What not to buy your wife for Mother's Day...

Here are the five worst gifts you could buy your wife for Mother's Day and possibly end up on the couch for the night!

1) The Hot Mom's Handbook by Denay. Do not purchase (or even suggest to your wife that she should purchase) this book. However mums - feel free to share this little gem with each other. But men, trust me, while possibly every mum will love this book - don't BUY IT for her. It will only lead to one question and one question only.... "Excuse me - are you trying to tell me that I am NOT hot?"

2) Hot Moma: How to have a babe and be a babe by Salmansohn. If your wife is pregnant - again this is NOT a book for Mother's Day or any day. Leave this book for her girl friend to suggest. Unless, that is, you happen to have a special ardor for the living room couch...

3) Don't even think about excercise equipment or signing her up at the local gym - I don't care how great a special they are having. If you value your marriage (and maybe your life) you will do well to stay away from the whole excercise idea.

4) Firming cream or otherwise known as Facial Cream. If you are not convinced just ask Dan Bean. He will caution you not even to mention such a thing, never mind buy it.

5) Nothing.... Do not let Mother's day go by without buying her something "because she's not your mum!". If nothing else, buy her card and slip an IOU inside. That IOU could be redeemed for say... washing the dishes for her one evening a week for the next month. Try it and see just how appreciative the mother of your children is for such a nice treat. (Okay, for those with dishwashers - perhaps it would be for tidying the kitchen...) Read more!

illness abounds...

I feel like a modern day Job. Our son has returned from school and put off starting a job with Fed Ex for a few weeks so he can help us jump start the new web site. And so, of course, we are all sick. Even me. I have temperature, and considering how high it is, I feel amazingly well. I can only attribute that to God!

However, regardless of how ill various members of the family are, we will have to plug on as we only have this extra pair of hands for two weeks. Posting might be sporatic over the next two weeks, but I will be as faithful as possible and keep you posted as to our progress as well as any comical happenings that might amuse folks.

This weekend is our daughters graduation from college - please keep us in your prayers that we will be recovered in time and all of us be able to enjoy this very special time in our daughter's life.

God Bless You All! Read more!

By two pm Emma and I were seated together in a cold tub...

Sometime during the night, the number of lumps under blankets in my bed rose from three, the standard number to four. Emma had crawled in with us and the temperature of hte balnkets around her increased somewhat, making me wonder if she was brewing a temperature. Sure enough when morning dawned and I rolled my sleepy body out of bed Emma was in deed not looking her normal chipper self. Her eyes had that 'sunken, I'm not well' look to them and when I touched her forehead, it was hot. I dug about in my children's medicine drawer, the one dedicated to fever relief. (We have many medicine drawers, an adult pain relief drawer, another for asthma meds and so on.) I found some orange gooey stuff and convinced Emma that it would make her feel better.

By the time we were ready to leave for church she was almost as good as new. I most relieved as it was going to be a busy, busy day. Today was First Communion for two children we knew, Aiden and Theresa. We wanted to be there to help them and their families celebrate such a special day. After that we were going to pick up the rental we needed for our drive to Ohio, as well as a U-haul, buy groceries for the children staying home, return to church for the Parish picnic and then leave for Ohio.

It was about one pm when we pulled into the drive from getting the gorceries and the childrne hoped out eager to load the van with the baking that had been done the previous two days before. Three Alexanders cakes, 190 pretzel rolls and two roasts. Despite the boding clouds and drizzle, we were all hoping that the rain would hold off until the picnic was over. As I gathered Emma up to bringher in, I noticed that we had that not good feeling back in her eyes. I was going to give her some more Motrin but got distracted by some other activity and Hugo called me. Emma was curled up beside him and was shivering. I took her temp and it was over 105.

By two pm Emma and I were seated together in a cold tub, I in my bathing suit and she with a dripping wet cold face cloth over her head. My husband was drizzeling tempid water over her that made her scream, "No, not told water Daddy, I needs hot water, I better now, I better! Her teeth chattered, and she began to shake even more. I checked her temp again - it was 107. Fighting panic, I turned the cold water on even further. Emma continued to scream as we tried to calm her down. Gradually we managed to get her temp back down to a manageable 103.

