More Wishful Thinking

The Mom-imposed rule in our house is "no video games on school days until After Dinner." This presumes that homework is done Before Dinner.

Little Brother is honing his creativity by trying to find ways around this rule. Here's today's gem:

"Mommy, since we have a new principal at school, I can play video games Before Dinner."

Mean Mommy didn't fall for it.

What Kind of Reader Are You?

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Book Snob
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

I love the last question about the bookshelves: my floor probably IS sagging from the weight.

Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

Father Altier's homily on Saint Luke really hits home with me. As a parent, this is what I want to teach my children to do. This is the kind of example I hope I am setting for them, even in little ways.

Our part, then, is to learn from the disciples of the Lord because we are His disciples today, and we have to learn what He did with them and we have to learn to do what they did. The Lord sent them out as sheep among wolves. That is certainly the case today for anyone who wants to bring the Gospel into this world. Even with that, we need to continue to bring the Gospel message to as many people as we can and to have the courage to stand alone because we know that what we are preaching is truth.

Via ukok.

What's for Dinner?

I made soup without a recipe tonight and it was fabulous!

I wrote down the recipe so I won't forget what I did. Here it is: Scarborough Fair Chicken Soup. Had to name it after the seasonings I added! (And I will freely admit adding sage, which I wouldn't have done, just so all the seasonings in the song were named. Yes, I'm weird like that.)

Soup with some simple dinner rolls made a delicious, easy dinner.

Wishful Thinking

Little Brother was eating a bowl of cereal and grooving to a Veggie Tales CD while I packed his lunch this morning. I don't usually encourage dancing while chewing, but it was entertaining, so I let it go.

When I asked him if he wanted some "Goldfish" crackers for a snack, he didn't even stop dancing. He just pointed into his cereal bowl.

(For the record, the crackers went into the lunchbox.)

How Cool Is This?

What a wonderful prolife effort at my alma mater:

At-risk moms find 'BFFs' at Notre Dame

In my Very Part-Time Work as a homebound tutor, I have had the opportunity to work with at least five girls who gave birth as high school students and kept their babies. They had varying degrees of family support. I know that there was more going on during some of those tutoring sessions than discussions of Shakespeare, geometry, and history. One young mom in particular would ask me all kinds of questions about baby care, breastfeeding, and her own recovery-from-childbirth process. Every once in a while I run into her. The little baby who spat up all over me while her mom took a test on Othello is now about 9 years old. Her mom and dad eventually married and she has a little brother. I hope that in the weeks I spent tutoring her mom, I helped to make an impact that was more than academic.

If they had one of those 'BFF' programs around here, I'd join. Young women who choose to keep their babies rather than abort them need support that goes beyond those first few weeks.

Check It Out!

Lindsey announces the new edition of Escape Adulthood magazine, themed "Finding Balance." You can download a free PDF here. Among the articles are a very good one called "Balancing Act" and Lindsey's take on the "to-do list."
The download is free and the articles are definitely worth a read. Enjoy!
One excellent line in the "Balancing Act" article: "say no to the good in order to say yes to the great." Chew on THAT for a while and see where it leads you!

Holiness, Little Brother Style

Little Brother has yet to learn the virtue of moderation when it comes to holy water. Apparently he believes that in this case, more is always better.
Yesterday on our way out of church, I watched him dunk his whole hand into the holy-water font and then run it over his hair on the way to his forehead before continuing with the sign of the cross. His head was really wet, and so was his shirt. (Big Brother thought this was really funny.)
Being a little boy with a conveniently-located head, he finds himself in the position to have his head rubbed a lot. It’s much nicer after a fresh haircut, but TheDad and I like to rub his head anytime. He likes it too. After dinner tonight, he was hanging around my chair and I rubbed his head for a second until I noticed something a little damp in his hair.
“Do I want to know what’s in his hair?” I asked.
Big Brother answered, “It’s probably holy water.”

Too Much Fun In Her Weekend

All play and no sleep makes Middle Sister miserable on Monday.

She had a busy weekend! Friday evening she and her BFF went to a dance for middle-schoolers that is held at Big Brother's high school. Then they had an "awake-over" at BFF's house.

I picked her up late Saturday afternoon and when we got home, TheDad told Middle Sister that another friend had called. She was being invited to attend a Halloween festival in a nearby town, and to sleep over afterward.

I discourage Saturday-night sleepovers and as a rule don't permit back-to-back overnights either. We've discovered that these things come back to bite Middle Sister in the immune system, and that usually on Tuesday morning she is not feeling well, has a mild sore throat, sometimes even a low fever, and winds up absent from school.

But it was a "special occasion" so I was convinced to let her go. Sunday we picked her up at 9:15 for Mass, then changed our clothes and headed for the 125-mile-each-way trip to visit my parents.

