On the third Day of Christmas...

...I just could not get it all done (do we ever?) so here is a little family blessing from our house to yours. We Sullivans had such a good year and here are some photo highlights from 2011. For me, I had been dreading, for years, Maggie's obtaining her learner's permit for driving. Well, goes to show that we should truly "fear not," because helping her learn to drive has been some of the most fun I have had in years. Watching Joybeth during her first year as a teenager has been a joy in all aspects. Our son, who is 10, is full of energy and, while I do not have a soccer photo in the mix, that was such a big time for him this fall.

Our first Thanksgiving in the 'new' house

Our MENU 2010
a 16lb oven-roasted TURKEY (first one)
jellied cranberries
green beans
gourmet mac and cheese (recipe below)
mashed potatoes and gravy
baked sweet potatoes and marshmallows
homemade stuffing casserole
yeast rolls and Irish butter
Joybeth's pumpkin bread
pumpkin pie and whipped cream

My daughter, Jb was looking through the November Food Network Magazine and she came across "Bobby Flay's Macaroni & Cheese Carbonara." We decided to make the recipe for Thanksgiving 2010 and I wanted to share the recipe with you!

Unsalted Butter, for the baking dish
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1-inch thick slice pancettam cut into small dice (or fatty part of bacon)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
5 cups whole milk, hot
4 large egg yolks, lightly whisked
2 teaspoons thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups grated asiago cheese, plus more for top
1 1/2 cups grated Irish white cheddar cheese, plus more for top
1 1/2 cups grated American Cheddar cheese, plus more for top
1 cup aged fontina cheese, plus more for top
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus more for top
Kosher salt & ground black pepper
1 pound elbow macaroni, cooked just under al dente
1/2 cup coarsley chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves.

1. Preheat the oven to 375. Butter the bottowm and sides of a 10-by-10-by-2-inch baking dish and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the pancetta and cook until golden brown on all sides, about 8 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with paper towels.
3. Add the garlic to the fat in the pan & cook until lightly golden brown, 1 minute. Whisk in the flower & cook for 1-2 minutes. Whisk in the hot milk, raise the heat to high & cook, whisking constantly, until thickened, 3 to about 5 minutes. Whisk in the eggs until incorporated & let cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from the heat & whisk in the thyme, cayenne & all the different cheeses until completely melted. Season with salt & pepper. If the mixture appears to thick, add additional warm milk, 1/4 cup at a time.
4. Put the cooked macaroni in a large bowl, add the cheese sauce, reserved pancetta, and the parsley. Stir until combined. Transfer to the prepared baking dish.
5. Combine an addition 1/4 cup each asiago, cheddars, fontina, & parmesan in a bowl & sprinkle evenly over the top. Bake until the dish is heated through and the top is a light golden brown, 12-15 minutes. Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Thoughts as we approach All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls

Counting our blessings: we lived in such a good neighborhood for 15 years and enjoyed such lovely, wholesome Halloween celebrations with a hay ride and chili cookoff before the trick or treating began. I wish I could find the photo the year the girls and I dressed up as a medieval queen and princesses. Every year, my husband carves the pumpkins and roasts the seeds with lots of seasoning salt. Usually, his parents have come down to enjoy the children and help hand out candy and watch an old classic movie.

Still counting our blessings: we are in a new, much smaller neighborhood with many kind people and families, and the annual, fall festival atmostphere of our Roswell celebrations accompany us here. The memories of good people and good times help us to bring forth new celebrations and new friends. We have our Faith and have always had many good family prayers around this time to the holy souls and to the saints. One year we even made a little saints museum in one of the children's rooms as the big days (read good link on All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls) approached. At our parish (which has not changed, even though we moved farther north), there is that lovely feeling of expectation for Advent, just a few weeks away! Fall blazes in and out so quickly; it is such a lovely time of year!

