that most marriages do not have an ideal situation for becoming holy. It takes the desire and devotion of both spouses to create a holy marriage, and a marriage that does not embrace all the graces of the Sacrament is missing out.

I am inviting you (and your spouse if he or she desires) to join me and my husband in a novena to Bl. Louis and Zélie Martin (from the site "“Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin: The Parents of St. Therese of Lisieux” run by a very nice lady Maureen O'Riordan) leading up to their Feast day on July 12. The novena will begin in one week on Thursday, July 3 and end on Friday, July 11. On the 12^th itself, we will pray a litany to the holy couple. The novena itself has an imprimatur, so it is even Church approved!

If you would like to follow along with me in the novena, I will be posting reminders on this blog, Living With Lady Philosophy. You can sign up to receive emails with the reminders by following my blog by email in the left hand column, or follow the blog in a RSS feed. I will try to post the reminders to Facebook daily, but since we will be traveling, I cannot guarantee that.

Here you may also leave your intentions for your marriage or for someone else’s in the comments or you may email me your intention to livingwithladyphilosophy at gmail dot com (skip the spaces and use the actual punctuation), and I will add you to my list. If you wish to remain anonymous just give your first initials (ex. M&S) or your last initial (Mr. & Mrs. S) or even make up initials.

I am so excited to share this powerful novena with you my readers and to have this opportunity to pray for your marriages!

Birthdays and Jam for St. John the Baptist

John the Baptist (right) with child Jesus, painting by Bartolomé Esteban Perez Murillo.

Happy Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist!  The best thing about having a birthday today is that I get to share it with St. John the Baptist, and psalm at Mass is this:
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Psalms 139

O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me!

Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar.

Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!

 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

 even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,"

even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee.

For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well;

 my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.

Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.

O that thou wouldst slay the wicked, O God, and that men of blood would depart from me,

men who maliciously defy thee, who lift themselves up against thee for evil!

Do I not hate them that hate thee, O LORD? And do I not loathe them that rise up against thee?

I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!

And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

 It is some seriously beautiful stuff to meditate on on one's birthday. Because we share a birthday, I have always had a fondness for St. John the Baptist and have thought of him as a patron.
St. John the Baptist, pray for us!

For my birthday today, I asked M if he would take the morning off to can some strawberry jam. We went out to a u-pick berry farm after early Mass on Sunday and picked 28 1/4 pounds of strawberries in about 30 minutes. We did it just in time! As we finished filling our boxes, rain started, and by the time we got back to the car it was a torrential downpour.

L and I did the 12 1/4 lbs. M and G did the 16. Apparently, 5 year olds are better at picking than 3 year olds.

We crushed 14 quarts of whole strawberries and froze them on Sunday. On Monday we cut up, sugared, and froze 4 more quarts.

All the red bags are full of strawberries. Some of them have two quarts worth of crushed berries.

10 pint jars and 2 half pint jars.

Today we turned 6 of those quarts into 11.5 pints of jam. This sounds like a math problem. We only canned 11 pints of it, and the other half pint got put in the refrigerator for immediate eating. How many quarts are still in the freezer? How much jam did we make, but not can? How many sandwiches can you make with the canned jam if you use 1 tablespoon of jam on each sandwich? How much jam can we make with the crushed strawberries left in the freezer? And I am done...If you give me all the right answers before midnight tonight, you can come over and get a half pint of jam or join us for some PB&J sometime.

I decided to not have anyone bake me a cake since the one I wanted would probably take the whole day to make. Instead we bought it from a bakery, and are going to eat it after we go out for some Lebanese food for dinner:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup: "Our peanut graham cracker crust layered with dark chocolate French Silk and chunky peanut butter cup silk. Topped with whipped cream, peanut butter cups and roasted peanuts all drizzled with chocolate ganache and caramel."

The description is making me drool... and I am going to go and do my birthday run now so I can eat more pie...

Interview at Whole Parenting Family!