So my list of excuses as to why I might not be about for a few days has changed to just one - Emma is sick. Our priest has prayed over and annointed her with oil and friends are praying for her as her little body fights this virus. So I ask all of you (again) to join your hearts with ours as we pray for her to recouperate quickly; and that my husband, who now needs to drive to Ohio without my help, will be safe. Read more!

Julie D., author of Happy Catholic , has left a comment regarding the idea of seeing Over the Hedge as an alternative to the Da Vinci Code, asking if I had seen the reviews or trailors for this movie. I had to admit that I had not, but I have now read one review and will check out some trailors as well.

I have to say the one review I just read, reminded me of the year we first moved to the country and discovered we had mice. Cute, cuddly looking, brown vermin. Being rather short on dinero, I opted for the no nonsence simple tan coloured, wooden, quick kill mousetraps. I left one under the kitchen sink before retiring for the night. With our bedroom being above the kitchen, in this tiny duplex we were residing in, I was awakened sometime in the night by a sharp snaps that rang through the floor under my bed. I rolled over and went back to sleep with a sense a satisfaction. Amazing how parenthood changes our values. At eight, I would have been crying myself to sleep.

In the morning, I checked under the counter and sure enough the trap was sprung having claimed not just one, but two mice. One was slightly larger than the other, giving you the impression that they were a couple who had been out in the night foraging for their little family who were now obviously orphans. As we quickly scooped them into the garbage can before little eyes came down the stairs I commented to Hugo:
"You know, if this were a Disney movie, you and I would be the villians. "

The review of Over the Hedge emphasizes that it has a strong environmental message which leads me to wonder just how much we will all feel the villian, if this review is accurate in its description. I still think I will try to take myself and the kids to a movie somewhere that day - whether it is Over the Hedge, or another movie. If I have the time to see some trailors, I will post some links AND the kids' reaction to them. Read more!

Vote at the Box Office...

This is not such a novel idea as some might think. I believe we rocked the socks of Hollywood when the Christians of this country pushed The Passion into a box office success and boom after all of Hollywood doom and gloom about how it would fail because it was too gory, too raw, too... true.

It is being suggested that once more we vote with our dollars - regarding the Da Vincy Code. And not, as you might think, by staying home.

Read here and here. Please take the time to read these links. If you blog, share these links on your blog. If you don't blog, email them to everyone you can think of. We MUST take action and this is a very good one that is suggested here. Let's take those box offices by storm!

I will be leaving this post at the top of my blog and will add new posts below for the next week or so. I don't even know when the Davinci Code opens, but obviously I need to remedy this. I will post this fact when I find out unless someone cares to edify us by leaving a comment.

(Credit for the original post of these links belong to Danielle Daily, which I suspect many of you also read.)

LET'S CAST OUR VOTES ON MAY 19TH - THE OPENING DATE FOR THE DA VINCI CODE.
Let's make ourselves HEARD in a way Hollywood understands! Read more!

A link and...

...a list of excuses as to why I won't be around for oh - about five days.

First the link; Robert Munsch , exAmerican, now Canadian famous auther that my kids loved when they were little and that I about to re-introduce to my second bunch of little kids, only he has more books now.

Now for my excuses:
1) My husband hurt his back and so I am now also listing items for sale - only we are selling on my eBay acount 'cause we can't afford to pay out ebay fees this week...
2) My husband hurt his back so I am now helping my son pack - the items we sold on my husband's account last week.
3) My husband hurt his back and my son wants him to make his "to die for incredible" roast for the May Picnic this weekend.
4) My husband hurt his back and we had to return his lap top so we could pay for some bills so that we can start picking up items we bought from all over the country that we will now have to list on my ebay account because my husband's is frozen... AND because my husband no longer has his lap top - I have to share my computer with him...
5) My husband hurt his back and Sunday night we will leave for Ohio- after spending about 5 hours at the church since that is the day we are having the picnic. We won't be back from Ohio until late Tuesday.
6)Did I mention my husband hurt his back?

