7-Quick Takes - the Holy Cow it's next week already- edition

Join Jen and the other Quicktakers over at the Conversion Diary

1. The punishing month of May continues! Although the weekend was supposed to be somewhat restful, we still had to get up at 7 on Saturday to go get the soccer nets and frames out of Mr. Pete's storage area, take them to the field and set up, then go get our kids ready to play soccer, play soccer until 11, and then take all the nets and frames down.



2. Then blissfully there was nothing until 4. Well 4:15 actually, which is the time I realized Noah was supposed to serve 4:30 mass, ran down stairs to see if he was ready to discover he wasn't even in the house! I did find him and we were able to make the 6 minute drive to church in about 4 to church just as the church bells were ringing, but before the priest et al had left the sacristy to process up for the first hymn!


3.  Back on the home front, Izzy was making peanut butter cookies to take to the annual Homeschool Dance!  Around 5:30 she came down in her beautiful dress with these ugly black shoes on - because she had lost the mate to her beautiful sandal!!   UGGGGHHHH!!!!  So I grab Izzy and we run to pick up Noah and then we make a super fast trip to Gabriel Brothers to get her some more shoes that at least look as if they are somewhat in touch with the rest of her outfit!!!!




4.  Then Noah has to go home and get dressed for the dance, which started at 6:30 p.m.  We made it there by 6:45. And they had a blast.






5.  Sunday Morning, Mr. Pete and Rosie had their very last PSR meeting- complete with the rosary.  Mr. Pete had to lead the singing and rosary recitation for that since he is the most senior of all PSR teachers with 11 years of service in.  Then he had to cantor for mass - and if you were at Pentecost mass yesterday, you might have noticed there was a bit more singing than usual!

6.  Then Mr. Pete and I had to perform at a Memorial Service at a local church for all of the hospice patients who had died this past year.

7.  And then we collapsed.  After getting the groceries, fixing dinner and getting the wall air conditioner in.  And I didn't even mention getting Gabe to a soccer game to ref, only to have it cancelled, and then trying to reach my sister to let her know she didn't need to pick him up at the field!!

Luckily next week we only have soccer championships and the prom...






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A Pentecost Craft with an improvement coming later today!

I am a great crafter! I can craft someone else's idea- and even improve on it! But I am not an original craft thinkerupper. So when I got an original idea last year for Pentecost, I jumped on it!

So here is my post from last year:
I wanted to do something simple but pretty and meaningful for my Pentecost Centerpiece and this is what I came up with.

I took a plain glass bowl and filled it with water and floating candles. I got all of it from Pat Catan's for under $12.







Then I surrounded the bowl with a holy card for each of the apostles and Mary. And let me tell ya- some of those apostles aren't easy to find, particularly St. Bartholomew, St. Simon and Saint James the Lesser. Those I found on the internet and printed them out in color. Izzy reinforced them for me with that craft foam. Then we put them around the bowl, and lit the candles.


The idea is that the floating candles are like the tongues of fire that hung over the apostles head at Pentecost. Izzy also made me a dove to hang from the chandalier over the bowl tomorrow. I'll have the full effect then, but for a test run, this is what it looked like!



The idea is that the floating candles are like the tongues of fire that hung over the apostles head at Pentecost. Izzy also made me a dove to hang from the chandalier over the bowl tomorrow. I'll have the full effect then, but for a test run, this is what it looked like!


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OK, here was the problem - that curved bowel got too hot with all of those candles in it and sometime during dinner - the bowl burst!!!! and all of the water and candles burst forth from the centerpiece.  I guess that is kind of symbolic too for the apostles bursting forth after the Holy Spirit comes to them... but it made for an exciting and messy dinner!

So I have improved on the bowl and on how I displayed the apostles - pictures will be appearing shortly!



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Works for Me Wednesday - iPiccy free photo editing.

Last April I wrote that I had found a photo editor online to replace Piknik, which was bought up and discontinued by Google. That editor is iPiccy.

I love that it:

• Easily allows me to crop my photos.
• I can edit the exposure, light and dark effortlessly.
• Enlarging is no problem.
• It has a lot of very nice special effects and...
• I can save directly to Flickr and Facebook from the iPiccy site.  Now if only I could go from Flickr or Facebook directly to iPiccy, that would be great!  For now I have to upload from the computer.
• And it's still free!

So here are some of my creations over the year via iPiccy as saved to my Flickr account.

Works for Me!

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St. Isadore

One of my favorite saint pictures!   Good Saint Isadore who was so good and holy, and such a good worker, that God sent an angel to toil in the field so that St. Isadore could keep going to daily mass!  Isadore's employer saw the angel working away and he converted to Christianity.  And the story has it that Isadore and his boss started going to mass together.  

Isadore's wife is also a saint.  They too suffered the sorrow of losing a child, their only child, a son.  They were noted however not for how they grieved, but how they incorporated that grief into living a full, holy, and even happy life afterwards.

St. Isadore loved the poor and loved the animals. The miracle of the multiplication of food occurred when Isidore fed a flock of starving birds and on another time when Isidore shared his food with a large group of beggars.

Isadore died on May 15, 1120 at 60 years of age and was canonized in 1622 along with four very notable Spanish saints. The group, known as "the five saints", included St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis Xavier, St. Phillip Neri, and St. Isidore. His body has been found incorrupt. His memorial is celebrated on May 15th on the Roman Calendar.



