The Lenten Journey

As most people know, this is my favorite season in the year... no, I'm not talking about the nasty snow of winter, or the time where we just sit and dare to dream of the sunny, warmth of summer... no my favorite season is the liturgical season of Lent. Fun Fact:Lent means "spring forth" in latin! Why would anyone like the time of year when we are told to "give up" something? Well, to me Lent is a season of conversion, a time where we turn our lives more completely over to Christ and His Way that we are truly called to live. It's not where we abstain from sin, sinful behavoir, or a bad habit; no, instead, we are called to learn how to live without the roots of sin in our lives that blind us daily. To me, this is the most beautiful season we can celebrate as we continue to renew our hearts and lives for Christ's love.

For our family, the season really gears up before we start on Ash Wednesday. The babies and I have been preparing for this liturgical season for about two weeks now... constantly contemplating what I'll "give up" (a.k.a. in Church language as abstain), what we as a family can add to our lives as we pray and discern about the sacrifice of Christ's love for us... a lot of people asked me what I'd give up. Food was out of the question for me... it just seemed to much like a diet thing to do for 40 days... I don't have homework anymore to try to get out of saying I'm sacrificing my homework time for prayer time (yes, as a teen I did try this excuse; no, it did not fly with the rents)... I couldn't cut television time, since I don't really watch television in the first place, nor do I think it's sacrificial to give up.

With all that in mind and a LOT of praying, SuperHubby and I gave up our bed. Being early in my pregnancy, I really had to think about this sacrifice... I mean it's my bed! And if you've ever been pregnant, falling asleep can be hard enough on its own because your body aches all the time in the first place, so a good night's sleep is rare...so my BED was definiately going to be a sacrifice to deal with. But not only are we called to "give up" something, we are asked to add to our Lenten journey as well...for our little.but.growing.family, we've added a nightly prayer of a super novena!! It's basically 6 novenas rolled up into a HUGE amount of awesome prayer...SuperHubby found this one... and the babies, well they aren't really old enough to give up yet, but they have added a special morning prayer with Mommy for our priests and the vocations to religious and priesthood as well... thus far, it's been really great.

Not only is this season a time for abstaining. It's a time for prayer, fasting (especially from meats on Fridays), and almsgiving! As I said before, it's a time for adding something a little more to your daily routine... for many of my friends, I hear adding a rosary is a big one for Lent...I think it's a wonderful idea to add structured prayer time into our days. Some people add the stations of the cross during this season. By adding prayers to our lenten journey, it helps strengthen our personal relationships with God for this time of conversion. By fasting, we grow through a physical and outward sign of self-control as we grow closer to Christ.

But the third pillar of Lent, alsmgiving, I always found a bit harder, yet more meaningful, to do. We are already called to give in tiething; but as addition fun money has seized to exist, it's become increasing more difficult to remind myself it's all in God's hands if we only put our trust in Him. I did think it was genius for the Catholic Service Appeal to happen within the past few weeks for our Archdiocese. I was actually very excited to give after looking into how our almsgiving can give to so many different services used by families around the area. But the challenge is to allow the almsgiving to be an act where we do trust in God with a part of our lives we like to tell people to stay out of, our pockets. It's a challenge, but in the end, I think it's mucho important to remind ourselves to let God into all avenues of our lives.

So, now I want to know, what did YOU give up and add for your Lenten journey? How's your journey going? How are you letting God be your guide in this season?

outnumbered

The day before T's baptism, SuperHubby and I found out some news...I wasn't feeling so good for a few days...so we prayed about it...and found that God has a spectacular adventure for us:

YEA! Yes, we are expecting! Now that we are outnumbered, we find a lot of joys and a lot of special graces as we prepare for our third in three years.

I recently read from Jason Evert that couples who practice NFP are more likely to find a pregnancy as a blessing instead of a burden/source of anxiety or stress. Being practicing NFPin' Catholics, I would highly AGREE with this statement! Although, I will say that knowing that I'll need a third arm to hold all three blessings will be a somewhat difficult task; but we're more than up to the adventure! Tomorrow is my first prenatal appointment, so please pray for us!

