Happy Easter!

Preparation.



After our Easter service.



Looking for, and finding, Easter treats at home.



Getting ready for our Easter feast.



We had a joyous, blessed Easter, and I hope you all did too!

Good Friday

Look what I found today.



This daffodil is alone, the solitary bloom amongst the spring bulbs scattered throughout our yard.

Today, this Good Friday, we remember Christ's sufferings and death and confront how utterly alone he was on the cross when he cried out, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") At this evening's service we will remember Christ's utter abandonment in our stead.

We are not ever alone, even when it seems we stick out like the first yellow bloom of spring. What an incredible comfort that is.

Best wishes for a blessed Good Friday and Easter to you all!

Psalm 51

Today marks the beginning of the season of Lent. This morning we read this psalm aloud in a brief service this morning at church and I thought it was a perfect psalm to reflect on during this penitential season.

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Return to Routine

A break from the routine of life for too long makes getting back into the swing of things difficult. When you've been sleeping until 9 a.m. it's not easy to rouse yourself earlier. When your days have been spent humming Christmas carols and baking cookies, it's not fun to return to learning about topic sentences (Madeleine) and nouns (Hank).

We eased back in today. Grammar. Reading. Playing Cribbage for math. Reading aloud from our history text, but performing a play about King Charles I of England's beheading instead of writing a summary of the execution. Slow. Easy.

We are calling it quits now at 3:16 p.m. Only half of my to-do list for today is crossed out and yet, despite the more relaxed day of schoolwork, I feel good, as if we accomplished something, as if a today were a success, and not a failure. Sometimes success and failure can't be quantified from items ticked off a to-do list. Sometimes it's those intangibles, like the absence of weeping and hysterics when we started reading aloud from The Treasury of Daily Prayer this morning and the realization set in that today was, *shudder*, a school day. Or that when I got out of the shower this morning, yes, I tripped over the eight gazillion toys littering our stairwell, but Madeleine and Hank had also taken it upon themselves and start and watch the next lesson on their Latin DVD and were halfway done with the workbook assignment.

So, for today, we rest. I will straighten up. I will cook. I will run Hank to hockey practice. All the while I will acknowledge, happily, that the first day back from Christmas vacation was a lot less painful than I anticipated.

Have a nice fall...

My knees are incredibly sore. Why, you ask? Because I'm a klutz. My goodness am I ever a klutz.

This morning I fell because of a combination of clumsiness and vanity. I was walking into our church through the side door (mistake #1) with Caroline slung over my arm in her infant carrier. There are three steps going down from the side door into our fellowship hall that are covered with that rubbery stuff that makes them skid proof (mistake #2; thanks, church ;) ). I was walking in with some friends and as I took the first step I twisted my head to say something to them (mistake #3) when all of a sudden my heel, which was, admittedly, a tall heel (oh, vanity!) got stuck on the non-skid stuff while my body was still moving forward.

BAM! Straight down on the hard, cold floor, right in front of about three to four other people (I am so thankful this is a low traffic entrance!). Caroline was fine, of course, since she was strapped in her car seat. She didn't make a peep and I don't think she even realized anything out of the ordinary happened. But me? I fell on my knees and hand and my left knee is throbbing. I can barely bend it and have been hobbling around all day like a doofus.

The moral of this story should be to stop wearing such impractical shoes and to stop gabbing. I will probably not do either of these things so I probably deserve to hobble around like an idiot.

Halloween/Reformation Day

Here are my three trick-or-treating kiddos just a few hours ago. Hank was a ninja and Madeleine and Elisabeth were our cats, Maisy and Moppet who, as you might have guessed, are gray and black respectively.



They scored scads of candy and I can't wait to dig into it once they're asleep (shhhhh! don't tell them!).

And now, Joe and I will switch gears into Reformation Day and go downstairs and watch Luther with Joseph Fiennes.

Caroline's Baptism, II

A follow-up in which I post better pictures. Thanks Dad and Diana!

Caroline's Baptism

I'm hoping some of the other photographers present at Caroline's baptism got some better shots than what I have. In each of mine someone in the picture has a wonky look on their face. Usually multiple people. Please, people, send me your .jpeg and .tif files-- I desperately want them!

In the interim, however, I'll share some of what I have.

Joe and me with Caroline following the service. The gown Caroline is wearing is the same gown worn by my great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother and now all four of my kids. While my mom and I did not wear it, others in our generations did, so the gown is on its fifth generation now. Of course, you can't really see the gown in any of my pictures because no one-- including me-- thought to get a close-up of just Caroline. Ugh!



Our whole crew.



Our family with Caroline's godparents.



Madeleine and Caroline with the cakes made by a very talented friend of ours from our congregation for Caroline's reception following the service.



I think most everyone who attended the service was able to join us for some cake, punch and coffee and I'm more than certain that at least fifty percent of our congregation held Caroline at some point. Madeleine kept asking when it would be her turn and grumbled how everyone else got to hold Caroline for too long. It was a fun celebration.