Welcome to any new readers visiting from Whole Parenting Family! Please take a look around and subscribe by email, in your RSS feeds, or "like" my blog on Facebook if you like what you see!
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My friend Nell, who goes to St. Agnes with me and blogs at Whole Parenting Family, sweetly asked me a couple of weeks ago me to allow her to feature my blog on her blog as a blog of faith with two other mom bloggers. (How many times can one fit 'blog' in one sentence?)

The interview questions and my answers are up on her blog today! It was a neat to think about why I blog and look back at the beginning of the blog and see how it has evolved. So, check out the interview and check out the other featured blogs!

Have a lovely day!

The Food Stuffs Growing in the Garden

I am sure you are all just dying to know what we are growing in our garden and how it is coming along. To relieve you of your desires I took some pictures and will explain.

 Here we have the new garden box. At the very top you see six red cabbage plants going to town making huge leaves, but no head yet. In the middle where it looks like nothing is growing are baby carrot and broccoli seedlings that I just planted two weeks ago. I know it was late, but I had not decided what to plant there yet. Hopefully, they will be ready to harvest by September. There is also three cucumber plants in a tomato cage, because that is how I decided to trellis them. At the bottom of the photo are my various lettuces and spinach. The spinach was mostly eaten by bugs, but the lettuce is thriving. We are going to be eating that a lot this week.

In this photo to the far left you see sugar snap pea plants climbing upward. There is no sign of actual peas, yet. I think I may have planted the seeds too late to get the fruit. In front of the trellises is a tiny blueberry bush, impulse bought by my husband. Then to the right of the bush we have oregano, two basil plants, parsley, and with the stakes are four sweet pepper plants. You can also see our cherry tomato plant.

From left to right in the tomato cages are a grape and yellow pear tomato plant, four roma tomato plants, and at the far right is a blue hubbard squash plant. You might remember my blue hubbard adventure from two autumns ago. That is the garden so far! We are hoping for an abundant harvest starting in August, and hopefully some peas before it gets too hot!

Seven Quick Takes: Friday, June 20

1. It was 97% humidity here when we woke up this morning. It was like breathing water. I am not sure how the weather manages to do that without us all being in a cloud. M said it felt like he had spiderwebs all over his skin. Things dried up as it warmed up, but at least it wasn't that humid and 90 out like a certain city is all summer long. Tomorrow is the first day of summer...woohoo! It is time to soak in summer while we can, and get a good dose of heat and humidity before the six months of dry and cold.

2. I took G(5) and L(3) for haircuts today, and the stylists could not get over how cute L was. I mean all the kids are really cute, but L just has that extra cute personality that get to you and then you can't stand how cute she is. It must be something like the charm that the Flyte family has in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. You simply cannot resist it. Her teenage swimming instructor kept on shooting me "your daughter is so cute" glances at the pool this morning. We are lucky that no one has thought she was so cute that they had to eat her up, you know.

3. M has decided that it is really important to make sure that our children do not fit into society at all, even when they grow up. The thing is, I never really felt like I fit into mainstream society, nor do I think I ever could. When I venture places like the hair salon, I can manage small talk about kids, but, nope, I am not really normal. When the stylist asked L about what she wanted her hair cut to be like L responded,

"I want to grow my hair all the way down to my feet!"
The stylist smiled and replied, "Oh, like the girl in Tangled."
L gave her a blank stare.
I chimed in, "How about like Rapunzel. Do you want hair like hers?"
L then smiled and said, "Yeah! Like her! We read about her in a book!"
Yep, we are a little different, aren't we?

4. M has been doing a little a lot more child watching since his break began, and F (19 months) is getting pretty used to him working while watching her. He came up from his study just before dinner the other night, and she had been whining at my feet in the kitchen. When he offered to help, I asked if he could watch F. He asked her what she wanted to do, and she led him down the stairs and into his study. She pointed at his chair and demanded, "Sit down!" Then she pointed at his books on his desks and said, "Do that!"

5. We are starting to get a harvest from our garden this week! I made our first pesto pasta of the season, and am so glad that I planted two basil plants this year. It is nice to be able to make pesto this early in the summer without using the whole plant! We also have been harvesting our lettuces. I read on some random website that you can do a later summer planting and Fall harvest of lettuce. Is this true for Minnesota?

