Sonlight Garden

A Baby! and prayers

Dear Friends,
We are asking for prayers. Some of you may know that we are expecting again! Our ninth blessing!! I am almost 12 weeks! Today I had some bleeding and went to the OB. The placenta is a little over the cervix which they expect will correct itself as the pregnancy progresses. The placental has also torn away from the wall a little bit, about an inch, again, with some rest it should heal up. 
The big issue is with the baby. On the ultrasound they saw that the baby has a cystic hygroma on it's neck. Of course I've been googling around on the computer. (Maybe not such a great idea.) When this appears in the early stages of pregnancy the outcome isn't as favorable. The majority of these pregnancies end up in miscarriage about half way through the pregnancy. Also the chance of a genetic abnormality is extremely high, sometimes Turner syndrome, Noonan syndrome, or Downs syndrome. I don't remember all of the percentages right now. My head is swimming. 
I am going to have a nuchal translucent (?) ultrasound soon and they will be able to measure the cyst and look at it a little more closely. I will also have a level two ultrasound at some time. 
My OB knows that we don't want to do anything invasive. 
So we pray. We know that God is in control and that His Divine Will will not take us where His Grace will not follow. If you could pray for strength for us and for our beautiful baby. We are praying for a miracle. It was wonderful to see his or her little arms and legs moving around. He or she was very active and it's heartbeat was very strong! 
We are asking Blessed Margaret of Castello for her intercession as well as St. Gerard.
Thank you for your prayers I know you are all such wonderful prayer warriors and we know that prayer works!

Love,
Kirsten

a little break for a day

The good Lord knew I needed a break yesterday. After days and days of cold and no sun we had perfect weather. It was Florida winter weather. The sky was so blue and the temp was in the 60's. The kids did math and english and we packed up and headed to the park for a couple of hours. It was balm to my soul. It healed my winter blues at least for a day. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even if the end of that tunnel is a moth and a half away. My day was full of "Thank You"s to my Heavenly Father. God is good!!

Of course I brought my camera. I shot in manual mode. My ISO is way to high in a lot these pictures until I could figure it out. I am not going to edit because if I do I will never get this posted. 

Henry had a blast being able to run around and climb on something other than the chairs in our house. He also enjoyed not being taken down from his climbing spot. :0)

January Birthdays

We had three birthdays in January!!

First, my Dad, who told the kids he was turning 42. Which is funny because that is how old I am!! We put the number 42 on his birthday cake. He got a kick out of it.

Happy Birthday Dad!!

 

Then Julia turned 14!!! My oh my. I just can’t believe it. We made her a Chocolate Peppermint Ganche cake. I used the Pioneer Woman’s chocolate cake recipe and it was delicious. She is growing up so beautifully. What an awesome kid. I love her.

 

John Paul turned 4!!! Already. This one I really can’t believe. He was so cute and really enjoyed his day. He, like Amelia, wanted sushi for his birthday dinner. So we obliged and went to a local place which is awesome!! Even Grandpa went, who is not a big sushi fan, and enjoyed himself. Unfortunately JP had a Costco cake with a blue dinosaur on it. He thought it was awesome and said I was the “best mom ever” I felt bad because it wasn’t homemade, which is actually very silly. I know. Anyhow it was a great day for him just as it should have been.

Dump

Although that does accurately describe my house at the moment, that is not what this post is about. This is a mind dump. There is so much going on so I am just going to kind of write this bullet point style.

Let's see...

*Henry is sick. Poor guy, it seems whenever he gets a cold it turns into croup. This time it was bad enough that I took him to our friends home one night (He is an ER doc) to get a diagnosis and some medicine. Poor Henry was very uncomfortable. The cold 20 degree weather and car ride over helped him a bit. He is better now. Thank God. I wonder if he is so susceptible to croup because of being on the ventilator when he was a baby? Praying he outgrows it soon. 

*Julia was chosen to participate in Governor’s Cup. She competed in the Language Arts part of the testing and she placed! She is going to regionals and will be taking that test this Saturday. She scored insanely high on a standardized test in language arts last year which gave her this opportunity to participate. I am so happy for her. And as a child who has been homeschooled up until last year, her teacher during those years, who is me, breathed a big sigh of relief. She is doing really, really well in school. Whew!

 *We narrowed down a high school for Julia. Around here that is like looking for a college. No joke. It is an all girl “Catholic” school. I say “Catholic” because it is just in the name. *sigh* It is sad that we have to tell our children who are in the diocese schools that they will be taught things against our faith. Thankfully we have open dialog with our children and their faith and they just know. I wish we had some other options. *sigh again* Some of her close friends from our church are going there also and they are really good girls. I am happy she will have them there with her.

 *Ok, so, we are almost 95% sure we are moving at the end of our lease in June. We are working out the details and I will write more about all that in another post. (could you pray for a good outcome for us) Any way. I have this entire house to pack up and I absolutely have no clue where to start. It is amazing how embedded you can become in a house in three years. I do know that I want to reduce the amount of “stuff” we have. I am so overwhelmed that it is causing me to do absolutely nothing!! And I mean nothing. Not good. I just sit here and look around. 

 *Patrick is reading the Hobbit. How cool is that! My 9 year is reading Tolkien! I know this is probably not something so unusual, it’s just that up until now he has not been a big reader. Although now, every night you will find him in his bed with his little reading light reading away. I love it! He informed me he is going to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy next. We’ll see. Ha Ha. I love him!!