Each year, in August, I pick a saint to pray to for our homeschooling. Education means to nurture; and, many parents see the family as a garden, a place where we work, play and pray to bring forth good produce. I have asked St. Gemma Galgani to be our special, educational protectress this year. It is not an easy culture within which to raise children and young people.

I regret letting my children read and watch all the Harry Potter stories, but I have to move forward continuing to humbly pray for the Blessed Mother's intercession and the fathomless Mercy of Christ our King, our Lord and Savior of all who call upon Him in faith, hope and love. Of these, the greatest is LOVE.

Here is my Halloween post from last year.

I just found this thought provoking article.

St. Gemma Galgani, pray for us and for all families striving to bring up their young in the best possible garden.

Let's work hard against contempt, let's adore Him, let's love...

"We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can -- namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us." --St. Teresa of Avila

I have a few quiet moments and am thinking about how fast the rest of the year will go by...and, I want to bring a grateful heart to each day, not worrying if I "get everything done". I am a "worry wart," as they used to call my grandpa (my dad's dad). It is important for me to stop and see the big picture, to stop and adore our Eucharistic Lord, even when I am not directly in front of the Blessed Sacrament. He, the Prince of Peace is, so very mysteriously, living inside of me and, as a beautiful song goes, "He is the air I breathe..."

We are all called to be living tabernacles. I love this thought and know that the Incarnation made this all possible. No wonder so many love Christmas. The miracle of Christmas is the gift of Mother Church. Christ came as a baby and would become even smaller in the Sacred Host (think of that!). As a convert, I am still learning and renewing, via His sacramental graces, my knowledge of the truths of the Faith. We know that Purgatory is the "Church Suffering" and that we, pilgrims on earth, are the "Church Militant" and that all persons are created to journey in faith, hope and love to our ultimate destiny of utter refuge, known to Catholics as the "Church Triumphant."

Heaven is the goal. It is the place to which we run. I was talking to some of the members of my Regnum Christ small prayer group (know as our "Encounters with Christ")about the idea that Heaven will be, for me, a place not of rest, as we tend to think of it. As a disabled person, I like to think of Heaven as a place where we are always free to move, free to act with verve and full-blown energy to love perfectly all the time. Come to think of it, that would be eternal rest because we would "rest" in the peace of a fully certain conscience, meaning that our hearts would be utterly pure. We would be unencumbered by our mental, emotional and physical disabilities. Living fully in the embrace of the Blessed Mother gazing in complete communion with the Blessed Trinity, we would be one act of pure love all of the time -- Heaven!!!

I know it is not a sin to be tired, but, as I am so tired so much of the time, I am blessed, if you will, to think, from time to time, of all the good works that I could initiate, if I were to have more energy. Alas, nothing is wasted! What I mean by that is that we can pray with all of our might for souls. We can offer everything up to Him who is Love. And, we must do what we can when we can to inspire and encourage ourselves and others.

We can offer each and every aspect of our daily lives for the salvation of souls, beginning first with our own. A related item I have been pondering is the fact that we must work and pray very hard not to be contemptuous of our own failings or those of others. Our Lord warns us of the only "unforgivable sin" being (all) that which opposes the Holy Spirit (do not quench the Spirit!). God never fails to forgive. We condemn ourselves. We know this. When we make our morning offering and ask for the special intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we must do so humbly and in full recognition of our potential for contempt, of ourselves and of others.

I just looked up contempt and you may be given a bit of a jolt --it is from the Latin contemnere, meaning to despise. Wow! Contempt is "an attitude to something (or someone, I add) which one despises as worthless, insignificant or vile; total disregard." (Webster's)

I believe this is key to understanding the internal persecutions of Mother Church. When any human person is deemed worthless (which can happen internally or externally, or both), then the demons leap in to the situation. When an idea that is good, truthful and beautiful is distorted, then the same occurs. The godly practices of celibacy for the Kingdom, worship of the Blessed Sacrament, family prayer, parish renewal, true friendship, authentic love, filial obedience to Mother Church -- there are so many more -- when these are held in contempt, watch out!

