7 quick thankful that we're almost there takes

1. I am really ready for the Easter season. I know Lent is always the same number of days, but this year it has seemed particularly long. I am thankful that tomorrow is Palm Sunday. Either I am doing Lent really right, because I am weary, or really wrong, because. I am weary.

2. Thankful for family. Last night, I attended my Uncle Cliff's 90th birthday party. He is the last living sibling from my father's family. He looks fantastic! I will add in a picture or two, once they get posted. About 140 were there to celebrate! And that was limiting it to his kids, nieces, nephews and their kids. Yikes, there are a lot of Biehls. And the world is better for it. Rachael went with me, as Bob could not get off work, so she had a nice dose of that branch of her family. Her quote of the evening, "Wow, I have never seen so many people that look like you." (meaning me). And that was a high compliment, given what a good looking bunch they are.  It can take effort to stay in touch with extended family, but it is so worth it. As I get older, I realize this more and more. I had a lovely time talking with my cousins.

3. I am thankful for the weather change, and days like today. The ability to start hanging out my wash, and that my hyacinths (above) bloomed and smell wonderful.


4. I am thankful for the fun of planning nice things, like Easter dinner, what to plant in my garden and front planter, trips I want to make this summer, the Chicago Piano competition trip (soon!) and even the cleaning for Holy week, and the wonderful smell of the new hyacinths we will put inside.

5. Very thankful and grateful for my 11 year anniversary of being Catholic.

6. Thankful for every day I am given to live on this earth, and the grace and mercy of God, who gives me another chance to love and serve Him each day.

7. Of course, thankful to God for loving us so much that He sent His Son to live on this earth and die for us.

snowed under in July and a birthday party

Here are some pictures from a fun thing, my son Ben's 17th birthday.

This was the Birthday Hat, and the Birthday Shirt. Rachael made the shirt. It has some significance to a show and video game. We went with  video game as the theme. The hat was just because. One year he wore a clown tie. It hung in the coat closet pictured, and for a long time it stuck out the side, giving the impression we had a clown trapped in our closet.

So happy Dan could make it. We all miss him!
He gave Ben a new drum throne, a really nice one with a tractor style seat. His old one had broken and he was using an old kitchen chair.

Here he is opening it.

 the old style Nintendo controller cake. The Cake Boss can rest easy.

 So this was what they mostly did. You know, just to keep with the theme. We had about fifteen or so people. It was a nice day, I think Ben had fun.






It took me pretty much a full week to recover from the prep and carrying out of this, though. Sometimes I wonder why I am so easily worn out. Other times, I am pretty sure it is a stress reaction. For me, they come way after the event(s). Sort of a chickens-coming-home-to-roost effect. I can function pretty well in the moment of a crisis, and be fairly clear headed. But later, all the residual exhaustion gangs up, hunts me down, and ambushes me when I least expect it. Yes, I have a lot on my mind presently, ( I won't list it out here, I might scare myself)  but it seems it is all I can do to get through the day, and that sometimes, just barely.

Guess it is time to regroup. Again. I want to go back to daily mass. Now that I am not in school, I hope to be able to. Getting up early, once something I did easily and enjoyed, is now difficult and far from enjoyable. Some combo of stress, middle age and all its accompanying changes, and my old cross, depression are OUT TO GET ME. Oh and maybe a touch of paranoia. Haha.

Nothing God can't handle. Praying He will soon do just that!

home news

 Please don't look at my dirty windows. Instead, notice the flowers Rachael picked while at the park on Sunday. We're getting there!

The hyacinths progress.

my little patch of earth, lol!


 I hope to put flowers in the planter out front, and maybe some out here, too. This is out back.






And last but not least, Corrie's twenty first birthday! She was born just an hour or so after midnight on March 18th, so we consider her the most Irish of all of us. She usually gets a St. Patty's Day theme. Which she did this year, but mixed with  Pirate and Princess undertones. And a little Mardi Gras thrown in. We had corned beef and cabbage for dinner. everybody ate it up so fast, I didn't get a chance to take a photo.