She spent most of the day snoozing on my parents' living-room couch. She slept all the way there and all the way home. And this morning she did not feel well. The only surprise there is that today is Monday, not Tuesday.

I made sure she ate breakfast, gave her ibuprofen, and sent her to school. She knew I'd be in the building this morning for my weekly library time. I was actually surprised that I wasn't called to come and get her during that time. And then I headed home, only to hear the cell phone ring as I waited for a red light to change. Pulling into a nearby parking lot, I told the school nurse that I'd turn right around to come and get my daughter.

Now she and a drink and a blanket are parked on the couch. There's going to be a Really Early Bedtime tonight. I'm sure that in the morning she'll be good as new.

But when your kid's this miserable, you don't even enjoy being able to gloat.

What Kind of Candy Are You?

Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

Very popular, one of you is not enough.

What Kind of Candy Are You?

Wonder if I could tweak my results to make it turn out that I am a Milky Way (my favorite candy EVER).

Via Jean at Catholic Fire.

Spelling Success!

Little Brother has finally learned to spell our last name.

It's not an easy name. It kind of looks like what happens when you are touch-typing and your fingers stray off the "home keys" so everything is a little, well, off.

Last week he could only spell half of it, so I was very impressed when he rattled the whole thing off.

"Wow," I said. "Have you been practicing that in school?"

His answer: "No. I learned it off my lunchbox. Thanks, Mom, for writing it on my lunchbox!" He was so proud of himself, and as he usually does when he's happy about something, he gave me Extra Hugs and Kisses.

I guess all that time he spends sitting on the school bus every day has paid off. I wonder if they make dry-erase lunchboxes? I could write Middle Sister's spelling words on there every week. Hmmmmmm.....

Just Because It's Legal Doesn't Make it Right

And it doesn't make it safe, either.

Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper. Today's story on abortion is clearly and completely slanted in favor of the procedure.

I wish I had a scanner so I could show the graphic that appears in my newspaper, but not online. A picture is worth 1,000 words, but the words will have to do here.

Heading: NEARLY HALF OF ALL ABORTIONS UNSAFE
Subheading: Of all abortions performed worldwide in 2003, nearly 48 percent were considered unsafe--with 97 percent performed in developing nations.
Key: Safe=no law restrictions
Unsafe=law restrictions or illegal; performed without proper medical skill and/or proper medical standards.

Since when is the word "safe" defined as "free from legal restriction or repercussion?" I can't find that definition in any of the several dictionaries we have around here. But if that definition is valid, then I've been wrong to tell Big Brother that he shouldn't climb around on the roof, and I should have let Little Brother vault over the back of the living room couch onto the stairway below.

Read the linked article carefully. Who's quoted? People from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood), the World Health Organization and the International Women's Health Coalition. All of these organizations have a vested interest in keeping abortion legal.

However, they don't have a good track record for keeping it safe--not even here in the USA! Christine at RealChoice, Jean at Catholic Fire and Jill Stanek, to name just a few, have more horror stories than I can stomach on the lack of true "safety" in legal abortions. Right here in New Jersey, there have been plenty of recent stories on the subject: Atlantic City and Englewood.

That's safety for the mother that is being discussed here. Of course, abortion is always 100% unsafe for the child.

It might be legal, but it's certainly not right. And it's not safe, either.

UPDATE: Lifenews.com has more information that proves the inaccuracy of this article.

UPDATE #2: Aggie Catholics asked a statistician to take a close look at the charts and figures.

Image source: Feminists for Life of America

A Beautiful Prayer for Our Friends

One of my forum buddies posted this beautiful prayer today. I couldn't resist sharing it with you here.

May God be with those who need comfort and hold you in His arms; may His wisdom prevail for those who have tough decisions or just don't know what to do; may He guide those travelling and surround them with safety. For each of us may we see with His eyes and love with His heart and show compassion and grace to all ~ we never know when we will walk in their shoes.
May each one of us finish today closer to God and His word than we started and may we be aware daily of the blessings He pours out on us, and the grace He extends to us daily.
Amen

A Must-Read for Parents of Girls

Donna Marie Cooper-O'Boyle has an excellent post about our culture's pressures on young girls.

There are so many more things I worry about with my daughter than I do with my sons, so many more fears I have, and so many ways in which I feel inadequate to the task. I know that other parents feel the pressure too; my sister and I were just talking on the phone this morning about one of her daughters' experiences with the Not-Nice Girls at her school.

I know I can't shield my daughter from everything--but at 11, she's just about to have to face so many challenges. I hope I'll be able to help her weather the storms ahead.

The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Middle Sister thinks so, anyway.