But first, return every hour of every day to the Lord with your whole heart. Ask our Lady to be your mother, to guide you, pray with you and for you. Ask for prayers from the holy souls and pray for them (then you will have "friends in high places," as I tell the kids). Here is a good link on Purgatory.

The one, sure prophetic word of God is to love. Spending time in front of the Blessed Sacrament will increase your capacity to love, of this I am sure for I have experienced it in my own life. I know it to be true both from doctrine and from experience. Both are good and sound. Only magisterial doctrine is constant, but it must be experienced to be transmitted, so that we may evangelize the world.

Is it possible that the teaching can be more sound, more constant, than the teacher? I am speaking of apostles, not our Lord Himself, of course. He mysteriously acts through clay pots. I have more cracks than most! I do know that true and real devotion to our Blessed Mother includes an ardent desire to free the holy souls from Purgatory.

Holy Souls in Purgatory, pray for us! I pray that the holy souls know that we care, that they do have us to pray for them and that they will help us love ourselves as children of the Most High God the Father and that they will help us love others as our Savior has loved us! Amen

St. Teresa of Avila (my Confirmation saint), pray for all inhabitants of this good earth!

Summer heat, summer stress, summer renew...

I am so glad to re-find this blogger mom who has given me much inspiration for years now. I am so tired and stressed lately. I really need to get to daily Mass at least once a week! Please pray for me!

It is so pitiful --that it makes me smile-- thinking that I am just too tired to post a list of personal reading that I'd like to do this summer 2010.

Summer is for reading, is it not? It is for relaxing and refreshing the mind, body and soul. So far, little of those things. The tide needs to turn. I have learned in the past, time and time again, that if I want a change in our family habits and routines, well......... guess whose heart needs to change?

Lake Lanier and hitting the water locally...

I have been poking around the internet looking at places I'd like to visit around Lake Lanier. This restaurant looks good and this marina would be fun to visit. This website has information on all the public access parks, but it looks like there is conflicting information regarding bringing your dogs along.

This outfitter is close by, and I would like to get in a trip before the peak season begins. I read in a local magazine that this outfitter up the road in Dawsonville has an indoor pool where they give kayaking lessons -- you can learn how to roll in a controlled environment.

River tubing is big around here -- the one trip we had planned in Jasper last summer was cancelled due to a thunder storm. I will add on to this post as I continue my research (the links are bear at this point, but I'll fill them in...)...

What's cooking?

Well, nothing over here, yet. I still have dishes to process from a little dinner party that Mags, Jerry and I put on for one of his work mates this weekend. We are having friends over for breakfast on Wednesday, and I am going back and forth as to whether to make sausage gravy, eggs and biscuits or a yummy egg casserole from my favorite Kentucky cookbook. I very much want to make a pumpkin goat cheese cheesecake that I have saved from a Country Living magazine from 2005! Where does the time go? I'd like to take the cheesecake up to KY when we go for a quick trip on Thurs.

I printed out a couple of recipes over at Cooks.com for a fresh broccoli casserole and pumpkin oatmeal cookies. I was thinking the cookies would be easier to take than the cheesecake, so we'll see what happens. I'd like to make the broccoli with some chicken legs for a simple meal this week.

Looking very forward to Advent 2009. We did alot of housecleaning this weekend and hopefully will make a major push to de-clutter the basement this week and get a bunch of clothes and such to Goodwill. We have the lovliest little St. Francis Advent candle wreath, and it takes special candles which I need to hunt up on the internet. Since it has been a while since I was expecting a child, I try to put myself into that 2nd-trimester-nesting-urge and look forward to welcoming the Christ Child into our hearts and home in a quiet, gentle way. We really like to "pull in" during Advent and cook and clean and get ready for what will hopefully be a joyous 12 days of Christmas.

