7 Quick Takes

1.

One of the problems with being on Twitter and Facebook is that my little tidbits that I want to save and share get slightly discombobulated. And so I was very surprised to discover this morning that I hadn't mentioned here that our whole family went to see UP and really, really enjoyed it (I think we even laughed louder than the other people in the theater - but it was surprisingly uncrowded when we went - and we're a pretty big, loud bunch sometimes!).

I used the movie plans as an incentive to get some things finished up for the school year and we had a really exceptional two weeks of concerted efforts beforehand - which is an entirely fair thing because it does cost a small fortune to bring eight people to a movie!

Yes, UP is as good as everyone's been saying - perhaps even better.

2.

And speaking of kiddos, they're all home now and still sleeping as a matter of fact. Everyone did great at the Schoenstatt Catholic summer camp and even Ria, who was counseling, had an even more enjoyable time than she expected and made many new friends too. (Of course it didn't hurt anyone's feelings that all the girls got to go to a local indoor waterpark that's owned by some fans-of-Schoenstatt.)

I was particularly proud of our 9 year old, Bernie, who can definitely be on the shy side, but made some great new friends rather than just hanging out with her 11 year old sister and 12 year old cousin. There were 60 or so campers all together and they put on a lovely set of skits and songs for the parents last night. The Magnificat they sang as a group at the end (pictured here) was incredible!

3.

John and I started a new exercise routine with a video I picked up on a sort of whim at Target the other day. It's a Jillian Michaels' workout and it's tough! I'm on day five and it's starting to get a little better - especially since I finally found our three pound weights which I swapped for the fivers!

4.

Here's a shot from our favorite patriotic parade:

Funny how all of the kiddos (and not just in our family - but other families nearby) recognize the Hudson Hornet because of the Cars movie.

This is a great parade because it has lots of great content (there must have been eight bands plus a bunch of church choirs and such) without all of the crowds. One of our favorite little traditions (which started, like many great things, by accident) is to make homemade ice cream during the parade and eat it once we start getting really hot. Yum!

5.

We've had three undeveloped rolls of film kicking around for an exceptionally large amount of time. Part of the reason for that is before digital we owned two film cameras. John had his SLR, which I thoroughly intimidated me, and after a little haranging, we got an easy-to-use point-and-shoot. The point-and-shoots film got developed pretty regularly (partly because the kids also were allowed to use it and we went through film a lot faster), but the SLR was a little neglected.

Well, this week I discovered that they were between 3 and 7 years old. Yep, I finally got them developed. Here's one of our favorites:

This is a shot of some of the kiddos at Ria and Gus's big Lord of the Rings themed birthday party, circa 2002. Their birthdays are in May and August, but this one year we agreed to combine them for an extra-special party. It was a lot of fun! (And those "magical elven cloaks", made from a roll of upholstery cloth I picked up at a rummage sale, still show up all over the place!)

6.

I have the next issue of mater et magistra magazine in my possession for proof-reading and it looks good! Don't forget to subscribe to this great little Catholic homeschool magazine if you haven't already. More info here. They now have their own Facebook page here!

7.

I'm pretty excited about a book I received for review yesterday that's due to be published in September. It's called NurtureShock and it's intended to have a big impact on breaking some of society's misguided conventions regarding parenting and education; which looks like an exceptionally good thing - at least from the first couple of chapters I've read so far.

Also, if you've read this article on "The inverse power of praise" (and if you haven't yet, you should), you'll get a little taste, because this article (which debunks conventional thinking about "self-esteem") is written by one of the authors of NurtureShock and the subject matter of the article is part of what's covered in this book.

Our Week in Half

Half our family, that is (and also about half a week)! Three of the girls were at camp this week (two campers and one counselor), so I've been trying to do some fun and unusual things with the rest of the kiddos.

Monday - We went up to Holy Hill for Mass for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul and packed a lunch and some sketchbooks (along with a small set of Prismacolors). After Mass and Lunch we headed into their huge scenic tower, found a cozy corner out of the wind on the second-from-the-top level and drew pictures. We also did some sketching in the church and the shrine and ended our long peaceful afternoon with some really good pie at the Monastery Inn Cafe. Yum!