A Priest, prophet, and king...

So something special happened last week, on February 7th, our little guy T was brought into the Church! It was the cutest sacrament ever! Although T does not like water in any shape or form, he did NOT cry during the baptism... in fact, he was very attentive (see pic to the right). He stood pretty solomnly preparing for what Father David was speaking about the importance of T's parents showing him the most important gift: Love.

Now some people may ask, "Kym, T is 6 months old, why did you wait so long?" Well, a few reasons... A. we really wanted our son to be baptized in a really great spiritual Liturgical readings of Mass. Something that spoke to us, and hopefully him about future vocations. Although, we are fully supportive of any vocation, whether it be priesthood, married, deaconate, missions, we really want to make sure our son (and other children) are surrounded by our faith... the readings for that week was on being "Fishers of Men"...HOW perfect!!!

B. Since our son was born in the Year of the Priests, we really wanted him to be surrounded by solid Catholic role models; hence working with his Godfather, Brother Peter (yes an amazing monk friend of ours) and his Godmother, GreatGrandma Ellie was important since neither live close to us.

But it was a wonderful event, with close family and friends there celebrating our son's entrance into the Catholic Church. We pray that God leads him towards our faith, that T finds love and hope in the faith his parents have brought him to grow up in. And we pray his Godparents will be able to continue the tradition of faith as witnesses to our son as he grows, struggles, challenges, and learns to lean into our faith.

T seemed to really like the whole sacramental ceremony! Great Grandma Ellie found Hubby's baptismal gown, so of course T wore it! He was a bit snug in it, but he was still very dashing! It was great to see Brother Peter and have a great priest like Father David present as well. We love Great Grandma Ellie for making the cute Lamb cake for the party afterwards that she worked so hard to help with too! It was a sweet little celebration to welcome such an adorable young boy into our Church!

Hugs from our Guardian Angel

It's been a week since I've posted! I am truly sorry to any of you who have looked up my site since I've now been added to the Catholic Mothers Blog reel. As this is my project during nap times of two children, I normally get a few posts within a week... however, this week kicked off with a BANG, literally!

If any of you are from MN, or are Vikings fans, you'd know that this past Sunday was NFC championship game where the winner would determine who would head to the Super Bowl... this means nothing to a southern belle who was secretly rooting for the Saints (because, being Catholic, who else could I cheer for? I mean seriously...) Anyway, due to this big game, I had decided to cancel the youth group for our parish; normally I do not do cancel any youth event due to a silly sporting game, however, I did know that most of our city was shut down due to this event specifically.

This being said, my hubby and I decided to invite some of our friends over to "watch" the game, but really just enjoy each other's company. "Uncle" Texas, soon-to-be "Auntie" Texas, and "Auntie" WinWee came to play with Bumble Bee (as seen above) and my daughter just loved the attention! She even showed off some of her dance moves! Granted, at this stage in life, her moves consist of beating the air with her elbow (kinda like flapping a chicken wing), and stomping her feet to whatever beat she can make up as she tries to circle around our room. But even so, it was mucho cute!

And then, it happened. I told my hubby to leave the kitchen to go and call his sister; I knew I could watch the stove top with the pot boiling something inside... it's not like he had anything in it, right?

WRONG! After what seemed like half a minute, there was steamy stuff coming off the pot, I looked over to see a SPARK! Thinking that it must just be boiling water, I figured I needed to lift up the lid and let the steam settle down before a bigger mess happened. Oh Sweet Virgin Mary, I did pray. As fire lept out of the pot... at this point, what is a gal to do, but scream for her hubby...LOUDLY!

And there, like a super hero... Hubby came flying into the kitchen for the rescue! With his quick thinking, he knew it was not water, but oil in the firey pot. Therefore, as EVERYONE should know: YOU DO NOT USE WATER TO PUT OUT A GREASE FIRE. EVER!!! Please note the severity of this, duely noted on youtube. Bit of a hardcore Public Service Announcement, however that demo kitchen is about the same size as ours at home.