6. I have been working through a couple of things parenting-wise this week. The first is how to deal with screaming children who want to argue whenever I say 'no.' I am learning to be more firm in my 'no' and not debate out the issue. I really do not want to be having arguments with a five year old about things she has no authority over. The second is gently encouraging less daytime nursing with F. She often asks when she is just hungry or thirsty. I have been offering foods and then informing her of when the next time she will nurse (which is usually naptime or bedtime).

7. And there was something I was going to write that I even told M yesterday about, and neither of us can remember. So, if we remember I will update this... if not... here is a really quick take. Take it or leave it...

Linking up to Seven Quick Takes Friday hosted this week by Kathryn.

Eight Ways to Build Unity in Marriage

Photo by my father.

My parents very concrete suggestions:

1) Cook what your husband likes to eat.
2) On eating what your wife cooks: Give it your best shot.
3) You can only change yourself.
4) If giving each other haircuts causes problems, then just don't do it.
5) Watch out for "modern rest areas" that are actually casinos.
6) Know the right time for talking.
7) Bring enough frozen custard from St. Louis for everyone.
8) Get the help your marriage needs...

For my more detailed and not quite the same suggestions, head on over to Truth and Charity...

A June Wednesday

Planning ahead...
So, we are going on one of our family road trips at the end of month, and M has decided that I am going to take a vacation from my blogging as well. I could see myself seizing the extra free time with other adults around and writing more, but he thinks we should just relax and read Michael O'Brien novels. I am totally up for that, but I am a little sad to set my writing aside for a few weeks. (I am also sad that we are not vacationing with college friends Up North again this summer.) Maybe it will help me come up with more good ideas to take a break. I always seem to have a hard time writing when I stop for awhile, but maybe I really just need a good vacation.

The only thing I do not look forward to on vacation is sleeping, because I know that the kids will not sleep as well as they do at home, and therefore I will be tired. We are going to see how F does in a room with her sisters and us since night weaning (and sleeping through the night for the past month). I imagine she will do better than we ever expected.

Food for the Winter...
I am praying that the strawberries at our favorite picking place are ready by my birthday next week. I want to pick 30 lbs this year and can about 50% more jam than we made last year. We just ran out mid-May from last summer and I am hoping to make it through the year with some to spare and more to giveaway. I love the taste of my homemade jam in my homemade yogurt for breakfast or a snack.

Living today...
M had a conference on campus to go to this evening, and he was hoping to meet one of our old professors from Franciscan University for lunch. This plan fell through because of flight delays, but M has been gone since this morning. I managed lunch, nap, dinner, and bedtime alone, which I really loath doing, but I did it! And L only came out twice!

This morning L (3.5)  had her first ever "class" with an adult instructor who was not me. She had been on the waiting list for swim lessons and got in after the first two of eight classes. She was so excited to be like her sister and even listened to the instructor. It was so sweet to see her big smile and excitement as she followed instructions. It is less frightening to have a second child do these things than a first.

Growing children...
G had her second vacation Bible school last week, and she is so much more mature than she was last year! It is really neat to see how much more mature she is than she was a year ago. Even with her reading lessons which we started last September, she is doing so much better with. It is like she reached a level of intellectual maturity that she had not been at before.

Wrapping it up...

Since M is still out at his conference dinner and talk, I am making myself a lime daiquiri. The only catch is that I had to make the simple syrup as well, and it has to chill. So, while it is chilling I am chillin' at the blog. I last made a daiquiri when M was off interviewing for jobs when L was 15 months old. It may have even been an evening when he was on the very same campus that he is on tonight. It is he same bottle of rum, since M does not drink rum. He prefers scotch or gin. When the few ounces that are left in the bottle are gone, I will have to ask: why is the rum gone?

My new food processor is totally photo-bombing here. It is upset that I have not yet featured it photographically on the blog.