See you Tuesday or Wednesday when I will try to squeeze someting on my blog before I pack up to go to Charlotte for Jenny's graduation. Which reminds me - I have three dresses I need to take to the dry cleaners! Read more!

Is God as Reliable as my Rocking chair?

We were in the midst of our morning Rosary and Emma was wandering about the living room, distracting us as usual. Finally someone asked her to sit down. She danced her way across the living room rug and stopped in front of a child size rocking chair, Elsa’s actually. Without looking behind her to make sure that the chair was ready to catch her – she just plopped her little bottom down and landed comfortable in the soft chair. I could only see her head over the top of the it and her delicate ankles beneath it as she pushed with her tiny toes to rock the chair.

Would she still have this confidence if someone habitually pulled the chair out from under her as she sat, or if the chair tended to collapse as she sat on it? Obviously not.

Her complete confidence in the chair got my mind working and I thought about how we all have that same confidence in chairs. Without a thought we simply plunk ourselves into a chair completely confident that its arms will enfold us and the frame will catch us. We never suspect that someone is going to possibly pull the chair out from under us, or that the legs will simply crack and collapse from our weight.

This confidence has built up over time, from our continued use of chairs and the reliability they have shown us, day after day, hour after hour, and year after year. Yet, I wondered, why have I not had this complete faith in God? Is it because when I do lean on Him, He collapses from my weight? Or pulls away in jest the way someone will occaisionally tease us with a chair? Or is it because, unlike my daily use of chairs, I have not used God’s invitation to rely on Him daily? And so, I have not built up confidence in Him as I have with chairs?

This really left me with a lot to think about.

(image found at: www.tvacres.com/chairs_edithann2.jpg) Read more!

Touching Base with Our Heritage

Part of the heritage that belongs to our children has roots in Latvia. My husbands great grandmother, great aunt and his grandmother were among the few of his family to survive the Bolshevik Revolution and upon escaping Latvia, were refugees in Europe for many years before settling in Argentina. (We are currently researching what happened in Latvia at that time. It is possible the revolution was not the actual Bolshevik revolution but the family has always referred to it as such. regardless all of the male members of the family were murdered and only the females escaped.)

My 19 year old son decided to begin exploring those roots. He has explored the arts, the culinary delights, as well as the history of this wonderful country. As a result of his research we were treated to some delightful baking that both hen and his sister Anna, engaged in one soggy wet day last week.

Discover some of what we enjoyed in the posts below. I will add recipes later. Read more!

Team work...

Working together on the Pretzels. Miguel is about to hand off the mixer to Anna. It was such great fun watching these two work together trying recipes that had never been made by anyone in our immeadiate family before. However, we do have a great grand father who was a pastry chef. Seems he passed on his skills through the gene pool.

One of two layers that needed to be baked for the Alexander's Cake.

These are delicous Pretzel Rolls, which had to be boiled and then baked. Despite it being a large recipe, these dissapeared pretty fast.

The finished product; Alexander's Cake, oh it was so delicous. I was unable to photograph the whole cake, it was devoured too quickly.

Read more!

Hiatus

I will be taking a short hiatus from my blog. Hopefully only for a few days. We are at a cross roads with our business and at the same time exhausted from a four year struggle just to surive. This past week has been especially hard. Yesterday - simply exhausting. We managed to get the money together needed to pay for the auctions but were unable to get a single person to confirm that the company received our funds. We will not know until Monday. Again, we are trying to leave it in God's hands and trust.

So for a few days while our family works hard to make some very crucial decisions, I will take a short break from the blog. I will back soon, and hopefully refreshed with lots to write about. Your prayers for us during the next few days will be very appreciated. Read more!

Thank you Infant Jesus!

Some of my readers, no doubt, remember the disaster that happened a few months back when some local gentlemen accidently mistakened a 2000 dollar item for scrap metal and removed it, selling it before we could recover it from them.