So back to the story... SuperHubby grabbed the pot, even though he probably shouldn't have... to keep the overhead cupboards from starting ablaze (side note, our fire was much bigger than the one on the youtube video, about 4 feet high at this point). Unfortunately, the pot was so hot that Super Hubby dropped it. Both SuperHubby and Auntie WinWee were on the wrong side of the kitchen, split in half by the firey pot. He lept like an elk over the fire, ran and grabbed our son T-the Tiger, brought him to the entry way (where Uncle and Auntie Texas and Auntie WinWee took our children to safety away from the fire), and SuperHubby started beating the fire with one of our pink towels. Now, please know that our Baking Soda was in one of the cupboards right behind the dropped pot! Despite no t having access to the baking soda, he was able to beat the fire out.

Now where was I during this time, you might ask? I first prayed that my guardian angel would help my hubby and Auntie WinWee get out of the firey area alive. Which as the picture shows, my angel seemed to hold the fire with a hug from his wings. As soon as they had both Olympic-sized jumped over the fire of doom. I was calling 911 as soon as my hubby would hand over the phone (SuperHubby didn't think we needed 911, and he was so composed that we all thought "it wasn't a big deal" as he was stating holding the pot of burning hell, you know... have a 4 foot fire in our midst...yeah right!). Then I was soon yelling at the poor operator who wasn't listening to me- did she speak emergency english??, and running down our apartment hallway. In the hallway, I discovered at this time, some less-than-smart person took the hammer for the fire extinguisher container (what a funny jokester, may he rot in the firey kitchens of below), and so I decided my palm would be the best place to ninja chop the glass in order to obtain the fire extinguisher (thank goodness for all those games of Ninja Ah at youth group and YMCA day camp days!). However, by the time I had handed off the extinguisher to Uncle Texas to bring to SuperHubby, my man had already taken out the fire. Please note that he saved more than just our apartment, he saved the lives of many neighbors; since to our surprise NO ONE knew about the fire, since our apartment smoke detectors are not linked to each other... allowing us to only knowthat a fire is in our building after it penitrates into our own apartment and thus setting off our own smoke detectors. AWESOME... (side note, we are currently looking for new housing options for the near future).

Shortly soon after (and a little too late), the police, fire fighters, and ambulance came. As SuperHubby was badly burnt on his right hand, I brought appropriate people into the apartment to show them the damage, and really to grab my babies diaper bag and coats. One fire fighter even said under his breath that it was a miracle that this was the extent of the damage and that SuperHubby was able to contain the flames himself. Yea...that's my huband. As noted in pictures above, the grease was only a half an inch from the electrical line beneath our oven. It was a miracle that all of the grease that was all over the kitchen had not caught flame as well.

We found out that I need to rush SuperHubby to the emergency room to see how badly burnt his hand was; myself and my ninja chopped hand had only a small flesh wound and a little black and blue edging (from how strong I am!). Turns out, he had deep 2nd degree burns and possibly a little 3rd degree burn. Throughout his pain, he inspired me due to his reactions to the pain as he kept offering up all the pain for someone else's conversion. (SuperHubby's hand a day later, at doctor's office... he suggested I post this... yuckie!)

Thankfully, our friends watched our children nearby so that they would not become restless in the hospital. And as soon as I sent word to Fargo, Momma Allex was rushing her way down to help us through this tough time. She spent 3 nights with us, helping me with the babies, and allowing me to help SuperHubby since he was right hand dominant impaired. So Wednesday morning, I made the second hardest decision in my life (the first was to NOT receive any medication through child-pushing process of labor)... and I put my trust in my amazing in-laws to watch my two precious angels while I help my SuperHubby the next few days recover with hydrotherapy and wound cleansing at the hospital. The other major blessing, we've received is the amazing generousity of kindess from parishoners who have offered up prayers for SuperHubby's recovery as well as AMAZING meals that SuperHubby and myself get to indulge ourselves with as we have no use of our stove for a little while, at least until our land lady comes back from her vacation. So I guess, that's where I've been the past week, instead of blogging, I've been mothering my hurt SuperHero...

oh my son!

