What We've Been Up to Lately

DSC_6389, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Baby Robins - Day 11

Baby Robins - Day 11, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Those Annoying Little Things

Sometimes it's the little things we (yes, including *I*) complain about the most. But what an untapped potential for offering up little things for the healing of our culture. In particular, I've been thinking lately that if we offer up all of our little annoyances with accommodations made for disabled people (like the sometimes disproportionately large numbers of handicapped parking spaces) for disabled people themselves, and especially that the parents of disabled unborn children will choose to let them live, we could perhaps do something really good with those little annoyances (and make sure we cultivate positive attitudes toward disabled people in ourselves and in our families too).

Just thinkin'. :)

Graduation!

Graduation Mass, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

We attended the beautiful high school graduation Mass and ceremony for our homeschool group earlier this week. It was so nice! There were nine graduates, including one Van Hecke nephew who will be heading to Christendom College in the fall.

I love this picture of the priest giving a lovely homily to the graduates. My husband took the photo.

I also have a niece and nephew (siblings) on my side of the family who will be heading to TAC next school year.

Birds Awake (Day 6)

DSC_5899, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Speaking of Robins...

...another Catholic homeschool family has baby robins in their yard. Check out the cool video of the mama bird feeding the babies!

Science of Relations

Baby Birds Update (Day 5)

DSC_5872, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Photos from yesterday: The baby robins are four or five days old and don't seem to have opened their eyes yet. They were sleeping peacefully while I took pictures, but we've definitely seen them awake too.

I can't believe how fast they're growing. The nest is starting to look full. Contrast with Monday's picture.

7 Quick Takes

1.

It was very much a week of celebrations of all sorts, really. Monday I celebrated my 39th birthday... for the first time. John and I went to see Star Trek. We're not Trekkies in any sense of the word (except for the fact that I've probably seen all the episodes of the original TV series once upon a time) - it was just the most interesting-sounding movie on the list at the local theater. It was unexpectedly fun and rather delightful, aside from one or two rather crude moments early in the movie.

2.

Ria was confirmed this week! She chose two names - Gilbert and Karol. Gilbert is after G.K. Chesterton (though there are some "official" St. Gilberts as well) and Karol, of course, is after Pope John Paul II.

Sadly, my in-laws weren't able to make it to the confirmation as my mother-in-law spent most of the week in the hospital after stomach surgery on Monday. Happily, she returned home yesterday evening and is resting comfortably and very much over the worst.

3.



It was also a week of getting together with members of the Catholic online community.

On Tuesday night we hosted a potluck for Ana and family as they made their way home from ND. We had 55 people here! It's already the most beautiful week of the year, with many blossoming trees, lush green grass and new leaves on most of the trees. The weather also cooperated beautifully! We had a delightful visit filled with food, fun, dancing and good conversation.

Last night our family attended a Latin Tridentine Mass for the Feast of the Ascension. It was organized by members of our Latin Club (so John and I actually brought 11 people with us - including six of our kids) and we planned to head out for some famous Wisconsin Frozen Custard afterwards, to celebrate the Feast and Ria's 16th birthday. The Mass was very nice and the St. Anthony Choir (which includes my brother-in-law and two nephews) provided beautiful music.

The priest shared a delightfully funny story during the homily, which I will attempt to re-tell here. He was talking about various theories regarding the end of the world. Apparently one lady at a previous parish he attended insisted that he warn his congregation that the world was going to end the next day (or sometime that week, I can't remember the particulars). He explained to her that he always preaches about conversion and wouldn't do anything different this time. The following week (after the world was supposed to have ended) she came up to him excitedly and said: You are such a good priest! Your prayers have stayed the hand of God! ;)

Afterwards, Robert introduced us to Matthew Alderman, who recently relocated to the Milwaukee area. Ria and I have been fans of his beautiful artwork for some time and he ended up very kindly accepting our invitation to join our little celebration at Kopp's Frozen Custard. The slightly surreal aspect of the meeting was that I had read half of his blog post on ND yesterday morning, and the thought was unexpectedly completed with the author in real life that same evening. Life is funny!

4.