A much smaller crew including grandparents, godparents and a few friends joined us at home for a relaxing lunch that I failed to really record, photographically-speaking, except for the beautiful flowers Diana brought and the leftover cake.



As a side note, there are a million little things that happen through the course of life that make me miss my mom and it's usually the dumb little things, not the big important things. For instance, you'd think a big important day like Caroline's birth or her baptism would make my mom's absence hit home and it does, in a way, but you know what's really made her absence hit home today? The lack of pictures that I have from Caroline's baptism. Weird.

Anyway, it was a beautiful, happy day and such a joy to witness Caroline receive the blessings of baptism in the presence of family and so many good friends.

Checking In

I'm here. Or, at least, physically I'm here in my house, but mentally? My mind has been consumed with getting a room, clothes and a car seat ready for the baby, getting every last stitch of laundry done (not quite there, but close!), stocking our refrigerator and cabinets, planning a baptism and party, relaxing with a good book (just finished Willa Cather's The Professor's House, which was a lovely book), lunching and shopping with Diana and one last celebratory date night with Joe at one of our favorite restaurants.

How did I manage all this with three small kids underfoot? I didn't. Joe's mom and dad requested the kids for five days way back in May; how could I refuse? So, off the kids went with Grandma and Grandpa, who did all sorts of fun things with the kids like taking them camping, swimming, boating and on various day trips. We pick up the kids in a few short hours and while I'll be happy to see them, I don't know how I would have been ready for Caroline's arrival had I not had this week to get ready both physically and mentally.

Family Getaway

Last weekend capped of the end of our summer weekends away and while I'm glad to be home, we had a really fun weekend. Every year our church reserves this really great location right on a lake in Wisconsin's Northwoods. There are actually three buildings: a main house, a big kitchen house (with a few bedrooms off the back) and a dormitory building. This year we had about sixty people attend, and the buildings were easily able to accommodate our group.

What do we do there? Well, we eat. A lot. Everyone brings food and there's always way too much, but we sure have fun sampling other families favorite recipes while we're there. We play a lot of cards (Sheep's Head mostly). During the day we fish,



we kayak,



we read, chat and laugh. We play on the dock,



we rent a pontoon boat and go tubing and, of course, jump off the pontoon.



But, more than anything else we just relax. We attended for the first time last summer and after two years we're hooked-- we'll definitely be going back again next year!

Brewer Game

Joe and I like to try and get to Miller Park for a Brewer game at least a few times every season, and now that the kids are older they like to go too. For Father's Day we bought Joe tickets for a Friday night game and we all had a great time tailgating and watching the game from the nosebleed seats along the right field side.

This past Sunday our church hosted its annual Brewer outing, an event we had never attended before for various reasons. I am perfectly happy to watch a Brewer game from the nosebleed seats, but a member of our church works within the Brewer organization and the seats he reserved for us were MUCH more fun than the nosebleed seats. We were literally within shouting distance of Corey Hart and every time a ball was hit towards right field you could see it coming right at you. Here was our view.



Despite the Brewers pathetic play on Sunday, the game was still a lot of fun to watch and cheer. Hank loved following all the high school boys around.



And after the game the kids got to run the bases again, as they are able to do following most (all?) Sunday afternoon games.

Hank after rounding third base.



You can kind of see Madeleine's head poking up here (she's wearing a pink hat).



And Elisabeth running home while grudgingly holding Daddy's hand.

Lutheran Humor

So two Saturdays ago (the Saturday before Easter) Hank ran up to Joe with the following realization, "Dad! Tomorrow we can say the 'a' word again!!!!!"

Joe looked at me with an alarmed look on his face.

"Relax," I laughed. "He's talking about the 'a' word in the liturgy, not the 'a' word."

Peaceful Day

I came here to post about what a wonderful, peaceful day we are having. Everything that could go right has. The snow is falling gently outside, the kids and I are at home, safely, wrapped in our pajamas, bathrobes and slippers (and this at 11:28 a.m.!) yet we've had an amazingly successful day schooling already: catechism, math, spelling, reading, grammar, Latin, piano, handwriting; whatever was on my to-do list for school today is done.

And yet...

And yet I can't write the joyful post I had intended. When I checked my email moments ago I came across something that changed my mood entirely. I learned that somewhere out there a family I don't even know just lost their son, a newborn baby whose name is the same as my own son. I don't know the family; I don't even really know the family who posted the message from my dear list-serve of Lutheran home-schoolers, but I do know that somewhere out there a family has just lost their new son. And while I am still thankful for the wonderful day we've had and while I know that bad things happen every day in many different ways, I also know that some things touch us different days more than others and, today, this news touched me.

Today I will enjoy the peaceful day we're having, but I'm also reminded to hug my children a bit closer and to remember a grieving family out there-- somewhere-- who needs some extra prayers.

Good Friday

Wishing you all a blessed Good Friday.