Patchwork Prism Quilt made with Lotta Jansdotter’s Echo line.
Patchwork Prism Quilt
Reply
The First’s First
Before Mass.
Before Mass with the Blessed Mother.
After Mass in the Chapel.
After Mass with Jesus.
The whole family!
Liam and his Godparents!
The First Communicant!!
Liam’s support crew!
The silly side of Liam’s support crew. I’m so sad I made it blurry!! Maybe I was giggling too much?
There aren’t words to express how proud I am and how happy I am!! Liam, the leader of the pack, did the most important thing he will ever do in his life, today…and he handled it like a pro!
After a year of preparation (well, 8 years really), he had his First Holy Communion! It was really amazing seeing him and all the other little ones receive the body and blood of Christ!
Next up…Jack! And maybe I’ll remember to take pictures of Jack’s party as I forgot for Liam’s!
St. Gemma and Blessed Imelda, pray for us!
The best blog ever!
Jack, the almost 7 year old, just started his own blog. Well, he asked me to make a website to share all the books he writes. And oh are they sweet!! I’ve put two books on his site so far, and I’ll try to update every Monday. That kid has story telling talent!
So visit Swell Kids’ Books and tell Jack what you think about his work!
Let them eat more cake!
I haven’t updated cakes in a while and we have a lot of birthdays around here! Oddly enough, the search term I get the most on this blog is “Diesel 10 cake.” Who knew Diesel 10 is still popular?! Well, there aren’t any trains in these cakes, but here you go…
First is Matilda’s 5th birthday cake. Mo Willems is huge in this house. We just can’t get enough of the Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny and the rest of the gang. So I thought it would be fun to make and Elephant and Piggie cake with the Pigeon making an appearance of course! I simply made a sheet cake then “drew” the picture on the white icing with a butter knife. I then colored it in using various icing tips.
Next up is Grover. Grover is Matthew’s absolute favorite! The look on Matthew’s face was priceless when he saw this Grover cake. This has to be one of the easiest cakes I’ve made so far with the exception of Hello Kitty cake. The kids don’t even ask for gifts for their birthdays anymore…they just ask for cakes! Win!
This isn’t a cake, but since we’re doing birthdays around here, our Athena just turned 1. She weighs in at over 100lbs, but as you can see, she still thinks she’s a tiny puppy. This was her pounce ready stance as she was trying to attack the water coming from the hose.
eating at bag end, flying a space shuttle and pirate ship, and losing teeth
Hobbit Cafe
I love reading the book Gooney Bird Greene to the kids. We always giggle at Gooney Bird very confidently saying things like she “went to China on a flying carpet.” Then we have a fun time trying to guess how her tale will unfold since she always tells the truth.
Sometimes we get a chance to make our own sort of Gooney Bird Greene story. Such was the case on the first windy weekend in March. We decided to eat at Bag End (technically the Hobbit Hole Cafe) then top that off by flying a space shuttle and a pirate ship.
OK, so our kites didn’t get too high off the ground. The trees were blocking the good wind. Our intention was to go to the top of the hill at Miller Outdoor Theater, but it was closed for repair. bummer The park across the street was wonderful anyway.
And on losing teeth (which has nothing to do with the rest of the post but I’ll put it here anyway since it’s my blog and I can do what I want!)…we don’t do the tooth fairy around these parts. The kids don’t shy away from asking me to leave goodies in place of their lost teeth though. So I came up with a little educational teething activity. I printed out a simple teeth chart on cardstock so that the kids can cross out each tooth they lose. I folded the bottom bit up so I have a little place to place the loot. It’s been a big hit!
My thoughts on the conclave
Yes, I know I’m just a lay person, but our house has been abuzz with talk about the upcoming conclave. This is the 3rd papal election of my life. I was 6 months old when Blessed John Paul II was elected. He remained pope until I was 27 years old. There will always be a special place in my heart for John Paul the Great. It was with a bittersweet heart that I said good-bye to him.
Then came Benedict XVI. I, like everyone else, was stunned when he announced he was stepping down. I will certainly miss seeing his loving face. Perhaps this will finally get me to tackle his Jesus of Nazareth series.
My thoughts about the conclave (I’m writing this on Sunday and publishing on Tuesday. So let’s see if I’m even close!)…I know that the Holy Spirit will lead the cardinals to choose the best for the job, but it’s still really fun to try to guess who it will be! So here are my top picks (please excuse the wikipedia links, but it’s late and I’m tired and wiki is easy): Cardinal Arinze. Yes, I know it’s unlikely since he’s 80, but I can hope!,
Cardinal Dolan. I may be a bit biased because he’s American, but I think he’s a great leader and communicator.
Cardinal Ouellet Yes, another North American. Canadian even!
The husbands pick: Cardinal Burke
Some other fun conclave things:
Pope Alarm I don’t really watch tv nor do I have time to be on the internet all day. So Pope Alarm will come in handy! Plus I laughed really hard at “When the smoke goes up, you’ll know what’s going down!”
Adopt a Cardinal. When you sign up, you get assigned a random Cardinal to pray for before, during and after the conclave. I was assigned Francesco Coccopalmerio.
And here’s a very informative post by Jimmy Akin about voting in the conclave.
Finally, a couple of videos that still bring me chills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K_iBXbE3UI
one
Our littlest turned 1. 1 is a small number, but being the smallest, he gets the biggest number of kisses and hugs each day. The older 4 can’t go 5 minutes without loving on this little cutie. Happy birthday wee Max. We love you!