We were greatly discouraged by this and we were wondering how we would recover from this. I started going through our inventory and I saw two items that were of high value, but had not even had a nibble of interest shown in them since putting them ip for auction. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Excited, I printed off our auction descriptions for these two items. I then folded them very carefully and tied a pretty bow around them. I then placed them beside our Statue of the Infant of Prague and we started a novena in which we asked the Baby Jesus to sell these two items and that they would be paid for in time to for us to buy more merchandise to sell.

These exact two items sold, and were paid for, just in the nick of time! God is good, so very good. I had intended to post this miracle when we experienced the even greater blessing of our son surviving that incredible accident just before Easter weekend.

Now we are waiting on the wonderful Infant of Prague once more. We did two novenas back to back for assistance while my husband researched and bid on merchandise for our new website, which is almost ready to launch. (I can't wait to show it to all of you. A very generous couple have been assisting us in its conception and birth!) We prayed we would win betweem 20 - 30 auctions and that we would receive enough of the money owed to us from sold merchandise to be able to pay for these 20 - 30 auctions.

We won exactly 30 auctions. We have about half of them paid for. We have enough in receivables to pay for the rest of them... but payments are painfully trickling in!

Faith.
Courage.

This is what I am praying for now. God seems to often tease my husband and I. Not a little unlike the testing of Job's faith. What I don't understand is how, over and over again my faith trembles as the deadlines draw near. How is it that despite so many blessings, I still sometimes falter and fear that perhaps God will ignore our pleas for assistance? Greater still must God wonder.

So I ask one and all to pray for my husband and I to have courage. To have faith. And to receive the graces we need to be patient as we wait... and wait... and watch the deadline creep closer and closer, while the Pay Pal account remains empty.

Thank you Jesus for prayers answered. Thank you for all the blessings you have heaped on us this year. Thank you! Read more!

Which fly is it?

Miguel: "Bethany, your fly is down."

Bethany: (very much puzzeled) "What fly?"

Mummy: "The zipper in your pants is also called a fly."

Bethany: "Oh!"

Sometimes even very simple words get missed in the vocabulary lessons of life!

Read more!

Ahem!

If you would like to know what my angelic children were up to while I was in Florida and Georgia the past 24 hours... click here. Read more!

Please note...

...when tempted to buy a new toy for the baby's first birthday check it out throughly. Aquaint yourself with ALL the sounds that it makes BEFORE you shell out the 6.99 for it. Or you will soon find yourself desiring to hide this toy from her 5 yr old brother who is enthralled with all its bells and whistles. The rest of the family will begin to beg you to hide it adding to your, already high, stress levels.

You will start to wonder where your sanity was when you purchased said bargain. You will also question why your husband did not think either to test out this toy's noise making abilities. After all, you showed it to him too.

All I can say is, he better not add any complaints to those that are already being heaped on my head for having bought this monstrous annoyance, which the baby has already fogotten about. Read more!

My apologies...

I tried to post on Monday - but bloggerspot would not co-operate with me and so my post sat in the draft file until this evening. I also wanted to let you know that we were headed on the road to Florida and Georgia for business. We have already done so and are back in less than 24 hours.

Needless to say - we are poofed. Tomorrow is another run but this time just within NC. There are more trips coming up - to Louisana, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama and Ohio. Many will be 24 hour runs where we drive throught he might spelling each other off. It is Hugo who does the bulk of the driving, I'm there as back up for the rough spots. Like from 3 am to 4 am and for short spells throughout the day. Prayers for safety are very welcome. I will post ahead of trips (hopefully, assuming blogerspot co-operates!) Now I must run, the children who stayed home are still cooking their dinner! The van is almost completly unpacked and a few children are trying out the skipping rope I bought for myself. In other words - chaos reigns.

Blessings
mum2twelve Read more!

Another tid bit from Sister Janet...