Tuesday - Frank became interested in playing this game - Deck of Chores - which I quickly adjusted by breaking the tasks into smaller pieces - and they loved it. I agreed to take them bowling if they did the entire game the following day. Still have to follow that one up as the bowling alley was closed yesterday.

We made a big trip to a local library they had never been to before and came away with 46 items checked out - yikes! It was a lovely, newer, very roomy library with a huge separate room for the children's section. And my favorite part - they had a special place for children's non-fiction; it was enormous and filled with lots of interesting goodies. Most of the local libraries are mixing the children's non-fiction in with the adult non-fiction. I suppose it's easier for finding things via the card catalog, but it absolutely stinks for fun kid-browsing.

We went home and watched a DVD I had never heard of before that we picked up on a whim: Tortoise vs. Hare: The Rematch of the Century. We loved it!

Later, Gus and John and I watched Kris Correira's webinar on Cohesion and Adhesion at Homeschool Connections (where you can watch the recording if you're interested), which introduced the basic concepts, showed us some fun (but simple) experiments and answered questions. Very cool! (Kate and Frank watched That Darn Cat during the webinar.)




Wednesday - Yesterday I picked up some food coloring, cotton string and medicine droppers so that Gus could do the science experiments from the webinar with his younger siblings. They were duly impressed and soon everyone was racing small colored droplets of water around on waxed paper and scaring pepper like crazy.

Last night we walked to a local tennis court and shot balls around for awhile (I really need to buy some new ones as we have exactly three really old tennis balls in our possession.)

And as a grand finale to our big plans, we camped out in the backyard last night. (And no, that's not our picture - it was cloudy and cool all night.)

We still owe them on the bowling.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Congratulations (and many thanks) on 53 years!

1956



2009

Well, actually, this photo was taken in 2004 and is missing six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, but it's the best we've got for the moment. We're having another family reunion this summer and hope to get a somewhat more complete group photo then. :)

St. Paul, Wall-to-Wall

This is the first time I've felt really connected to a special church year theme throughout the year. That's because, during this year of St. Paul, we've incorporated a lot of his writings (as well as some writings about him) into our teen discussion group. And so we've tackled a number of his letters and are currently reading through Pope Benedict's book on St. Paul.

The main thing I've learned this year is that St. Paul's thinking pervades the Church's teaching and tradition and should pervade our thinking as well.

Here are a few samplings, from Pope Benedict's book, on what was so special about St. Paul:

Paul thus appears to be at the intersection between three different cultures - Roman, Greek and Jewish - and perhaps partly because of this was disposed for fruitful universalistic openness, for a mediation between cultures, for true universality.

Wow - he certainly seems like a saint for our times! I love the phrase "fruitful universalistic openness"!

And the discourse of the Areopagus, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, is the model of how to translate the Gospel into Greek culture, of how to make Greeks understand that this God of the Christians and Jews was not a God foreign to their culture but the unknown God they were awaiting, the true answer to the deepest questions of their culture.

It's neat to see that the Church's tradition of taking something pagan and remaking it for her own purposes, has been with us from the earliest days of the Church.

Here's a beautiful description of what St. Paul's conversion did for him:

This expanded his heart and made it open to all. At this moment he did not lose all that was good and true in his life, in his heritage, but he understood wisdom, truth, the depth of the Law and of the prophets in a new way and in a new way made them his own. At the same time, his reasoning was open to pagan wisdom. Being open to Christ with all his heart, he had become capable of an ample dialogue with everyone, he had become capable of making himself everything to everyone. Thus he could truly be the Apostle to the Gentiles.

And a follow-up of how this applies to our own lives:

Turning now to ourselves, let us ask what this means for us. It means that fo rus too Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ. Of course, he does not show himself to us in this overwhelming, luminous way, as he did to Paul to make him the Apostle to all peoples. But we too can encounter Christ in reading Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ's Heart and feel him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians. And in this way our reason opens, all Christ's wisdom opens, as do all the riches of truth.

Building a Culture of Life - Part 8

8. "Replace Them"

Early last year I accompanied a group of teens from our catechism discussion group to a local talk by Archbishop Chaput on "Catholics in the Public Square". Because the audience was composed mostly of people older than myself, our big row of teens were pretty prominent. It was an interesting talk with lots of food for thought and one that we still bring up in our discussions on occasion.

One particularly memorable comment by the Archbishop was in a response to one of the audience questions after the talk. The questioner wanted to know what the Archbishop thought we should do about "Catholic" politicians who support abortion. The answer was perhaps a bit surprising, given our activist inclinations, but it made a lot of sense for me in the end, and was definitely a concept that inspired this blog series on Building a Culture of Life (which I've been pretty negligent of for many months).

Anyway, this is what he answered in a nutshell. He said that it was his duty as Archbishop to engage in dialogue with politicians who claimed to be Catholic, but supported abortions. He indicated that it was perhaps a bit of a "lost cause" (Though I like to keep in mind, of course, that lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.), but that it was necessary, nevertheless. Then he exhorted the audience to remember that they had a different job - their job was to replace those politicians. When he said this, he pointed to the young people in the audience and indicated that it was our job to prepare our young people to go out and change the world and be prepared to play their important roles in changing the culture.

Giraffe Peek-a-Boo

DSC_7924, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

Peacock at the Zoo

DSC_7950, originally uploaded by Chez VH.

We went to the zoo for Father's Day. Isn't this guy amazing?

I Love How...

...Kate and Frank have figured out how to keep track of the Hail Marys for each decade of the Rosary on their fingers using Sign Language numbers - which means that they only need to use one hand. They can actually keep track of what decade they're on using their other hand. Thanks, Signing Time! :)

A Little About the Making of Darby O'Gill and the Little People

(Which is one of our favorite movies.)

Library Craziness

Twice this month I've made huge trips to local libraries in which I've checked out twenty-odd picture books to see which ones we like and might be willing to recommend (particularly for a unit study I'm working on for mater et magistra magazine). There are plenty of ones that needed only a quick glance before I didn't bother and several that we finished reading, but were only so-so. Here is a list of our favorites so far:

Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts! by Lynne Truss

Wonderful Words: Poems about Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins

As: A Surfeit of Similes by Norton Juster

How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear?: What are Homonyms and Homophones? by Brian P. Cleary

What's Inside: Fascinating Structures Around the World by Giles Laroche

Here are two more that we haven't quite finished reading yet (just nosed through quite a bit) and really liked so far:

G is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book by David Schwartz

Go Figure! A totally cool book about numbers by Johnny Ball

P.S. We're also in the process of reading Ethel Pochocki's Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints (from Bethlehem Books) and really like it so far. There have been a few spots that made me furrow my brow or that seemed just a little too silly, but these have been more than compensated for by some incredibly beautiful stories that are really well done. There was a little bit in the story of Juan Diego that bothered me (a little off on the Aztec story) and an aspect of the story of St. Nicholas that I thought pretty disturbing for young children, but some of the other stories, like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Thomas Aquinas are really lovely and the one we just finished - on St. Paul Miki and St. Charles Lwanga - has an absolutely stunning and incredibly appropriate explanation of the martyrs. Fabulous stuff and I very much look forward to reading the rest. Oh yes, and Ben Hatke's illustrations (he also illustrated Angel in the Waters by Regina Doman) are wonderful!

Filling in the Dots...

So we were here yesterday, but we missed a lot of it since my 9 year old forgot her shoes! I thought we were "done for" which would have been very frustrating after trying to connect a bunch of people together for a group outing. Fortunately, after we gathered all of the families together, one of the moms, who lived nearby and had an older child at the house, suggested that we drive over to her house to borrow a pair of shoes. And so we did enjoy a little visit to Old World Wisconsin, with lots of friends (old and new) and here are a few fun pictures to prove it. :)

The water pump in the Danish area was a big hit with our group:



WATER! I love how Frank's determined little face is peeking out from between all the girls:



Two munchkins from our group working the water pump.



Megan's sweet little Catherine. We had another baby with our group too, but I didn't manage to get a picture of him.

I'm so excited...

...that we finally get to meet this family today, who are new additions to our homeschool group.

Please Pray

Please pray for Fr. Robert Mueller, a priest who has been very involved with and supportive of our local homeschool group. He'll be having surgery today to remove a blood clot from his brain.