Seven Quick Takes on Anniversaries and Fathers

1. It is not too late to write my quick takes! We had a busy, fun week. My parents came up for a visit, which is pretty incredible in itself considering that my dad just had a major surgery after the most catastrophic thing a body can do to itself (aortal dissection). Most people do not even make it into surgery, let alone out of it... We are so thankful that we have however many more months and years with him on Earth, and I will cherish every moment that I get with him.

2. Friday, the 13th was my parents 34th wedding anniversary. M took this lovely shot of them while I was following F (19 months) down the path and keeping her our of streets.

Dad is still tired a lot, and we wonder if he will ever have the same energy that he had before, but then I know that this recovery cannot be rushed.

3. This has definitely been a very trying year for my mom and dad. Dad has been looking for a regular position since he lost what was his dream job when the website he worked for got shut down. Then he had his surgery. My mother has been tirelessly taking care of his health needs, working her job as a nurse, and starting up her prayer ministry for priests. She is truly and amazing woman, and we are all blessed by her in our lives. I pray that God blesses their marriage abundantly in the next year and beyond, and that Dad finds a new dream job for his last years of working.

4. M and I took our anniversary date on Tuesday (READ: FREE BABYSITTING), even though our six year anniversary was not until yesterday. We went to a Russian restaurant in St. Paul, and discovered that dill is a major Russian spice. M got his favorite martini with horseradish infused vodka and I went for a girly coconut-citrus flavored one.

My chicken kiev came with this little crown and dill garnish.

These chocolate truffles and butterfly cookie were soooo worth the price.

"Susanna, put away your embarrassing phone!" Yep, everyone else had a smart one. Hey, look, the moon!

Afterwards, we headed over to the St. Paul Saints baseball game, and watched a crushing, come from behind defeat. It was a lot of fun, and we are planning on taking the kids with us to a day game later this summer. 

5. Our actual anniversary day, we celebrated by sleeping in until 7, letting my mom take the big kids to Mass while we ate a leisurely breakfast, doing chores. M cleaned out the garage and vacuumed out my van. We made a dinner of broiled kabobs (too rainy to grill) and the driest wine Trader Joe's stocks.

6. Happy Father's Day to my amazing husband, who does things like wash dishes and put kids down for naps, even though it is Father's Day. He is even going to cook dinner on the grill tonight, during which we plan to leave him alone with his thoughts and his beer. Thank you dear for everything you do!

7. Last one, if you want to read something less academic by M, read him over on Public Discourse where he explains that "taking philosophy and theology as the foundation of our knowledge elevates and unifies scientific and humanistic inquiry."

Postpartum Depression: It Happens

Heart to hearts with friends help a lot, too.

 After F was born it went on for about a month before my husband and I realized something was wrong. I had been doing so well with things: happy and managing the kids and home, and then I was not. It crept up on me, and I was unhappy, overwhelmed, and unable to do more than the minimal effort. The hardest thing was admitting that I did indeed need help, and then admitting it to the receptionist at the doctor's office on the telephone. I left the message that I thought I had postpartum depression (PPD), and I got an immediate call to come in. With tears in my eyes, resigning myself to the situation, I drove in with the three kids. When I got there, they said that they were going to treat my symptoms with progesterone and that I would notice a difference within hours. It was like night and day. But I noticed bad habits that I had let myself get into over the month of feeling awful that I had to work through. I made it past it that time, but not without seeking the help I needed. I do not know how long it would have lasted, had I not gotten help.

This time we noticed my problems were more than just average "mom tiredness" within days of the first symptoms. After losing the baby, it was natural for me to be tired and sad, but I was managing things and sleeping well. Then M and I had a conversation during which I ended up in tears. I was feeling overwhelmed by everyday scenarios with the children, such as making them lunch. I was having a lot of trouble falling asleep at night. It took me about a half an hour to admit that I needed help. I had had a creeping realization for a couple of days, mentioned it to M on the way to Mass one morning, and his agreement sent my emotions spiraling all through Mass until I made that decision to call the doctor. I went in and again received an injection of progesterone (which, by the way, I am pretty sure I am addicted to...). More progesterone, and again I had an immediate difference in how I felt. This time I had not had enough time to develop bad habits beyond sitting in tears, overwhelmed by my children's needs.