I am trying to pray and meditate every day with Fr. Gabriel's Divine Intimacy, a lovely aid to prayer, one that swells the heart with gratitude and praise. A couple of mornings ago, I was blessed with a lovely memory of my a cold salad my Aunt Punchie used to make for Christmas lunch. It was a layered salad with jello, cranberries, walnuts, pineapple and cream cheese, sliced in to squares over a big crisp piece of lettuce.

I am off to surf the 'net in search of a similar salad and to poke around for some locally-made or farm-fresh Christmas gifts. I wonder if the cheese made by the Trappist monks in KY is any good? I want to get some wine from North Georgia vineyards.

My son has a really bad cough, and I too feel under the weather. I hope we get better soon so we have abundant energy for all the opportunites of the season to love.

Here's to a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving!

Memories of Southern food and new(to me) Novena...

I love Thanksgiving, and while, as usual I could be more prepared for the upcoming "holiday onslaught," I just relish this time of year. The woods behind our house are home to a pack of coyotes that we are able to see since much of the foliage has fallen to the ground. I hope they will not be dining with us or on us any time soon! The other evening we heard a ruckus unlike anything I've heard in my life. I wonder if they weren't taking down a deer, poor dear! I am a bit loopy with a cold and congestion, so praddling on about coyotes in my seasonal post is part of this crazy day. I am going to surf around and look for some good seasonal inspiration. Hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving!

I would like to visit this local market with lots of yummy meats and sauces.

A new friend told me about the Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which just may be what the Divine Physician ordered for my struggling prayer life.

I really enjoyed our visit this past weekend with my hubby's parents. They stopped at one of their favorite bookstores in Chattanooga on the way down and Mimi bought a cookbook written by Loretta Lynn. I copied several of her recipes and enjoyed reading the book. I am particularly interested in becoming a proficient biscuit maker and passing this on to my kiddos.

I can make a moist buttermilk cornbread in my iron skillet that my mom taught me to make. She also showed me how to make smooth, white sausage gravy.....but, my problem is that I have to throw frozen biscuits in the oven -- or, eeeh gads -- settle for toast!

My friend Sara posted some yummy looking pumpkin biscuits. I'd better get on it because they sure look good. Here is foodie celeb Alton Brown's recipe for that heavenly breadstuff.

So, speaking of southern food, I spent much of last Thanksgiving typing some of our Mimi's favorite recipes in to my laptop....I'd like to post them soon and maybe figure some nice, more permanent presentation for our kitchen items as we love to cook and love to eat well. I'd say the gift of southern cuisine is its simplicity. It should be an agrarian cuisine. My grandmother, Sara Evelyn Gott Cohron, was a dedicated and talented, old-school southern "cookin' mama". She and my grandfather, Pernie, yes Pernie was his name, rose every morning at 5 am because my grandfather was a butcher and had to get in to Mr. Cook's Grocery early. Even when he retired, they were early birds. She began every day making biscuits from scratch. Well, as I write this my husband is slaving over a hot stove making his famous chili. I got JB in to the dentist this afternoon, and we got soaked as it is raining in torrents here all day long. Nothing a good pan of hot-out-of-the-oven-iron-skillet cornbread won't cure!

Easter blessings -- I am back!

Did anyone notice I was missing? Ha ha. Moving is hard work. It is getting easier. I was so busy cleaning, packing, hauling, unpacking, putting away, taking out, putting away again...well, whew...I can highly recommend moving from a house you've inhabited for nearly 15 years as a most appropriate Lenten activity. That's all I'm sayin' ...as that way I can try hard to offer it up to our sweet Savior, though He really needs nothing from poor ole me.

The blessings: found lots of stuff that I'd forgot I had, tried to detach from stuff, even though it seemed it was all about the stuff...have found, so far, that our greatest blessing is not the house, while it is grand and swell...It is our wonderful band of cul-de-sac friends. The neighbors here are fast becoming good friends. There are boys for our son to play with. The dogs love the yard. The girls love the kitchen and the room to have sleep overs. Dad is so very content with his new office and basement, that is more of garden apartment than a basement. I love the front porch first and the kitchen a close second.