First, the preparation. The hat and mask didn't want to go together well.

The blaze! Geez, Cor you must be getting old.

Attempting to blow out the blaze through the feather mask, and not catch on fire. Tricky.

o-kay!

                                  Corrie's beautiful smile

A few nice gifts!

A cupcake tribute to the Irish flag.

A little nest of Irish Potatoes

Here are the leftover Saint Joseph cakes. Surprisingly, no one seemed to care that they were "leftover."

 a better shot of the hat. oh yes, and the lovely trash can. 




















 some random silliness

the view if you are a crumb







 Ben was shooting stuff with the princess wands.











Melissa wasn't feeling well  :( 
I don't know what Adam was doing :P

The aftermath. We were really full. Two days off our fast, and bam! lead.

 

Happy Birthday, Corrie! You're beautiful, even blurry.

those two days after Friday. you may know them as the "weekend"

 I am not able to sit very long today, as I need to catch up from the whirlwind weekend. I have found that there are times when the idea of the weekend does not hold the same thrill as it once did.  TGIM is more the right speed. This one was kind of a blur, but as best I can remember, it started out on Friday, with my work shift, as always. I drive to my job at 4:00 every Friday, while the rest of the world is streaming out of workplace doors, wildly anticipating a few days of calling some time their own.  

 I worked until midnight, then tried to get up the next morning and tackle the day's activities. I should mention here that my husband always comes to pick me up from work, so he is up late too, but he seems to be able to get up no matter what. It is some genetic thing. I also used to have it; mine went away. Something else that expired was my ability to be ready to walk out the door in 45 minutes from the time my feet hit the floor. I was kind of proud of that, so I guess I just answered my own question...
  We had breakfast, ran an errand,  attended a wedding mass, ran some more errands, took an hours' crash-nap ( a staple of my existence), made and ate dinner, then spent the evening with my mother in law for her birthday. There was cake. 

 Sunday; mass, breakfast, Columbus Day Parade in which two of the kids were marching. This involved lots of walking, and for the record my feet were not recovered from Friday's work shift, so...some pain. But lots of pride for my kids. Even if the band as a whole was not in it's finest hour, it didn't stop the formation of the  Parental Lump in the Throat Syndrome.

 Then, home and getting a birthday dinner and small family party ready for our youngest. It featured  birthday pie (her choice), churros, (also her choice) a kazoo band, and lots of silliness. It was fun. Exhausting fun.

So, Monday found me with some nice memories, sore  feet, thankfulness for my family, and a lot of leftover cake. The pie went.

                                                                   ~next day~

  It has taken me until Tuesday just to get this finished and posted. That alone speaks of the weekend recovery time I require. I also am still in my pj's, and it is just about time for Malaika to appear for lunch.

I do have a few things I want to write about soon, of course the promised story of how I met and married Bob; but also something I have been chewing on for some time, and that is the problem of hating "the world" in the biblical sense, but loving the people in it. I usually cringe when I hear the "hate the sin, love the sinner" phrase bandied about. Not because it is wrong, but because it is put out there with about as much effort as pushing a button or waving a wand. We who live in the world and do love "the people" as a whole, often are faced with specific people, that we in fact already love, who are, in fact, in disordered lifestyles or situations. What does our love for them, then look like? If you are reading this and have some ideas feel free to share! Please, pretty please, though, stay away from platitudes or phrases as the one I mentioned above, at least if it is without a more in depth explanation. I have been meaning to order and read "Reaching the Left from the Right", by Barbara Curtis, well known blogger of Mommy Life (featured on my blog roll).  I do have some thoughts already on the subject, but I will wait until I can do a thorough treatment.

