JPII We Love You!

I'm celebrating my new third class relic!  Okay, so really the canonization of JPII who is so special to our family.  But my wedding ring touched JPII so it is a relic.  If you don't know what I mean by relic and are interested here's a link that explains them.  But in a nutshell a relics are ashes, bones, clothing or possessions of a saint or something that touched the saint.  Catholics of course don't worship them, just use them to remind us of the particular saint, their path to holiness and how we can imitate that holiness in our lives.  Having one from John Paul the Second makes me happy.  (and my dress?  Did my dress touch him?)  

Easter Joy

We had lots of fun with family on Easter but we only have pictures at Jeremy's parents because after being outside there for a couple hours my pink eye got really bad and I was preoccupied with itchy, inflamed eyes at my parents.  The good news was I was the last of the family to get it!

A couple of my favorites:

We braided Julia's hair for the Vigil.

Thomas seems to have found all the high eggs this year.

Check out how cute Nicholas and Grandpa Steve are!

Love the picture of Nicholas finding an egg with his cheeks full of jelly beans he snitched before Mommy caught him.

Also love the intensity with which Aliza is inspecting the egg she found.

 Samuel made the sprinkle bars by himself, Thomas the fruit salad by himself, Julia and Nicholas helped with our traditional lamb rolls.  Philip did whatever it is he does.  Actually I think he helped with the rolls but didn't get it documented.  :)

Only Jeremy likes hard boiled eggs so I took the time to blow out the insides of the eggs we colored and made Easter morning casserole instead!

We didn't take Nicholas to the Vigil this year (best.decision.ever.) so that's why he's in pjs and everyone else is dressed up.  I put him to bed before the sitter got here and he slept until about 5 minutes before we got home.  (He still not quite sleeping through the night but that's a different story...) We always talk up the Easter Vigil and explain the Easter fire and candles and bells and readings and all that special stuff that goes on so the kids are excited to go.  Samuel actually told me this year that he loves the Vigil- yay!  Guess we talked about the church being dark before our candles are lit a little too much though because Philip had the foresight to pack a green finger flashlight in his pocket.  Jeremy wondered who was shining the little green light up at the ceiling and looked over to discover it was our son.  Guess we'll do a pocket check next year.

He is truly Risen!  Alleluia!

Double Field Trip

Julia and Philip both ended up with a field trip to the Children's Museum on the same morning!  I went with Philip because preschool requires an adult with every child but we saw Julia a little bit too.

 He says he's a puppy.

Fun was had by all!

Hooray!

Out with the old

 In with the new!

No more setting the timer for 6 minutes and then throwing the soap in (the little soap door broke) or setting the top rack back in its track every time we pull it out!  Yay for tax returns and good sales!

Messy

I asked Thomas to feed Nicholas some yogurt while I went to go do something.  I came back to Thomas happily telling me, "Nicholas can feed himself yogurt!"

Yeah, we agreed maybe not quite yet after all.

That's not a black eye.  We had raging pink eye go through the house.  That's from all the rubbing.  Poor kid.

Brother Fun

This scares Daddy so we only do it when he isn't home.  ;)

Both boys think it is fun!

Wow

After telling Samuel his friend who has cancer was not doing well (please pray!) I asked him to write a nice note we could send to him on Caring Bridge.  Sam went out to his thinking tree and came back in and wrote this:

Hope. Such a powerful word. With out hope you wouldn't gotten to remission the first time.   Never lose hope!  My robotics team won the " Overcoming All Odds" award at our competition. With hope you'll win the real one!  I miss you.  I'm praying for you.

All I did was supply the word "remission."  I was blown away.

Samuel gave me permission to post this.

Mom?

Can I give Nicholas a lemon?

Turns out he liked it.  Hopefully he'll like the lemon-rosemary pork roast too.

Don't Blink

Or you might miss the nice weather

 The burn pile has been a pirate ship recently.  Too bad it's cold again.

Nicholas Words

I don't remember other kiddos having many words at 15 months but Nicholas has a few.
Ma
Da
Uh-oh
No
Yah
Bah- his siblings.  Apparently it's easier to just have one name for them all, why didn't Jeremy and I think of that?
Na-anything he wants  Case in point.  He climbed up on my lap the other day and tried to lift up my shirt saying, "Na?"  "No, Nicholas no milk right now, it's not sleeping time."  He literally hung his head, dropped his shoulders and very sadly sighed, "Na."  He got to nurse.

Hi guys.  Can I do that too?

 It's hard to keep him busy in the high chair but this worked

 And this too

 I thought he'd see through my attempt to contain him right away but it must have been fun in this wheel ring because he stayed for a whole five minutes!

Hmmm,

Guess who found markers during rest time?

They're put away now.

Nicky

I got to look at this cuteness all day yesterday!  I love when their chubby arms can be exposed!  Yay for warm weather!

 Yesterday Nicholas was sporting some hair volume that even Uncle Bob would have been jealous of.  This picture doesn't really do it justice.  Not sure Uncle Bob achieves his volume with pineapple juice and yogurt, but you never know.

I Won't Let Them Get a Dog....

Actually it's a huge magnet and we all took turns dragging it through the dirt.  We picked up enough rusty old nails, nuts and junk to make the time well spent.  Yesterday we got 4 loads of compost that Jeremy will spread out before we plant grass on the east side of the house.  Here's hoping for a rainy spring (and a shift in the wind so I don't have to smell the compost any more)!

Birthday Hugs to the Aunts

Aunt Beth's birthday was last week and Aunt Lynn's is next week so Nicholas celebrated by wearing his Aunt shirt!  Hope you had/have lovely birthdays, sisters!

Also, I saw a great version of this shirt you might want to buy for one of the nephews, Beth.  Under the "If you think I"m cute you should see my aunt" it said, "Do you want to be my uncle?"  :)

Prayers Please

Please pray for a classmate of Samuel's who is battling cancer for the second time in two years.  Despite aggressive treatment he has a new tumor that is getting bigger.  I have only read his mother's Caring Bridge page but it sounds like he needs a miracle.  St. Peregrine, pray for him!

Proud

Philip refused to put this puzzle away until I took a picture and promised to put it on the blog.

What Nicholas has Been Up To

Doing some farm reading

Not sure what happened to the reading here.... 

Nicholas did this.  Apparently the saints are going somewhere. St. Rose of Lima looks like she's driving with her feet and poor St. Gianna doesn't get to go.

  

 Still not much for sitting still so I can get a picture of him and his tree.

 Climbing the burn pile with Samuel.  Mommy didn't like this activity very much.  Especially since I ended up being the one to carry him down!

Dinner Rut Snapped!

Have you met the 6 Sisters?  I do believe they have snapped my dinner rut!  It's a blog of recipes and projects that Jeremy told me I should check out.  Not sure who he heard about them from....   So far I've only looked at their recipes.  Easy stuff with ingredients I have in my cupboard!  I wanted to try so many of their recipes I started a Pinterest board of them all.  So far I've made Slow Cooker Balsamic Pot Roast and Drunken Pork Chops (lots of pork in my freezer).  They were both hits.  I was sold when the drunken pork chops just needed whatever beer your husband drinks, not some expensive lager.  Lynn, you should be able to eat the pot roast with very few substitutions!  Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about the last couple days.  Maybe something more interesting soon?