We celebrated our cousin's bday on Sat and a lovely Easter luncheon with our dear family friends, Lisa and Tom and their kiddos. Alleluia! He is Risen! May we pray hard and work hard, so as to live for Eternity! One thing I thought about alot, as I undertook a blogging and facebooking hiatus over Lent, was this -- every thought, every action -- it all matters to God. We all know the saying "you play, you pay". I am really one to mess around, to talk and fritter away my time.

It is not my time. It belongs to Another. I wish I could truly live this reality to its fullest. I have no illusions about myself. I am weak flesh. I have a good heart, but I need more discipline. The discipline of Lent does involve some courage. I crept out of bed just at sunrise on Easter Sunday, drove to Mass to a parish I'd never entered. I realized how warm and accompanied I felt even though I was cold and alone. I love Jesus, the Christ. He died for me, weak sinner that I am. I continue to offend Him and He keeps loving me, through His faithful and through His Church. He offers Himself humbly in the Eucharist to transform our weak flesh. His Body and Blood in the Eucharist ought to rock us to the core. I love the Blessed Virgin, as she is Queen of Angels; while, at the same time, being a very intimate mother to all her children. She grieves at the sin in the world. She teaches us to be more sensitive to personal sin, to work hard to approach her Son as we ought. I wish I had the words to properly express the quiet and deep satisfaction I felt this past weekend with the end of Lent 2009.

A very fun and fat Fat Tuesday

We really lived high on the hog today with meaty meals and lots of play, talk, organizing and packing with Rach and her kiddos. Tivo and Tyler were a dynamic husky duo and Tanner got worn out fast. J, JB and A stuffed themselves and came to lunch all fattened up, laughing and bouncing off the walls and each other. We ate cheese eggs, sausage and whole wheat bagels with good apricot jam. We drank coffee early and tea later. Rach got us really organized and ready for the move. She packed and packed. Later, JB and Mom packed lots more and then everyone ate more -- spicy boneless chicken wings and pizza from Dominos with soda, as a special treat. This is our third year in a row to really live it up at home for Mardi Gras...usually we have King Cake and decorate with the festive gold, green and purple.

7 Sweet St. Valentine's Day Memories 2009

I have been on Facebook a bit this past week and am trying to psyche myself up to respond to all the encouragement to write a 25 Things About Me post. This is a warm-up:

1. Our seven year old son's new favorite food is ---lobster!!!!

2. Yesterday afternoon, after spending a rather grueling hour and a half at BrandSmart super, mega mart buying a dishwasher for the house we are about to put on the market, we had an early dinner at a Chinese restaurant in a very Asian suburb of north Atlanta off Buford Highway. Well, Canton House was delicious. Because it was their 14th Anniversary, they were offering a wonderful pan-sauteed lobster for $5. It was redolent of ginger and perfectly cooked and perfectly sweet.

3. Dad and Mom spending an afternoon and evening with their boy. Both of his sisters were spending the night away from home, so our sweet boy was all ours.

4. Even though my husband and I are a bit stressed out with the idea of owning two houses for a while, I am happy to report, that after 15 years and 4 months of marriage, our close friendship is the better part of any situation. While I am temperamentally like my dad, and he always told me to "never brag on (my) marriage", I am temperamentally very unlike my husband. I hope I am not so much bragging as I am counting the biggest blessing in my life.

5. Early yesterday morn, I sent our 2 daughters and hubby a cute little Valentine on Facebook. I thought long and hard before putting FB into our family routine; and, so far so good. I think FB, if used with prudence, can increase faith, hope and love.

6. Speaking of love, we were all about red on Friday when we celebrated St. Valentine's Day and the 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit at our TORCH coop class. I am one of the lead teachers for the Blue Knights curriculum and our topic Friday was the Holy Spirit. The liturgical color for Pentecost is red. Red vestments are worn by priests and deacons on the feast days of martyrs. Love, in the Christian sense, is not just about pleasure and sweets, it is about sacrifice. I'd add that a life of sacrifice can be a very sweet thing indeed. Treat yourself to a copy of Butler's Lives of the Saints and read some love stories that will knock your socks off!