There was a time when I visited a Hindu diplomat, the first time I
had ever met him or entered the Embassy. The courtesy and
hospitality towards a complete stranger was incredible, so much so
that I commented on it. The answer? "God has many forms. I do not
know if you are God coming to me in the guise of a stranger. If I
turn you away, then I might have turned God away from my door."

Something I would do well to remember, whether speaking to one of my children, my husband or
a stranger.

Read more!

Energy...

Today I was pondering the age old question that has become a visitor to me much more often than it did in my twenties. The question of energy and why is so much of it i granted to small children whilst the parents, who were not smart enough to value it when they were children, have so little?

How unfair it is, I murmered to myself that Emma hops about, filled not only with joy for life but also so much exuberant energy. She races from one piece of mischief to another, sometimes with a a partner in tow and sometimes not. And of course, any partner in crime she has also has energy to spare!

But is any of it shared with me? No. Why oh Lord do you waste - yes, waste this energy on such little ones and leave us, who must run after, provide for and protect these little ones, with so little energy in our old, err, middle age?

And I heard an answer. Yes, I did. Once more our Lord chuckled in my ear as He whispered the answer.

'I have blessed you with sufficent energy to begin each day, and for the rest you must remember to turn to me, daily, hourly, even moment by moment. In this way I keep your eyes focussed on Me, for I am a jealous God.

When you were a child you believed in me implicity. Your faith was simple and your mind was not troubled by worries and cares that leave you buried in the world. You were easily delighted by a butterfly as it fluttered past you and the grass as it tickled your toes. Without even knowing it, you acknowledged and worshiped me through your pleasure in the world that I created for you. But as an adult the worries and cares of the world press in on you, taking you away from Me.

When you are tired, you MUST turn to me and acknowledge your need for Me. Then I will bless you with all the energy you need, and more. Just turn to Me and ask... Ask and you shall receive. ' Read more!

Popular Joint...

One night, several weeks ago, we awoke to the door quietly creeking open. A small body crept in and a little voice asked; "Tan I 'leep wit you pease?" One of us lifted the blanket and she joined an already crowded bed. Elsa was curled up into my back, one of her favorite sleeping spots. Nathaniel had already joined us on Hugo's side of the bed. I'm not sure when, but I could see his curly top sharing Hugo's pillow.

Hugo raised his head and looked over all the little heads spread between us and gave a little chuckle.

"This bed seems to be a pretty popular joint these nights, eh?"

This brought a smile to me face and I laughed into my pillow. Yes! Our bed sure is a popular joint! I guess our popularity is partly why I am so tired most days. Read more!

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. This is a sound I have been surrounded by since Easter Sunday when all of the children found electric toothbrushes beside their chocolate bunnies. Even my 20 year old son got one to take back to college and Miguel, who had already bought one for himself, got some fancy smancy orange toothpaste.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I smiled with pride as I stopped by the bathroom door and listened to this lovely sound - the sound of teeth being brushed, whitened and cared for. I peeked into my bathroom to see who was cleaning their teeth with their lovely new electric brush.

Imagine my surprise when I saw 5 year old Nathaniel lying on the floor, his head resting on one arm, as he pushed his electric toothbrush across the floor watching it's fire engine lights blink and the bristles spin to the lovely whirring sound.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... Read more!

Ditto!

As I recently shared we came very close to losing our oldest son and third child, who is 20 years old, when the truck he was driving suddenly cracked it's back axle. It spun across three lanes of rush hour traffic at 65 miles an hour, slamming into the cement median twice, before coming to a stop facing traffic the wrong way.

Well - today Danielle has announced the birth of a fellow blogger's newest addition and this lead me to another blog and so to this post. It is this post that lead me to say ditto. There is nothing like almost losing a loved one that makes you appreciate the common everyday things in life.

Thank you Jesus for all of the mundane things in my life; dishes, diapers, dirty toilet bowls, the detested task of shipping merchandise. I am so grateful that I have ALL of my beautiful children and wonderful husband to share my common, normal, run of the mill life with. I am so grateful that, as Alice titled her post, my life is Status Quo! Read more!