TheDad is checking her math homework. (Division of homework in our house: I help with English, Spanish, history and religion. TheDad helps with math, history and science.)

TheDad is really good at math. He graduated college with a degree in meteorology, which required a lot of calculus. Now he programs computers for a living, so he uses math every day.

So Middle Sister didn't have a leg to stand on when she tried to defend herself by saying, "Dad, are you sure you know the Order of Operations?"

Germ factory? Or just a hard day in kindergarten?

Too early to tell. But Little Brother is definitely "off" today. It's like I have a little Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde on my hands. One minute he is smiling and dancing and wanting a snack. The next minute he is a puddle of tears over something that ordinarily would just be cause for a minute of whining.
He doesn't have a fever and his appetite is fine. But his eyes don't look quite right to me.
I guess it's time to play "wait and see." Certainly he's had ample exposure to germs. Hopefully he's just tired, and a good night's sleep will do him plenty of good.

UPDATE: Thanks, he seems to be fine. So I guess it was more "overtired" and less "unhealthy." I'm glad about that! And I wonder if he ever falls asleep during Rest Time at school! He's a busy guy, and including the bus ride, he's putting in an 8-hour day.

What's Cooking?

Danielle is collecting recipes in her comment box today. She's looking for the easy kind. The kind where you don't really even have to MEASURE. The kind that have simple, easy-to-keep-on-hand ingredients. So far, there are some good ideas over there. I'm going back tomorrow to copy the best ones!

And in case you've missed it, my family favorite recipes are posted here. Because I believe a good recipe is meant to be used and shared.

I used to help out in the kitchen when my kids' school (2 schools ago) had Bingo. I met a lot of wonderful senior citizens from the parish who were on my Bingo team. There was one lady who made The Most Amazing Chocolate Cake Ever. Now, I am not a big cake eater, but this cake was phenomenal. She would make one for Bingo each week, and two during the parish carnival to be donated to the "spin the wheel and win a cake" game. People would stalk her to the cake booth and try to win her cake. When she would show up at Bingo with the cake, we'd have an immediate rush to the kitchen. Everyone begged for the recipe and she would never give it out. She said she didn't even share it with her own children. She probably took that fabulous recipe to the grave with her. What a shame.

Don't keep your recipes close to the vest! If someone likes what you make and wants to make it at their home, that's a big compliment to you.

Coincidence?

I don't like to get all superstitious about sports. But it seems that all sports fans get that way after a while. And I'm fully aware of how foolish it sounds to think that something that I did, or did not do, has any impact on a game played all the way across the country. Yet I can't help dwelling on that...

Notre Dame won last night!

All season long, I have made a careful effort to watch the game, wear my game-day shirt, and all of that.

Yesterday, since the game was on so late, I intended to change into the shirt later. Never happened.

When it was time for the game, I was on the phone with my mom. She is also an Irish fan (I learned from the best!) and she turned on her TV, only to discover that ABC was not televising Notre Dame, but Ohio State. We quickly got off the phone to scroll through the sports stations on our satellites, trying to find the game. I don't know if she found it, but I never did.

First game all season I didn't get to watch. I didn't dress for the occasion. And NOW they win.

So, next game--do I stay away?

On Respect Life Sunday

I want to bring you an announcement straight from last week's parish bulletin.
A FULL-PAGE announcement, placed right next to the Mass intentions for the week, so no one will miss it.
All caps, underlining, etc. are as printed in the bulletin.

ATTENTION:
IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE NJ BOND REFERENDUM
TO PROVIDE PUBLIC FUNDING FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH

In light of Church teaching on the sanctity of human life, the Catholic Bishops have expressed opposition to any funding for human embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. Embryonic stem cell research always involves the destruction of the human embryo, which is innocent human life.

Catholics have an obligation to protect human life and promote responsible scientific research.
Therefore, Catholics can never support embryonic stem cell research.

Words of Life

"The Church says life is beautiful, it is not something to doubt, but it is a gift even when it is lived in difficult circumstances. It is always a gift."
Pope Benedict XVI, May 9, 2007


A big THANK YOU to our pastor for his courage to speak the truth on this subject.

And here's another pastor who's not afraid to speak up: Father Martin Fox has today's homily on the subject of contraception.

Jane has a helpful post highlighting the USCCB's statement on Respect Life Sunday and a link to the full statement. (And the beautiful stained-glass image Jane has illustrating this post is not to be overlooked either!)

Yum

We just got back from our church's Fall Festival where I had my fill of my favorite Polish dish, "Kluski." Basically, it's "pierogi hash." Some pierogi always break in the pot, so they chop them up, add more farmer cheese, more onion, more butter and maybe some cabbage, fry it all up and serve it in a bowl.

I can hear my arteries slamming shut as I type this. But it was SO worth it.