My daughter's name is Isadora, so today is her feast day.  She is named for her Grandpa Isadore, Mr. Pete's father.  He was a delightful man with a wonderful sense of humor and fun.  I remember in high school he drove the family station wagon to pick up  Pete and his friends wearing a blond Farrah Fawcett wig.  Of course everyone pointed and stared but he pretended he had no clue what they were laughing at.  Mr. Pete and his friends had no choice but to get in the car with him if they wanted a ride home.  Ah... the fun of embarrassing teenagers!

Another time, after we were married, my father-in-law Isadore wore a pair of dark sun glasses to a New Year's Eve party.  The glasses lit up when he pressed a button in the pocket of his leisure suit.  He spent a good part of the evening flashing his glasses and surprising people.  The DJ that evening then found a record about cheap sunglasses and my father-in-law took to the floor, dancing by himself and flashing his sun glasses while the crowd watched and applauded.  Boy, that was so fun!  I really missed him after he passed on. 

Lest you think he was just a jokester, my father-in-law was with General Patton in WWII.  He was with him during two campaigns, but was hit by shrapnel in Africa and was out for the rest of the war.  That's how he met my mother-in-law.  A girl was writing to him, but she had too many soldiers to write to, so she gave Isadore off to my mother-in-law Virginia.  Their letters clicked with each other.  They met, married and had nine children.  The rest is history!

My kids know all of these stories.  So in honor of St. Isadore, and of Grandpa Isadore, we are going to plant some flowers today.  St. Isadore was a farmer, so that is very appropriate.


Happy Feast Day St. Isadore, Grandpa Isadore, and sweet little Izzy!
Litany to St. Isadore here
Great day to do some planting! Like a Marian Garden








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Simple Woman

Outside my window...





I am thinking...
about the things I got for Mother's Day - 
Noah ran the 5K I asked him to run with great results!

4th in ages 15-19  Noah LaVictoire age 15 over all place - 36  time of 24:27   pace of 7:53 minute miles.

Calvin bought me cheese cake.
Izzy made me a carrot cake - both are favorites of mine!
Sam bought me some golden chicken wings - also a favorite
and my god son bought me two diet cokes and a bagel.

So I got a lot of my favorite foods - which I shared of course!

I am thankful...
for the example of my mother and my grandmother, and that I had the opportunity to be a mother myself!


From the learning rooms...
Last week was very hard!  The schedule was packed.  The kids and Mr. Pete and I had to travel to Cleveland on Tuesday and Thursday evening for a choir competition.  Wednesday night was the normal art class/ drum lesson with a wedding rehearsal thrown in for good measure. Friday was a wedding rehearsal and a wedding right after with a different bride and groom!  So it was intense and we took Thursday and Friday off just to regroup.

• Gabe and Noah are reading The Grapes of Wrath! 60 % of the way through!
  
  
  
  
• Spelling program per Dr. Holinga for all four kids. 
• Instacert for History and start American History part 2
• American History at Homeschool Connections Recorded Courses.  Listening to Michael Medved's recording on World War II
• Apologia Science - Physical for Noah, Biology for Gabe, and  General for Izzy.
• Saxon math for all with math tutor for Gabe and Noah.
• Rosetta Stone Latin 3 - for Noah and Gabe
• Diane Craft reading program for Izzy.  Ms. Craft is coming to Ohio next month and I definitely want to ask her what the next step should be for Izzy's improvement. 
• By the Shores of Silver Lake.

• Pathway readers for Rosie and the Wand for Language arts.
• Little House in the Highlands for Rosie

Izzy's dress is a discount store find!  I got it for $2 but the zipper was broken.  So I taught Izzy how to take out the zipper and put in a new one.  I thought she looked really cute in it~

From the kitchen...
Baked chicken with cheesy potatoes and salad.

I am wearing...
Gray pants and pink  T-shirt with pink hoodie.

I am creating...
a soccer league apparently.  The homeschool Saturday Soccer League has been in existence for many years.  Mr. Pete started to help the leaders by striping the fields every week and hauling the nets and goals back and forth to the field.  Well, the leaders resigned and an e-mail went out that we were the new leaders!!  a prospect that caused me to lose a bit of sleep Sunday night!

I am going...
work out in the morning- probably by getting Noah up and having him run/walk - since we are not going to be able to do that at night next week. Have to work in some abs and arm work though.  Last fall my left shoulder was almost frozen - it hurt so much to move!  and now since I have been actively working in  upper body work with weights it is almost 90%.  and absolutely no pain now at all at night.


I am reading...

and






I am wondering...
if I am making the best decision.  Calvins' graduation is the same day that Izzy and Noah leave for Franciscan University's youth conference - and I am going as a chaperone.  But I wonder if that's the right choice?  I really would love to see Calvin graduate and I was ready to - last year!! and then he didn't make the cut.  But we have always gone with the kids when they went to Steubenville for the first time - so... I guess I feel conflicted.

I am Hoping...
That now college is over for Sarah, that Calvin can graduate in a few short weeks - one major test away!





(next - time for a ring and a date!)

I am Looking Forward To...
the homeschool dance this week - with Izzy and Noah going!

I am hearing...
the buzz in my left ear and Rosie playing outside with her friends.

A Picture I am Sharing...

One of my favorites from the First Communion photo shoot!








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