So, my point here is not to tell you all about my woes of PPD, but to spread that thing called "awareness", which does nothing in itself. If others and mothers are aware, then maybe someone reading this somewhere can realize that she needs some help. And get that help, which can be as simple as a quick injection and some progesterone pills. PPD does not always mean going on an antidepressant for as long as those normally last, but just getting the right hormonal balance.

Thank you again for your continued prayers.

Recipe: Really Thick Greek Yogurt in a Crockpot

I have been making this yogurt since we lived in Buffalo, NY. I think I started when G was one, so maybe four years now. It saves money and is so much fresher tasting then store bought yogurt! After many different ways of straining and flavoring I have finally perfected my yogurt recipe/process. It is really about timing and waiting.
 
I start off around 4 pm with 8 cups of whole milk in my 6 quart crockpot slow cooker. I turn it on low and set a timer for two and a half hours. When the timer goes off, I simply turn off (and unplug for good measure) the crockpot, take my starter of a 6 oz plain Fage Greek yogurt out of the refrigerator, and set the timer for three more hours.


At 9:30 pm, I put the starter yogurt in a two cup measure and ladle a few scoops of warm milk in with the yogurt. After I "introduce" those live and active cultures to the milk and pour them all into the crockpot and wrap the whole thing up in two super warm blankets and put it in a cozy warm corner of the kitchen counter.

In the morning (around 7:30-8:30 am), I unwrap the crockpot, lay about 5 paper towels on top of the nice brand new yogurt, and put the whole thing in the refrigerator for the next 24 hours.

The next morning, I remove all the excess liquid that has been soaked into the paper towels and voila: 2 quarts of think, creamy, Greek yogurt.

Thick Greek Yogurt:
8 cups whole milk
6 oz. plain store bought Greek yogurt

-Put milk in Crockpot on low for 2.5 hours. SET A TIMER!
-When 2.5 hours are over turn Crockpot off, take starter out of refrigerator, and set another timer for 3 hours.
-When three hours are over, mix starter and 1 cup of hot milk from Crockpot together and stir it all into Crockpot of milk. Wrap in lots of blankets and keep it away from drafts. Let it sit overnight.
-In morning place about 5 paper towels on top of yogurt covering the whole surface and put in refrigerator.
-In 24 hours, remove paper towels and put yogurt in storage containers.

I like to serve the yogurt with a teaspoon of homemade jam. We also serve it with falafel or fajitas as a substitute for sour cream. :)

Notes: Some Facebook commenters have suggested to ways of thickening the yogurt without "straining".
1) Add two tablespoons of gelatin in with the starter.
or
2) Adding 1/3 c. dry milk powder at the beginning.

Seven Quick Takes: Saturday, June 7

1. Friday is not my day for writing quick takes. We had a play date in the morning, which involved 14 children of philosophers. It was pretty intense, and for awhile there was a mob of three 3 year old and three five year old girls doing whatever little girls do in mobs. At one point they were comparing mosquito bites.

2. Congratulations to my husband for getting another article accepted into a peer reviewed journal! This will go towards the four he is supposed to have before going up for tenure, and is his tenth in his professional career. For those of you not familiar with the field, journal articles are hard to get published and take months of research and writing. This is a Big Deal!

Not a black bear, but young brown bears that once lived in the Buffalo Zoo.

3. So, a black bear was fatally shot about a mile from our house early this morning. It is kind of crazy. I guess I should be watching out for bears when the kids play in the backyard? When we were closing on our house the seller's realtor told us a bunch of stories about people who live in our "city", and he claimed to have grown up with a bunch of the police force. If they are anything like him when it comes to fishing and hunting, then I can say that I am confidant that the West St. Paul police can hunt down any bear that comes into our neighborhood. These police are real Minnesotans!

4. Speaking of Minnesotans, when I was at the optometrist's yesterday, I heard a saleslady and a customer discussing the weather:

Saleslady: "How is it out there?"
Customer: "Oh, it's toasty."
Saleslady: "Oh, that is great! Don't you just love it!"
Customer: "Sure do!"