7. St. Valentine, pray for us!

My favorite links for FEBRUARY...

Here is LovetoLearn's Calendar of Resources -- excellent. I love this mom's approach to the months of the year; she has everything, so go over here for a visit to all the possibilities this cold-hands-warm-heart month has in store for us all. Go over here for what I have found is the best overview of the month for the liturgy. This is a very odd juxtaposition of material, but here goes: I love this book and this other, very odd-ball, yet entirely reverent, book to gleen seasonal and liturgical material for our domestic churches.

The 6th Day of Christmas -- journaling...

It is the 6th Day of Christmas and everyone is rising in a leisurely manner. I am absolutely loving awakening to a quiet home, and it staying that way for a good, long while. It was 35 degrees here, when I let the dogs out around 7am. I puffed out the smoky-looking air and perused the woods behind us -- beautiful and quiet and dimly lit. We are heading downtown to IKEA today, later. Looking back to the 5th Day of Christmas: Yesterday my friend Lisa picked up Little Man to go for a playdate with her daughter and new puppies. The girls and I left Dad alone with his woodchip pile to go to the Mall (...I am thinking of writing, at some point, about "Mallschooling" -- catchy, no?). It was clear and a bit brisk, perfect for shoveling and Dad did shovel and spread lots of mulch over our muddy backyard. The Mall Foodcourt was crowded with happy moms and tweens and teens -- very nice to see others enjoying what I get to enjoy often. Maybe I am a starry-eyed optimist, but I see so much goodness around me. We live in a very safe and, for lack of a better way to put it, a well-educated area of American Suburbia. As a southerner, I feel the South here in Georgia, even though North Atlanta is mostly transplants from everywhere. It is so much cheaper to live here than any other metro area in the U.S., or the planet, for that matter, that it is very amenable to family life. You can enjoy big city perks and still afford a nice house with a good-sized yard...well, anyway: the girls talked me in to a new outfit, at a rock bottom price...then, we picked up Little Man, saw our friends' new puppies, chatted with their family, Mom (yours truly) sipped a half glass of good red wine, and then back home to change clothes, drink tea, leave the boys at home and then off to AMC Cinemas to use Dad's gift card from work to see Twilight. M read all four books since T-giving and I read about a quarter of the first book last nite. I like it. I like it alot. More on that, later. So many hunger and thirst for the truths of the Old Faith which is also known as Catholicism...more later, very important topic and do not want to botch it...Adios for now, dear Christmas journal.

play, peace and a poem

We're back. And, it was not an easy drive. Thanks be to God, everything else was remarkably easy. The photo was taken night before last in KY. My hope tonight is for my family, at least for a few moments, to go to that stable "...when peaceful stillness compassed everything..." (Wisdom 18:14). Here is a poem from Richard Wilbur from my Magnificat. It is called "A Christmas Hymn":

And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master rebuke thy disciples.

And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

St. Luke 19:39-40

A stable-lamp is lighted

Whose glow shall wake the sky:

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

And straw like gold shall shine;

A barn shall harbor heaven,

A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city

Shall ride in triumph by;

The palm shall strew its branches,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

Though heavy, dull, and dumb,

And lie within the roadway

To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,

And yielded up to die;

The sky shall groan and darken,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

For stony hearts of men:

God's blood upon the spearhead,

God's love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,

The low is lifted high;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

In praises of the child

By whose descent among us

The worlds are reconciled.

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel

Travelling to Kentucky today...

I am doing some last minute packing up and cleaning up before loading the van up for a drive from Georgia to Kentucky. Here is part of day 5 of the Christmas Novena that we are praying: O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel: you open and no one shuts; you shut and no one opens. Come and lead forth from his prison the captive sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.

Our Lady of Guadelupe, pray for us!