 *In other news the little girls and I are almost done with The Little House on the Prairie. They love it! I love these books. They bring back such fond memories of when I was a little girl. I would stay in my room forever and just read and read the Little House books. I over hear them talking about when the weather gets warmer how they are going to go outside and play Little House. I may have to try and find some little prairie clothes for them. 

 *Speaking of weather...It has been fa-reezing here. Like in the teens and 20’s. brr. Yesterday it was almost 70. We had major storms last night that landed us in the basement when the tornado sirens went off. The weather is supposed to turn cold again. I hate to wish time away, I really, really do, but I can’t wait for spring!!

Edited to add: Since I started this post 5 days ago I thought I would update you all. Henry is all better! The bad news is it is slowly working its way around the house. Tis' the season!

Are you bored?

Try spreading packing popcorn all over the floor in the middle of winter, in a heated house, and try, just try to pick it up and put it back in the box it came in. It's almost as impossible as stapling water to a tree.
This afternoon's activity brought to you by the resident three year old.
Ugh.

Resolutions

 

In looking back on this past year and looking ahead to the new one I think about resolutions and about things I want to do differently...better. It seems to always be the same year after year though. One of those big resolutions is a clean and organized home. I think that is on my list every. single. year. I have decided that instead of focusing on that one big thing. I am going to focus on something else that will help me have more time so that I can get to organize this home. That would be  (1) to get my children to do more around the house. For the amount of kid power I have around here this home should not look the way it does. It's not their fault. It's my lack of being consistent with chore accountability. I have fallen into the mindset of "it's just easier to do it myself" however, that isn't doing me or them any favors. I really need to change this and make it a habit. This is going to be the biggest hurdle for me this year. It is a necessary change that needs to made.

(2) My prayer life and that of our family. Terry and I have been talking about this a lot lately. We also want to include fasting in this as it is a very powerful prayer weapon. We just recently spoke with a priest who emphasized how important it is for all Christian families to be fasting and making this a big part of their lives. Actually we have heard this theme a lot lately, also from the pulpit. We feel convicted.

(3) A consistent bedtime routine for the children. The lack there of is noticeable. In order to make this happen (4) dinner needs to happen at a decent hour and that also involves having (5) a plan for meals. I am back on the emeals band wagon. 

And because I think this is so important and because I have slacked off (6) reading aloud to the children at bedtime.  First up will be Little House On the Prairie.

Some things of note.

*Father said something in his homily this morning that I want to note. "God's Will will never take you where God's grace will not follow.

*Also he spoke about what a powerful intercessor our Blessed Mother is for us. She loves us so much. Resolve in this new year to get to know her better. She will always lead you to her Son.

Scenes From New Years Eve

Once again this year we had a fondue party to ring in the New Year. It was just us and we had so much fun. These are memories I think I will always cherish, especially as these kids of mine get bigger. I was looking at the pictures of last years new years eve and I was amazed at how much the kids have grown. Most especially Henry, of course. Wow, time sure does fly. 

After Mass today Terry and I went out to breakfast. (after we dropped the kids off at home. hee hee) We had a brunch date. We talked about resolutions and the new year. Hopefully I will put up a separate post about that. My list is pretty long, however most of them involve the children!! So, I guess it involves my parenting ;0)

Happy New Year to you all!! May God bless you!

Winter Wonderland

We woke up this morning to a blanket of white. It is just so beautiful. I grabbed Terry's jacket and shoes and snuck out and snapped a couple of pictures while the snow was still on the branches. If the wind picks up around here the snow will fly off of the trees and it changes the whole look of this winter wonderland. The kids are begging me to get out there so I have to go and dig out all of the snow gear. I am praying we have the right sizes of boots, snowpants, gloves, etc. for everyone. Wish I would of planned ahead on this one. Oh well. it will all work out. I plan on continuing on my mountain of laundry today and knitting some more of Catherine's sweater. I see a lit fireplace and some Mexican hot chocolate in our future. Enjoy your day friends!

Christmas Eve 2012

That is my Joseph carrying the cross! Patrick also served, he carried the incesnse. It was his first time assisting with the incense. It make me almost cry when I see my boys assist at Holy Mass.

This is my favorite statue of our Blessed Mother. I love the look on her face. She is life sized and just so beautiful. 

We had such a wonderful evening all together! Merry Christmas!

 

preparing

The tree is decorated. Christmas music fills our home. After a major clean of the kitchen (a move the refrigerator kind of cleaning) we just finished a two day bake-a-thon. Mary Jane is quite the baker. We need to make one more batch of peppermint bark for teacher gifts. That needs to get done today. Also on the list...I need to make the pyrogies, wrap presents, Finish addressing Christmas cards, and grocery shopping for our Christmas eve and day meals. Terry is home so he and I will do this together :0)

I was in Walmart on Thursday getting all of our baking supplies and I started to get all choked up. I was thinking about my children and Terry and my Dad and how we are all going to be together over these next few days. No place to go. I feel so blessed to have this time together. I was so excited and overwhelmed at how blessed I am. In those same thoughts I think of those in Newtown, those families, those babies. I pray and beg mercy and grace for them...for all of us. 

Well, I am off for now. I promised John Paul he could help me make the dough for the pyrogies. I may have to give him his own little batch. Have a great weekend everyone!