Nicky's ninth

Nicky turned 9 this week!

I thought as the kids grew out of the baby/toddler stage it'd be easier to get them to pose for pictures.  No way José.  Teens and five-year-olds are photo saboteurs extraordinaire.

Saw this video on the news yesterday; something to rival the goat version.  No disrespect Taylor...Zach likes your song and we rock out to it in the minivan.

Habemus Papam!

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina is our new pope.  He has chosen the name Francis, or Francesco to those Italians.  Which does sound cooler, frankly.



The peace prayer of St. Francis~

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

“Preach the Gospel at all times; and when necessary, use words.”

 God bless Pope Francis!

Lent lessons

We've imposed a No Sugar Cereals rule on the kids for lent.  Lots of families do that year round anyway, of course, but we like our Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch around here.  The kids have had to tolerate speeches about the people who don't have enough to eat, period, much less their fav cereal in the cupboard every morning.  Nate came up with another idea for them during their bedtime prayers, too.  They each have to say one positive thing about the other.  It's kinda funny listening to their compliments.  "What I like about Michael is that, uh...umm...he was not mean to me today."  But it's been cool seeing how insightful they are about each other.  And they've learned to be more conscious of their positive interactions during the day so they can remember to mention them at bedtime.

We had a snow day yesterday.  I think it's been 3 years since the last one.  I had to console Nicky, who was actually bummed out because he had a Scholastic book order due to arrive yesterday.  We hung out and watched Jurassic Park.  In realizing it came out almost 20 years ago, I felt rather old.  Kids born in '93 are in college for Pete's sake.  Back in my day we had animatronic dinosaurs in movies, and CGI was yet to be overused.  And we walked 3 miles uphill both ways to the theater.

the Pope's last day

Today is Benedict XVI's last day in the chair of Peter.  Since secular news reports are generally semi-ignorant at best and riddled with nincompoopery at worst in regards to anything Christian, it's best to take them with a grain of salt.  Mark Shea says to take off 50 IQ points when the mainstream media reports on religion.  So, here are some of Fr. Barron's thoughts about Benedict's legacy:

recap of some recent junk

Had another bday recently.  That's a Cold Stone red velvet cake layered w/cake batter ice cream.  It was stupendous.  Took the edge off of turning 29 again.

Michael made this pillow case in his FaCS class.  That's Family and Consumer Science, or Home Ec to us old ogres.

This beastly ugly dog won the Westminster title this year.  Doesn't it look like Chewbacca?  I think mutts are usually cuter than all those fancy schmancy in-bred dogs.

We had some Nicky artwork framed.  The 3rd graders had to sketch and then paint something from the school garden last fall.

And the Oscars were last night.  We haven't seen any of the contenders except Les Mis.  Musicals are not really my thing, but the end was moving.  A really cool payoff.  (book snob alert)  The book is ridonkulously better than any cinema or stage adaptation, though (end book snobbery).  Anyway, I thought Peter Brady did a decent job of hosting. 

January concerts

It's nice to have a kid in the front row now.  So much easier to get a pic.  We have lots of pics at several concerts of the top of Michael's head in the rear rows.  Above, Adrienne and the Cheetah house kids are dazzled by the applause at the end.

It worked out that the kids played in different concerts last night, so we were there from 6:15 to 9 p.m.  It was nice, but we've had our fill of middle school band performances for a few months at least.

Happy MMXIII

A rocky start to 2013, what with the payroll tax hike and Kim & Kanye baby news.  It can only get better, right?  Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas 2012

a present for next year

Set to release exactly one year from today:

Anchorman 2 releases Dec. 20, 2013 with the reported bonus of Kristen Wiig involvement.  Of course, that's if Dec. 20, 2013 isn't the one year anniversary of the last full day the world existed.




Now if they'd only make another Anne of Green Gables movie next year...

return of the weather geek

We got about 10" of snow this weekend.  Other parts of the metro got around a foot.  The kids and neighbor kids all descended on the snow pile in the cul-de-sac after the plow went through.

I think all four kids have used the circa 1975 snowsuit that Zach's wearing.  He's getting too tall for it now...sniff.  So if the weather talking heads know their stuff, this is the most snow in a one-time event that we've had in almost 2 years.  During last year's wimpy winter season, our biggest total was around 4 inches.

Also spent time this weekend trying to get a family photo for the Christmas card.  Though we set the camera to take seven pics at a time and took almost 100 photos total, we still had precious few to choose from.  I do admit to having the lofty goals of everyone looking at the camera and having at least a non-menacing facial expression.  Here's one we didn't use:

Zach and Nicky were the biggest offenders.  And the dang cat wandered into this one.  Yeah, "Merry Christmas from all of us and Felix's rear end".  Zach looked like this for a whole series of 7 shots:

And poor Michael came pretty close to breaking my Non-Menacing Look rule.  He bared all his teeth in every photo.  One could imagine him growling or howling at the moon afterward.