I was pleased to discover a week or two ago that I qualify for Amazon.com's Vine Program - which provides top reviewers with free review materials of all sorts. Though I receive many Catholic review materials through my work for Love2learn, I like to promote good books and publishers through Amazon already and when I only read books from a limited field, I get burnt out very quickly. So I ordered a few interesting-sounding books, including a picture book about children with autistic siblings and a non-fiction title about a soccer team composed of refugees. Interesting stuff!

Unfortunately, when I received the latest edition of their review offerings yesterday, I had too many out-standing books to request more - and one of the review items was a Flip Videocamera! (I bought a very inexpensive Flip Videocamera for John for Valentine's Day, thanks to a tip from Danielle, but we managed to break the screen just a few weeks later.) Whaddya do?

5.

The gardens are coming along, though there's always too much to do terribly well. We're actually eating some lettuce (both red lettuce and Mesclun sweet mix) and arugula (which I wasn't really familiar with before). The potted cherry tomatoes (which we started from seed in February, I think) are coming along beautifully. I think we'll be eating some in a week or so. We also have spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, zucchini and onions growing pretty well.

6.

Late last week (or was it early this week) I finished reading Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy for the first time. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but it's basically the story of how a very devoted couple walked the path from atheism to Christianity. It's quite a touching romance and C.S. Lewis plays a major role. Can't wait to get my hands on the sequel, Under the Mercy. It also makes me want to go back and re-read all of the C.S. Lewis I read in high school and READ all the C.S. Lewis I haven't yet read. Good stuff!

7.

Last, but certainly not least, I'm very excited about my friend Karen's new book on the Rosary. I'm reading it slowly, amidst the other miscellaneous books and am enjoying it very much. It's simple and very accessible. Not necessarily things I didn't already know, but insights and helpful ways of understanding things (and possibly sharing them with others). Here's a little sample:

The Church affirms that we are to give the mother of our Lord the respect she deserves, which was foretold in Luke 1:48, "All generations will call me blessed." And simply put, why would we not wish to offer her love, honor and respect? Mary surrendered herself completely to all that accompanied bringing our Saivor into the world, including intense suffering. Seeking to emulate her faith is not an act of worship; it is an act of learning from another disciple.

Robin's Nest (Day 1)

DSC_5722, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Three baby birds in the robin's nest in the kids' playset have hatched so far (two yesterday and one during the night or early this morning) with one more to go. Ria took this picture this morning while the mama bird was away (by special request for Katrina).

Sleeping Ducks

Sleeping Ducks, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

This is what I found outside our front window this morning. :)

Please note the creatively-manicured lawn from the new kid-powered mower.

Schoenstatt Marian Shrine

DSC_5640, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

My mom asked me to take some pictures at our local Schoenstatt Marian Shrine the other day. This is one of my favorites. It's really beautiful in Wisconsin right now, with many trees in bloom like this one.

7 Quick Takes

1. I have a new great-niece who was born earlier this week - Anna Philomena! Can't wait to meet her (and at least see photos soon, I hope!). Congratulations M & M!

2. It's been a major book-buying week, between a fortuitous trip to the local thrift store (that was having a two-for-one deal on adult non-fiction) and a big rummage sale we dropped by that had a huge selection of books. I wonder sometimes, if those who look at my LibraryThing account might think we have a large book-buying budget. The reality is that there are all kinds of books that I can't resist when they're priced at 5 for $1. :)

And please keep in mind that just because I own a book (all of which I try to keep track of on LibraryThing) doesn't mean that I recommend it!

Favorite finds this week include a binder full of fun-looking chemistry reproducible activities (think crossword puzzles and such) and a couple copies of "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" to have around for gifts. Saddest finds were a batch of Catholic (some good and some not-so-good) books all belonging to one person (name left in the books) that seemed to tell a story of confusion and withdrawal from the Catholic Church over time.

3. We got a little sixteen-inch non-motorized lawn-mower for the little areas in our yard that the rider mower just can't handle. As expected, this is a huge hit with the kids. Their new-found creativity in lawn-mowing... um... shows.

4. Regina Doman blogged this week about The Midnight Dancers production that several of my girls were involved in. You can see her post here.

5. I can't believe that Ria is turning 16 next week (as well as receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation). I took her out for her first parking-lot driving lesson a few days ago. She did very well!