As I was writing this, a funny smell wafted through the house. Now, I am used to this, because I live with six kids; I live in a row home, which affords us up close and personal  access to other peoples sounds and smells. This one was kind of like a cooking smell, again, not too unusual. I mentioned above that Malaika comes home for lunch...well, when I finally decided to go to the back door (via the kitchen) to see where the increasingly burning-like smell was coming from, I remembered. I had put on some eggs to hard boil--oh about an hour ago or so, then gotten into this posting again (amongst other stuff), and forgotten. Just as I approached the pot to turn it off.....POP...one of the eggs exploded. 

                                                                                                          

Suffice it to say that I now have two exhaust fans going, a steaming pot of rock hard eggs on my back patio (I can still see the smoke going rising past my window), and, no doubt, my neighbors are all wondering where the funny smell is coming from.

                         

                                                                             

salvation history part two

As promised, here is the account of another attempted stumbling block on my journey for God.

I mentioned in the last post that I was baptized on my eighteenth birthday. Just a note- my father attended my baptism -pretty good considering he did not usually attend church. Little did we know he was going to pass away the coming February. I am glad he decided to be present.

Afterward, we had a gathering at my house, of baptism -goers and birthday party-ers. At that time, I was working a summer job between high school and college, and met a few new friends. A guy I worked with had been talking to me at work on breaks and at lunch. I was reading the Bible on lunch breaks--he was reading...the Book of Mormon. He suggested we do a joint Bible study. He was clearly proselytizing; he questioned the image of the crucifix, (even thought I was becoming Baptist, I guess he didn't know Baptists didn't use them), likening it to memorializing a friend shot to death by hanging up a machine gun. Even to my untrained ear, that sounded like learned propaganda. Still, he was nice and I thought it was harmless to be friends. I know my mother was kind of concerned about the friendship. I think we may have even gone out a time or two. So- back to the birthday/baptism party. I invited him, but instead of attending he dropped by for a very brief time and waited while I opened the gift he brought. Now-mind you I was freshly baptized, practically not dry yet. It was a Book of Mormon. Talk about a Hail Mary pass! Or whatever a Mormon would call that. Joseph Smith pass doesn't have the same ring. Perhaps Brigham Young? Anyways, I saw it for what it was and dismissed it. I do think I may have read little bits of it here and there out of curiosity, but if you think the Bible is outlandish in places--this book requires a real stretch of the imagination. I should add here that when I went on my merry Baptist way, his interest in me quickly faded.

Still, not one to throw away books, it was stowed in a cubby in my room. Now I know I told you the story of the paper writing incident, that also occurred in my room. One piece of the bigger picture is that my eldest brother suffered from some type of schizophrenia. He had occupied this room in the past. He had been known to get himself involved in some outlandish things, some of them occult in nature. Some of that stuff happened in the bedroom I now occupied.

There was not a dramatic incident as before, but I do believe that I had taken a step by joining the Baptist church, certainly I was learning more about Christ, reading the Bible, and hearing good foundational teaching. Boy, I sure had a long ways to go yet, but as it is sometimes said, it was a good thing I could not see all I was yet to encounter in my walk with God. Sort of like when you have a baby, it is not helpful to think, I will change 487,353 diapers before this child is potty trained...something like that. And let's not go to the land of putting them through college...so!

I believe now my bedroom, that I spent much time in from age 13-17, was kind of a spiritual battle ground. After I learned more about the Christan faith and the realities of the spiritual world, I got rid of that book with no qualms, understanding at least, that to be too fast and loose with forces beyond my understanding was not wise. Especially when God specifically prohibits dabbling in such things. Now I do not think the book itself had any power unless I read and believed it, nor that the Mormons are evil people. I do understand that they are not considered Christian, as they do not believe in the Trinity, and do believe some things decidedly outside the boundaries of Christian theology. I think I underwent some challenges and even attacks in that bedroom, struggling in my adolescent mind to come to grips with God and how to best find and follow him. Many thanks to all who prayed for me, and of course to my guardian angel. There was another large hurdle yet to transpire, that I would weather partly in that room. This one was going to shape a large part of my adult life. I will tell you about next time.