It is hard for me to settle down and write because there is so much to do! So, I ask our Lady's intercession to bring me down a few notches to pause and reflect. After a very relaxing, long weekend in Kentucky, with Dad's brother and mother and father over the Thanksgiving holiday, we came back to Georgia ready to prepare for Christmas and for our move to Cumming in January. While we were in Kentucky, our Mimi and I decided to work together to make a Polish meal, when we return back to their home in Kentucky, as part of our Christmas 2008 celebration. A couple of days ago, the children and I checked out a bunch of books on Poland at one of our local libraries. This morning we read this inspiring picture book, Escaping to America: A True Story, by Rosalyn Schanzer. This is such an appropriate story, given the season. Speaking of Advent, we are getting very enthusiastic about Gaudete Sunday. Having never roasted a turkey, I hope to talk my husband into giving it a try this Sunday. I have stuffing mix from Trader Joe's and apples and sweet potatoes to bowl or stew in the slow cooker. I just need to buy some green beans and the turkey. I hope to post more on our Polish studies as there is more to it than what I have here. Also, we are so grateful for our son's performance in The Small One night before last. We also have been blessed to be able to serve, outside the home, more than usual; and, I notice, with the children a year older, that this Advent 2008 has seen many more quiet-working-together moments...nothing spectacular, just the pleasant calm of cleaning and organizing together.

Photo essay -- Thanksgiving 2008

Smile. Be happy. Play.

Since we have a DVR now, I was able to record three saint movies on All Saint's Day; and, I watched two during November. The movie about Don Bosco was just great. He was so grateful to be alive, to serve, to love, to shoot that winning smile at everyone, even if he were tired or not feeling well. I just love him and what he did. As the first weekday of the Advent season, I choose him to inspire our homeschool for the upcoming weeks. We had such fun with all the dogs (5!) at Mimi and Grandaddy's house over the Thanksgiving weekend. We got out for a nature walk everyday. How many grandparents would let you shoot basketball for hours -- inside! That is it! St. John Bosco, pray for us!

O Night Divine!

This morning we watched some home movies and, what with building a new house, this will be our last Advent and Christmas in this house. Each box I pack up and drawer I de-clutter brings so many good memories. Go to the "O Night Divine" blog and get lots of good ideas. I do not know if it will happen this year for us, but I really want to put a homemade Nativity scene, with an uplight, on our front lawn. I love Advent and the Christmas season.

The Day You Have Just Lived

"You will be judged on the day you have just lived," came as an exhortation from a good and active priest one morning this past spring. A group of mothers had gathered to pray and reflect. I wrote this in my notes, and, since then, it has become a simple, yet powerful, prayer.

This morning my husband and I rose before our children and had a little quiet time. I was reading my Magnificat. There is a lengthy quote from Pope Benedict XVI on the souls in Purgatory and here is a good part of it:

With death, our life-choice becomes definitive -- our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred, and have suppressed all love within themselves...In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbors -- people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfillment what they already are.

Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life (emphasis mine). For the great majority of people -- we may suppose -- there remains in the depth of their being an ultimate openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil -- much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur?...[Saint] Paul [says] that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: 'Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw -- each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Cor. 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through "fire" so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.

Sin is at the bottom of the most profound Mystery of Faith, the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist. So many people do not believe they are in need of salvation. Our Savior is both our hero and our best friend. The doctrines of Mother Church are merciful because they come from the Son of Mercy, our Lord, the Christ. The fires of Purgatory purify us, and we need purification. I think often of the famous quote of St. Catherine of Sienna, "Be who you are and you will set the world ablaze." Our Lord calls us to be grateful for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Fear of the Lord, Knowledge, Fortitude, Piety, Counsel, Understanding and Wisdom) and to use them all at all times. Yet, we are weak and we fail. Then, we stoke the dying embers by our faith in the Sacraments; and, thanks be to God, He, by the request of Our Lady, fans our flame. Father, thank you for giving us Jesus as real food to enflame the fires of our love. Help us to love others as your Son has Loved us.