When you live in Minnesota, it is best to embrace all weather to the fullest.

5. And since we are on the topic of weather, I have been trying to decided which things are worse:

Bundling children in snowsuits or in swimsuits and sunscreen?
Grocery shopping in a blizzard or grocery shopping in pouring rain?
Staying inside with hot tea or bug bites?

6. I went to a lovely concert on Thursday night called Harmony in the Park with two lady friends. We left our children at home and had a lovely evening on a blanket drinking wine and eating cheese, strawberries, and chocolate. It was great, and M is so awesome that he was okay with me leaving at 6pm and taking care of dishes, the childrens' baths, and bedtime for all three alone.

7. If you were wondering how my dad is doing these days, I can tell you that he is well enough to visit us for a week with my mom. They are driving up tomorrow from St. Louis (and hopefullly with some Ted Drewes Frozen Custard in a cooler). I am excited to see them. Please keep my father in your prayers, since he is still slowly recovering and has nerve damage in his left hand. Some good news is that he is now allowed to drive, which was an issue with the narcotics he had been on since his surgery.

Linking up once again with Jen at Conversion Diary!

Seven Reasons Everyone Should Read C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy

1. Space

2. Aliens

3. Bad guys

4. Space Travel

5. Good guys

6. Space Aliens

7. C.S. Lewis

But seriously, head on over to ChurchPOP if these reasons are not good enough...

Seven Late Takes: Sunday, June 1

1. Happy June 1! June is pretty much the best month in the calendar year. We get my birthday and our wedding anniversary. So, you can't do much better than that.

2. Am I being way to hopeful about the possibility of a curly haired child? 

It was hard to get a non-blurry shot.

 With these warm humid days we have been getting lately, I am really starting to suspect.

Here she is putting clean tissues in the trash.

 Is this a normal way for curly hair to appear. Her hair is much coarser, thicker, and darker than her sisters with dirty blonde, straight, silky hair.

3.  We bought a tree this week, and planted it in the front yard with the help of M's farmer boy cousins who were in "the cities" from rural Wisconsin for the Catholic home school conference. I am hoping that it will one day shade our front window.

It is a snowdrift crabapple, which means it has white blossoms in the spring and red-orange fruit on the tree all winter. This means we are going to have a color besides white and dirty white outside our front window all winter long. Hooray!

4. Speaking of the home school conference. The boys babysat our girls for us while M and I went to the conference and looked at curriculum ideas. I am feeling pretty peaceful about what we decided on for the kindergarten/first grade level G is going to be at next year. The way I chose what I liked was purely based on whether or not I felt overwhelmed browsing through each book. When I looked at a book and I thought, "I can do this! This will make home school doable!", then I knew it was a good choice. Not sure if that is the best way, but it is a start.

5. We had a lot of fun playing games with the cousins this weekend; and I even exerted my prowess over the eldest of our cousins by defeating him in Settlers of Catan after losing to him in our first game. They are really into board and card games, so that is about all we did with them when the children were asleep. That is why my Quick Takes are so late. I was playing games...

6. We have a nice Catholic family down the street from us of a school music teacher and three adopted boys, ages 6, 3, and 1. We have been seeing them a lot more since the kids have all been playing outside. Yesterday they invited us over for a May Crowning of their illuminated statue of Our Lady, which was situated in front of three bales of hay and surrounded by Christmas lights. Our kids were already in the bath, so we had to decline. This morning, when we arrived home from Mass, there was a fire truck in front of our neighbors house and the hay bales were blackened and smoking. It turned out to be an electrical fire. The cool thing was that Mary came out of it intact with just a little brown on the back of her head.

7. Oh, and M is finally on Summer break with grades submitted. This does not mean that he is going to play stay-at-home dad until September. It means that I have to try really hard to not bother him all day while he works in his study doing research and writing papers. We do have couple of vacations planned and some visits with family here, but otherwise he will be working away. It is nice though that I can run errands during nap/quiet time or do some exercise without worrying about kids needing me.

And that is it for Quick Takes! Linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary.