Ready, set, go!

Being here at Oyster Haven for almost two weeks before the kids were due to arrive has been such a HUGE blessing! We’ve never had the luxury of doing so since we bought the house in the fall of 2015 and opened it up as a vacation rental the summer of 2016.  We get our one week each year that we block off for our own family.  But that’s it…until this summer.  Between some burst pipes in the winter that needed repairs and a last-minute late June cancellation, we had the house blocked off the whole month of June, so we were able to move right in as soon as we came north. It has just been wonderful staying here!

We were able to get a number of overdue projects done inside and out, set up all the rooms for everyone, and shop for groceries and other supplies.  I was even able to bake coffee cakes and several batches of family-favorite cookies, which I stashed in the freezer—because otherwise, would there even be any goodies left by the time the kids arrived?!

We will have four out of five boys and their families this year.  Son # 2 and his wife just welcomed a fifth son on June 16, so they will not be joining us.  It’s hard to ever get 100 percent of the clan together for this week, with all the various commitments they have.  (Adulting is hard!)  But we are thrilled to have as many as we can get spending the week under our lake house roof.

As far as sleeping arrangements: it’s cozy…yeah that’s it, cozy.  It reminds me of summer trips to my husband’s parents’ house (the one just down the road, where we stay when we’re not at Oyster Haven), when our boys were growing up.  Very crowded communal living for a week!  That’s how they bonded with their many Pearl cousins, even though they were spread out all over the country. 

Many of our boys’ kids are lucky enough to live close to each other year-round; sons #2, 3, and 4 live within striking distance of each other in VA.  But with son #1 about to settle in a new house in WI and son #5 currently living in TN, we have to try to get everyone together as often as we can, 

Are you interested in room arrangements?  Let me show you how we’re fitting 10 adults and 16 children in a house where we only allow 13 guests total when we have renters.  (I won’t show you the master, where my husband and I are sleeping, because it’s a mess!)

Son #4 and his family are getting the Aviation room.  It has a queen and a twin.  We added a queen-sized air mattress, and they’re also bringing a pack ‘n play.  He and his wife have four little ones.

Our youngest son and his wife have one baby girl, four months old, who is currently co-sleeping with Mom and Dad. This little family gets the Little Cherubs Room.  It has a full and a twin, and we’ve pushed the beds together. 

Our oldest son has six kids with #7 on the way.  We converted the basement ping pong room into a bedroom for his family.  We dragged a queen-sized bed from the other makeshift basement  bedroom into this one (it might have been hard for our pregnant daughter-in-law to be comfortable on an air mattress!). Then we added two air mattresses, a king-sized and a queen-sized, and also a pack ‘n play for their youngest.  (After the picture was taken, we added a twin mattress on the floor for their young son.)

Finally, son #3’s family gets the Norman Rockwell Room.  It’s a huge room, which has a queen and two twins already (the second twin is not shown in this picture).  We added two  twin air mattresses. Their four oldest kids will sleep with them in this room.

Their youngest will be sleeping in the walk-in closet in Papa and Grammy’s room.

Oh, and then there’s this, which my husband saw on a Sam’s grocery run and thought we ought to have for the grandkids.

 

Well, before I had a chance to post this, the kids started arriving!  Let the fun begin—we’re ready!

Lakeside Pearls 2023: Let Summer Begin!

We are at our Oyster Haven Vrbo rental!  We got in yesterday afternoon, after the long drive north from VA, and we've already started the exhausting work of spring cleaning the place inside and out, so that it will be ready for the season.  We blocked off the whole month of June, because we needed some work done. There were some pipes that burst during the winter, which fortunately didn't cause any flooding.   But plumbing repairs were needed, and all the ancient baseboard heat covers throughout the first floor had to be replaced.

The work got done and everything looks new and improved.  And the bonus is that for the first time ever, we were able to move into the house early and get it ready for when our own gang comes on July 1 for our week-long Pearl vacation.  That's right, our kids and grandkids are our first "guests" this summer, how awesome is that?!  The only ones who will be missing this year are son #2 and his gang (because his wife JUST had a new baby, and the little guy is not quite ready for long-distance travel yet).  But the other four boys, their wives, and the 16 kids they have between them will be here.  Our oldest son's family hasn't been able to join us for the Oyster Haven week since the summer of 2016, so this will be very special for them. I'm getting so excited!  

I've dreamed of being able to spend more time here than just our one family vacation week (I get a little jealous of our lucky renters).  We stay at my husband's childhood home about 3 miles down the road while we manage our place from mid-June through Labor Day, and it's not too shabby there either.  But I love this property so much.  With its endless back yard and expansive private beach, it is the perfect idyllic retreat. I can hardly wait for everyone to get here.

But in the meantime, my hubby and I are enjoying being here together, just the two of us. This morning we went to an early Mass and when we got home, we sat by the lake in Adirondack chairs and prayed the Divine Office.

Not a bad way to start the day…and the summer.

Introducing—

A new grandson!

This sweet little fella was born yesterday afternoon, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and he has stolen his Grammy’s heart already.  Mom and baby are both doing very well.

Papa and I have been staying at his house with his four older brothers, waiting anxiously to meet him.  He and his parents should be home from the hospital by dinnertime.

This precious little boy is his parents’ 5th son, our 10th grandson, and Pearl grandchild #21 (he has so many cousins to play with!).  What a blessing he is to our family!

Our Walls Do Talk

My husband and I are about to leave our VA home for the summer and head to upstate NY, to the town where we grew up and met.  To the place where our story started 50 years ago. 

I’m excited to escape the extreme VA heat and humidity and spend the summer months on the refreshing lake, boating and swimming (when it finally gets warm enough for this old lady to dip her toes in there!), seeing my mom and lots of siblings on both sides, hosting our kids and grandkids for a vacation week in July at our Oyster Haven rental property.  

But I will miss the kids and grandkids who are our “neighbors” down here (not exactly next-door neighbors, but close enough)—three of our married boys and the 13-soon-to-be-14 children they have between them.  I love having so much of my family within striking distance.  (I want them ALL that close, but I’ll take what I can get!!)

I’ll even miss our sweet little house here, though it doesn’t have a lake view out the back windows—and in fact, it doesn’t even have much of a yard at all around it. We make do, as you can see from these photos taken the other day at a playdate with son #4’s wife and four kiddos.

Most of the walls in my house are gallery walls, eclectic groupings of artwork and memorabilia that “command attention and showcase our fondest family memories” (that’s what the Internet says these sorts of walls are supposed to do, and that description seems to fit!).  My walls look randomly designed (and they are constantly evolving and changing); but they are tied together by the fact that everything I hang up on them has special meaning.  Every piece has a story behind it, and all together, our crowded walls tell the story of our life.

This little section of wall in my kitchen is one of my favorites.

This wall includes canvas photo copies of the pigs I'd painted onto the kitchen walls of our NH house over 30 years ago.  I had to roll a nice neutral gray-colored paint over my precious pigs to make things fresh for the new owners when we moved away in 2017, but I made sure to take pictures before I started that sad task.  And those canvases were among the first items I hung up when we got to our new house.  Notice also the two cartoon drawings son #4 (a very talented artist) did for us as gifts, one of our five boys and the other of my husband and me.  There's the Bigfoot sign I painted for my dad years ago as a Christmas gift ("Bigfoot" was the name his grandkids all called him, per his request!).  That little sign came back to me when he died in 2016.  There's a clock I had made with an image of the cover of Finding Grace (you can do just about anything with photos these days, can't you?). The tiny embroidery piece was handcrafted by one of my twin granddaughters, who is 12 now, as a gift for me a few years ago.  (The little wooden frame?  It originally held a tiny oil painting that I made for my own grandmother many decades ago, a gift that came back to me when she died. Talk about history repeating itself!)  See that small framed print of an old brick building? That's the high school where my husband and I met as freshmen, way back in 1972.  It's since been torn down and I'm so glad to have this image of it!  The small wooden cross with the beautiful scroll work on it was given as a favor at a wedding we attended about a year ago at our parish here in VA.  (We have friends!  We're making connections, when I never thought we would do that after our big move to a new town--and a new state-- at a relatively late stage of life!). And finally, the cutting board is a gift from our youngest son.  It is engraved with our last name and these words: "Together is our favorite place to be."  Truer words were never spoken.  (And my boys are the sweetest, most thoughtful gift-givers.)

Can you see why I love that gallery wall so much?  Since it's in the room where I spend the bulk of my time each day, I look at it often.  It always makes me happy.

I have a passion for collecting transferware and vintage souvenir plates, so many of my walls have plates hanging on them.  But they can't just be pretty; they have to be meaningful to me as well, as these two in the family room most definitely are.  The top one is a souvenir from a Bavarian town where our youngest son lived for three years when he was in the Army.  While he was stationed there, I was able to stay for a prolonged visit with him at his apartment, located right in the center of town, and I fell in love with that area of Germany.  The other plate shows a map of another place near and dear to my heart, of course: the state of NH, where we lived for more than a quarter of a century and did most of the raising of our sons.

On the table: a picture from our trip to Rome in March of 2019, standing 
in front of the Spanish Steps.

The other neat thing on that wall is the framed map of Lake Champlain.  We grew up near that lake and we spend our summers there, so my husband and I love having this reminder hanging on a wall of our VA home.  And of course, there's the requisite nod to Irish culture, the Claddagh wall hanging.

The man of the house has a recliner chair on one side of the room, and this is what the wall next to that chair looks like.  I don't really have to tell you why I love it so much, do I?  I mean, is there anything better than family photos? This wall also has the sweet sign our middle son's wife made for us one Christmas--it might have been the first Christmas we celebrated in VA.  It says, "Papa & Grammy's House, WHERE COUSINS BECOME FRIENDS."  That pretty much sums up why we moved here in the first place and what we hope this house will accomplish!  (Please note the clock, too, a gift I gave my husband: it's an Irish pub clock that says, "DANCING, SINGING, CARRYING ON--CLOSED DURNG MASS."  That was a must-have because we love all things Irish, and that includes Notre Dame football.) 

Over on the other side of the room, where I have a big overstuffed chair and ottoman, this is what my wall looks like. Pictures of our boys, pictures of them with their wives on their wedding days...it doesn't get much better than that.

The best wall of all is in our living room, though: that is where we showcase the ever-expanding gallery of canvas portraits of our beloved grandchildren.  Each little person's adorable mug is added when he or she turns one (a favorite age of ours), so only 19 of the 20 (almost 21!) are up there so far.

We do have some lovely religious artwork in our house as well (a subject for a future post, perhaps?), and a few other pieces of art that speak to me in a special way.  But family photos and memorabilia take up most of the wall space.

I'll be missing these busy but comforting walls, and the tales they tell about our life together, when we're away for the next few months.  But I'm also looking forward to spending most of the summer (when we're not at our Oyster Haven house) surrounded by the walls of my husband's beloved childhood home, where we spent so much of our time when we were young and just starting out.  Those walls do a lot of talking, too, and they've got some great stories to tell.  

We should be packed up and on the road to NY by Sunday or Monday.  But first, some babysitting!  We are going over to the house of son #2 tonight for a sleepover, to be there for their four boys when Mom and Dad leave tomorrow morning to have their new baby.  Our daughter-in-law is scheduled to be induced rather early.  Any prayers you could offer up would be appreciated!  And I'll let you know how it all went, and whether we've got a new granddaughter or a new grandson!

Grandparents' Day, a Confirmation, Cousins, and a Cake

Well, it hasn't been QUITE a month yet since I last blogged (almost, but not quite!).  I left off with this post, from May 19, which chronicled a grandson's First Holy Communion and a Mother's Day celebration.  Lots has happened since then...lots that I haven't written about but I'd like to get down "on paper" here before too much more time has passed.

I actually forgot to mention another special event that occurred in May in that last post: Grandparents' Day at son #3's kids' Catholic school, which took place on May 12.  Their school is only about a 45-minute drive from where we live (I've said it before and I'll say it again, this move to VA in 2017 was the best decision we could have made), so we were able to arrive early and snag the best seats up front in the gym/auditorium.  (That way, when the kids looked out to see if we were there, we were easy to find!)  It was wonderful, but a bit crazy: when you have three students (grades JK, 1, and 2) and only two grandparents, it's hard to do all the things you want to do with each one, as each grade level has a different schedule of events.  But we did the best we could and our grandchildren seemed extremely happy that we came.  (Especially our JK cutie, who was literally jumping and dancing with joy.)

 

You may recall that in my next-to-last post, I blogged about a trip out to Iowa for a granddaughter's First Holy Communion in early May.  Well, that same granddaughter (8) and her sister (10), two of our oldest son's six children, were scheduled to be confirmed on May 21--in the same ceremony, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in LaCrosse, WI, by Cardinal Burke.  So we went on another road trip!  We drove out to Iowa first, to spend a couple of days with our son's family.  On Sunday, we went to a traditional Latin Mass at their parish in the morning, and then we car-caravanned over to WI with them afterward for the Confirmation.  Our 8-year-old granddaughter, City Girl, had asked me to be her sponsor.  Her sister, Little Gal, had asked her other grandmother.  What a special honor that was for Grammy and Nonna!

The two newly confirmed girls are in front,  one on either side of the cardinal, with their sponsors
 behind them. (St. Joan of Arc, pray for us!  St. Catherine Laboure, pray for us!)

One more interesting little fact: our granddaughters' mom Regina was also confirmed by Burke many years ago, back when he was a bishop.  

That will probably be our last trip to Iowa to see this beloved family, since son #1 has taken a job with a new company and a move to WI is imminent.  It's funny how you can get attached to a place so quickly.  They've only lived there a year-and-a-half, but I'm a bit sad that my husband and I will never visit them at their sweet little Iowa homestead again.  They've sold most of their animals (the cows, chickens, and ducks; but they still have the goats) and put their house on the market, and they're looking for a place to buy in WI.  We pray that the sale of the old house and the move to a new one will happen quickly and smoothly.

Doesn't this look idyllic, like something out of an old painting?  It's a dreamy piece
of real estate. (Hopefully some buyer will agree with that sentiment, sooner rather than later!) 

Let's see, what else has happened since I've been away?  Oh yes, over Memorial Day son #3, his wife, and their five kids made a trip to TN.  They met up with son #5, his wife, and their infant daughter (who live outside of Nashville), and they all stayed together in an airbnb cabin.  While my husband and I weren't part of that fun family vacation (which included visiting Dollywood), we enjoyed it vicariously through pictures.  We were so thrilled to know that two of our boys had met up with their families and were enjoying precious time together, and that cousins who'd never met before were forming new bonds.  (Although our youngest granddaughter may have to see these guys a few more times before she starts to remember them!)  That's everything to my husband and me, really.  Aside from wanting them to one day all become saints in Heaven (of course!), our one wish for our boys and their families is that they remain close to each other, long after we're gone.

It has become a tradition that sometime in mid-June, son #2 and his wife host a huge family blow-out party at their house, to celebrate the birthdays of their second-oldest son Jedi and my hubby.  After that backyard extravaganza, we head up to NY for the summer to manage our Vrbo house and enjoy the lake life.  This year, because our daughter-in-law Ginger is due to have baby #5 in mid-June, they were going to have the party at the beginning of the month.  But they ultimately decided to cancel, which to tell you the truth was a relief to us.  It's hard enough to be within a couple of weeks of giving birth, but add in a party for dozens of people (which always includes an amazing spread and a giant water slide/bouncy house for the kids), and that's just too much.  

So instead of that, Papa and I brought a little party over to Jedi last night, and we celebrated his 6th birthday a few days early. 

It has also become a tradition for Grammy to make cakes for all the
little ones.  Guess what Jedi is into these days?

Unless the baby decides to come earlier, Ginger is due to be induced on June 16, the Feast of the Sacred Heart.  She and son #2 chose not to find out the sex, and we can hardly wait to meet our new grandson or granddaughter!  We will be staying overnight at their house to watch their four boys while they're in the hospital.  Please keep our daughter-in-law and her baby in your prayers, if you could.

I used to dream that this blog would have all sorts of inspirational content, that it would be more about writing than just telling you what I've been doing and posting photos.  When I read Jenny Uebbing's blog posts, which don't come out that often and are always eagerly devoured, I'm just blown away by her WORDS.  (I love words!  I love to read them and to write them!  Speaking them is harder for me, so I'd rather write them.  But I digress...)  Uebbing rarely even includes pictures in her blog posts, but she doesn't have to.  Every essay is gold. 

This blog, on the other hand, has has become more of a scrapbook of my life than anything else.  But I'm okay with that!  As my 65th birthday approaches, I'm reminded more and more of how fleeting it all is, and I want to commit to memory every single precious moment with the people I love. 

And thanks be to God, there are many such moments.

A Beautiful Mother's Day and a Beautiful Life!

I am late with my Mother's Day post, but that's about par for the course for me these days!

We had such a special celebration last Sunday, because our oldest grandson, G-Man (who is the oldest of son #3's five offspring), made his First Holy Communion that day.  What could be better than spending Mother's Day seeing one of your precious children's children receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time ever?  It was beautiful.

This grandson of ours will always occupy a special place in my heart because of the four-and-a-half months we lived with him and his parents when he was a baby.  We were still living in NH at the time, and my husband was still working as an airline pilot.  So he commuted to work while I played the part of full-time nanny, so that our son and his wife didn't have to put the little guy into day care.  Our daughter-in-law had completed her three-month maternity leave from her job at UVA, and there was about a four-month stretch until the end of the school year.  She had decided that when that semester ended, she was going to quit her job and stay at home with the little guy.  We filled in that gap and it was a very special time for us--and of course, G-Man was often the star of my blog posts in those days, as you can see here.  

Oh my, reading over that old post has made me misty-eyed.  And also amazed at how surprising life can be, and how beautiful.  Two years after that post was written, we had moved away from NH and become Virginians--which we never would have imagined doing at that point.  (Best move ever: with three sons living close-by, we are no longer constantly in travel mode.)  G-Man has a little brother now who's just a bit older than he was in those old photos.  And he's often riding on my left hip and staring at my face, just like his big brother was in those photos from 2015.  Oh my goodness, it's like deja vu (all over again. Ha ha!).

After Mass, we went over to G-Man's house for a brunch with lots of beloved people: G-Man, his parents, his four siblings, and his maternal grandmother; son #4, his wife, and their four kids; and one of our boys' cousins (named after yours truly!), who lives in the area and has two delightful daughters.

We got a picture of G-Man with his grandfather (my guy, whom he calls Papa), his godfather (his uncle, our son #4), and his father.  All of his earthly fathers looking out for him, body and soul.

So that was Mother's Day, one for the ages.  

If you come here often you know that ever since we moved down to VA, the boys who live nearby come over to have a special Mother's Day dinner with my husband and me, without spouses or kids--so that we can relive the old days when they were just mama's boys.  (The gift of time spent together, which is my #1 love language.)  It's usually not on actual Mother's Day, because we want them to spend that with their deserving wives.  I've written about this tradition before.  Here's last year's post, which included a big surprise for me. 

Oh no, not again.  An old blog post, making me misty-eyed! 

Anyway, I usually only get three or four of my five boys at once, but I'll take whatever I can get!  I am so grateful for this tradition.  I didn't think it was going to happen this year, because everyone is so very busy with their kids' school and after-school activities, work, and other commitments.  I had said that we should skip it this year, and that our wonderful celebration for G-Man's First Communion was enough of a Mother's Day treat for me.  

But those boys...the Tuesday after Mother's Day, our VA sons (all three of whom live between 40 and 50 minutes from our front door) came anyway.  And we had steaks and baked potatoes, with cheesecake for dessert.  And we talked about the two brothers who were missing, so that it was almost as if they were there, too.  And we laughed. And it was wonderful.

I have the best sons.  Just sayin'.

I tell you what, I'll always be glad that I have this blog. It's keeping memories alive for me.  As the years pass, things tend to get blurry.  But all I have to do to remember exactly what I was doing and thinking and feeling during some moment in my life is to click on an old post buried in my archives, and I'm transported back in time.  It's a gift, this blogging thing.  I don't do it as much as I used to, but I don't think I can ever give it up completely.  I'll be 65 this summer; my memories are only going to get fuzzier with age.  I'm going to need to read the story of my life, and luckily, I'll know where to find it.

Deep thoughts about blogging.  Yikes, that's enough of that for today. 

A belated Happy Mother's Day, dear readers.  God bless you!

Falling Behind and Playing Catch-Up, as Usual!

When it comes to keeping this blog up to date with what's been going on in the Pearl family, I'm currently falling way behind--which is par for the course these days (months, years, what-have-you). Some people are just so good at writing regularly, and so fun to follow (Colleen and Madeline, you two blogging champs come immediately to mind!), but others of us seem to suffer from a constant state of blogger's block.  In my case, it happens because there's too much happening, too quickly, and so much I want to write about that I don't know where to start. Kind of like when you have an extremely messy house and can't figure out which room needs cleaning the most.

I have too much that I want to say.  And so I choose to say nothing a lot of the time.

Excuses, excuses--right?

I never even got around to blogging about our road trip to Iowa a week after Easter, to visit with our much-missed oldest son and his family (who lived nearby here in VA for four-and-a-half years, then moved away a little over a year ago--and boy, do we ever miss them!!). We hadn't seen them since November 2022, so too much time had passed! We were able to be there for the First Holy Communion of our firstborn's #4 daughter, City Girl. It was so beautiful, taking place during a traditional Latin High Mass at their parish.  She wore one of the two dresses I made back in 2019 for her oldest (identical twin) sisters. 

These dresses have now become part of this family's tradition.  I made one with a lace Peter Pan collar and the other with a plain neck and an extra band of lace embellishment at the waist; I wanted them to be slightly different so the twins could choose the individual style they liked best.  Sister Little Gal wore the one with the collar for her First Holy Communion in 2021.  And City Girl picked the one without the collar.  So each dress has now been worn twice.  

I dream of these dresses, made with lots more love than skill, being worn years from now by great-granddaughters whom I may never meet (although I hope to!).  I dream that they become my favorite sort of thing: family heirlooms.

Anyway--

Aside from celebrating this beautiful sacrament, we were able to become friends with our one-year-old granddaughter, who really doesn't know us very well, now that we only get to visit with her family a couple of times a year.  (Did I give her a blog name yet?  I can't remember.  If not, I think I shall call her Little Lady.)  She has big blue eyes ("lollipop eyes," as one of her aunts described them) and is just about the most adorable little person imaginable. But she spent most of the week we were there studying her Papa and me with suspicion from a safe distance, head down, raising her eyes to peer at us.  She warmed up to Grammy first, allowing me to hold her as long as one of "her people" was close-by.  Papa finally became her best buddy when we had to babysit for her and her four-year-old brother towards the end of our stay, because the rest of the family was going to her twin sisters' play.  The two oldest girls had parts in the chorus of the musical "State Fair," which was put on by their homeschooling group.  My husband and I went to see the opening night show on Friday, then we stayed back to watch the two youngest siblings while everyone else went to the Saturday matinee--and that bonding time with those little ones was truly a gift.

These girls, at not quite 12, kind of tower over me now, so they must be slouching
in this picture.  (I've been slowing shrinking while they've been quickly growing!)

"State Fair" is just wonderful, with songs by Rogers & Hammerstein.  And it is especially fun because the story is set in Iowa.

It was hard to say goodbye when we left; but we were fortunate to have the opportunity to drive our son to the airport about five hours from his house, as it was on our route back home anyway; this saved him a commute to work by plane and gave us that precious extra time in the car to chat with him.  (We did solve all of the world's problems on that drive, and even had some good laughs as well.)

Aside from the goings-on out in the Midwest, there's also been a recent Baptism, of Pearl grandchild #20; but unfortunately we were unable to travel to Nashville to attend it.  Our daughter-in-law's parents were able to be there, however, which is special because this is their first grandchild.  I've yet to see pictures of that sweet little girl, the youngest of our grandchildren (for now, anyway!), receiving her first sacrament.  But I've been assured that they're coming!  

Let's see, what else?  How about some recent VA news? 

Last Sunday we had son #4 and his family over for an after-Mass brunch.  He and his wife are the parents of triplets, identical twin boys and a girl, aged 5, and a 3-year-old girl.  Those kiddos love to come and play in our basement playroom (I've got a post in my drafts folder with my deep musings about playrooms, actually; maybe it's time to edit it and get it posted!  I bet you're thinking, "That sounds fascinating!”). That same night, we had Sunday dinner over at son #2's house.  He and his wife Ginger have four boys, aged 2 to 7, and another baby on the way, due in mid-June. Ginger is a great cook, so we enjoyed a delicious meal of Pioneer Woman steak bites, rice, salad, and homemade brownies with ice cream.  We stayed way too late talking, which we have a tendency to do when it comes to our kids.  (Isn't life grand when you not only love, but sincerely like, your kids?!)

Yesterday, son #3 had a birthday, and we were able to celebrate it with him by bringing over one of his favorite meals and his favorite cinnamon coffee cake for dessert.  I'm a broken record, so I'll add that we stayed way too late talking with him and his Preciosa after the kids were in bed.   It's so worth it, though, even though it means we don't get home and in bed until midnight or after.  We'll sleep when we're dead!

I don't know what's gotten into me today.  I'm feeling a little silly.

Anyway, I'd have to say that 37 is looking pretty good on this middle son of ours.  He is surrounded by lots of noise and activity with his energetic brood, and surrounded even more by lots of love.

God is so good.  Life is so full, I can't even imagine having time to get bored.  And VA is so ridiculously mild and lovely in the spring.  Everything is blooming and I am in Heaven, as much as one can be in this earthly life.  

Father Mike always says, at the end of each episode of his Catechism in a Year podcast, "I'm praying for you.  Please pray for me!" Ditto that, dear readers.

Okay then, until next time...which will hopefully be pretty soon!