6. I listened in on Fr. Mitch Pacwa's webinar today at Homeschool Connections. It was very good! A good friend of mine, Dr. Robert Gotcher, will be offering some high school classes there this summer. Hoping to sign Ria up with at least one (they look really good and she thrives on that sort of thing) as she has very much enjoyed his Catholic Lit class this year. More info available at the Homeschool Connections blog.

7. And on a related note (I might have mentioned this already - I forget.) - I'm scheduled to host a webinar myself at Homeschool Connections on Choosing Educational Materials on Wednesday, June 10th.

The Water is Running!

The Water is Running!, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Our almost-overdue (we had water leakage problems under the old one) bathtub project is almost done. :)

100 Species Project - The First Fifteen

We're doing pretty well on the 100 Species Challenge since we started last week over on our gardening blog. Here are our first 15 species identified (plus a 16th we're rather unsure of) with links to the posts the kids wrote on each plant over on the gardening blog.

By the way, the kids did all of the photography, except perhaps the gladiolas from last summer.

1. Ornamental Apricot Tree

2. Tulips - More Pictures Here (I love how the red ones seem to magically appear amongst the yellow a few days after the yellow ones start to open up.)

3. Apple Tree (with beautiful leaf buds just opening up - this tree should be blooming in a few more days)

4. Rhododendron (Or is it an Azalea)

5. Crab Apple Tree (this one should be blooming soon too)

6. Daffodils

7. Rose Bush

8. Gladiolas (This one was kind of cheating. It's definitely not blooming right now, but one team decided to post a picture from last summer.)

9. Wild Pansies

10. Birch Tree

11. Buckthorn (Ugh. We're always trying to get rid of this stuff. It's not native to the area and is super-invasive.)

12. Dandelion

13. Wild Violets

14. Mustard Weeds

15. Phlox

16. Purple Iceplant?

Jumping for Joy

DSC_3652, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

This is a picture of me with Bernie and Kate after a Mass at Holy Hill a few weeks ago.

It's Been a Busy Week!

And it's nice to catch up on posting just a bit.

We had a good-sized group take the National Latin Exam at our home back in March and I was finally able to have an awards ceremony a few days ago.


They did really well! I can't take credit as these students are basically teaching themselves Latin, but for the past few months I've been running a twice-monthly Latin "support group" to answer questions, provide a bit of a lending library and do various activities in a group setting.

All of our high school students earned medals, which was very exciting! (This is our 4th year doing NLE and the results tend to vary significantly from year to the next.)

All in all, we had:

Intro: 1 Certificate

Level 1: 1 Magna Cum Laude Certificate, 3 Maxima Cum Laude Silver Medals, 1 Summa Cum Laude Gold Medal

Level 3: 1 Maxima Cum Laude Silver Medal, 1 Summa Cum Laude Gold Medal

Student ages ranged from 5th grade through 11th grade.

Salad Tables Progressing...

I wrote about the construction of our salad tables back here. We have several kinds of lettuce, spinach, green onions, cauliflower and broccoli planted in them. (Probably some other things too, I forget at the moment.)

They seem to be particularly nice for early in the season planting in our area. Keeping them up against the house seems to keep them a lot warmer when it freezes at night (though I tuck them in under old blankets when it freezes - we've had a week+ of above-freezing temps at night!). I'm still experimenting a bit with things. I'm guessing that some of them (especially cauliflower and broccoli) will have to be transplanted into the bigger garden before they're fully grown. Also not quite sure if we should have packed the dirt a bit higher. Guess we'll be learning a lot about gardening this year!

Here's what they look like today:

Kitchen Bookshelf and other projects...

My parents were here over Easter and my dad loves to have projects to work on with the family when he's here. Holy Thursday was particularly busy as John took a half day off from work and we had multiple projects going.

I love this kitchen bookshelf they built. It even makes the folding chairs underneath look good.

This used to be a doorway to a room that had two entrances. Not particularly helpful for us! My husband closed it off early last year and we finally get to make use of the space on the kitchen side.

The shelving has enough room for all of our cookbooks, our big recipe box (a 5x7 index card box that easily holds recipes printed from the Internet or torn out of magazines and folded in half), plus our liturgical year books and books on gardening and home improvement/repair.

By the way, the picture is taken from a funny angle, it's not *really* crooked! :)