So looking back quickly at old post, I noticed I haven't given you much updates on T. Well at 5 months-old, he keeps us very busy. He LOVES to eat things! He also LOVES to sit in his big sissy's brown chair...which makes me wonder if we should save up and get him one sooner than later. He LOVES to watch his surroundings in his Bumbo chair. and He LOVES to not sleep at convenient times (like normal night hours) and insteads tries to stay up with Daddy all night long while Daddy desires his own rest. T enjoys putting everything in his mouth and he has recently found his toes in his mouth regularly. He has the cutest laugh ever and he LOVES jumping in the jumperoo! OH and did I mention, he dances to any Veggie Tale intro movie we pop into the DVD player!

Yes, I believe he is growing spendidly and he is pretty cooperative when it comes to getting diaper changed (Mommy hasn't had any pee incidents since he was 1 month--old), and he doesn't push new clothing away like his sister did at 5 months-old. He is fully in his 6 month-old clothing...and he truly enjoys this blue football outfit (so thank you whatever person gave it to him for Christmas!) Also, he is currently trying to learn how to hold his bottle, eat it, and suck his thumb at the same time... who says guys don't like to multi-task? He absolutely LOVES his big sister's kissies; having her tickle him on his chest; and playing with her on his tummy! OH and last but SURELY not least, he is finally being baptized in a few weeks! He will be baptized on February 7th, which the readings correlate to that of being a "fisher of men"... does anyone smell vocational calling to the priesthood? Prayers would be wonderful for my son and his washing away of original sin and the openness to the Holy Spirit!

oh my daughter...

Today has been a very funny Bumble Bee day... at 17 months-old, my daughter constantly loves everyone she meets...and today has been no different. Bumble Bee has an enormous heart and loves to express her love towards others... B loves to dine with her monkey and Puppy friends.. she loves to draw with her new Tadoodler crayons... and she LOVES to sit on her big brown chair and sip from her sippy cups.

But more than anything else, she loves to give small "kissies" to her little brother on his forehead. It fascinates me that even at such a young age, my daughter picks up on our love for T. Yet, she never tries to kick him out of the spotlight of love, she would rather show us that she too loves him. It really is a great gift to be able to shower her and him with love and to see that she wants to do the same for her rather tiny brother.

On the other cute note, B LOVES to snag my phone and make a random phone call to some unsuspecting friend or family member. This is a pic I took while B was on the phone with Great-Grandma Ellie last night. B LOVES to talk; she LOVES to walk around our apartment with the phone and call someone; she LOVES giggle while running away from one or both of her parents...and she is so darn adorable while she talks on the phone. If you are blessed with a phone call or better, a message from B, I know you know what I'm talking about. But what a wonderful gift to get an unsuspecting phone call from your friend's daughter! Well nap time is over now so back to playing kitchen!!

God Bless

speaking of getting old...

OH YEAH... my birthday.

Ok so: Bday morning, hubby let me sleep in. SWEET!

Afternoon, went and picked up my gal pal/partner-in-cooking-crime: Lindsey. NICE!!!

Got Lindz, get home and BAM! Monk pal, Bro Pete, sitting in my kitchen with my hubby, stopping by to wish me well on my day-older-day! AWESOME! Made some cupcakes with Lindz for a home-made cupcake tree... YES... devil's foodcake and funfetti! FANTASTIC!!! Although we made 36, only 27 got put in the tree... hrmm odd?

Hubby surprises me with pink roses! Double nice!!

YAY birthday pic with hubby.

Phenomenal night with Lindz, gal pal Erin, her hubby Andrew, and my hubby... played some board games, watched some t.v. and watched the ball drop! it was a spectacular night while my two babies slept only feet away!