7 Quick Takes Friday

1.

What's Cookin'? I post not because I think I am inspiring (I'm not), but to show a glimpse of Real Life (really modest cooking). As I remind myself, in order not to cry, I'm a homeschooling parent, not a gourmet cook.

Monday--meal for a new mother, doubled for us
Delectable Marinated Chicken
Rice Pilaf
Peas and Onions

Tuesday--Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Calzones
Salad
Butter Brickle Cake

Wednesday
Fast food on the drive home because we stayed too late at a play date and got caught in rush hour traffic to boot.

Thursday
Pancakes

Friday plan--Two big outings that day and husband (still) out of town
Frozen pizza

Saturday plan--Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Taco night
Chips and guacamole
Mexican Wedding Cakes

Sunday plan--Mass and two outings afterward planned
Restaurant or delivery

2.

Great videos of catechism instructions for adult converts to the Catholic Church can be found at the website of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a parish of the FSSP.

3.

Thomas can now sit in a high chair! Sometimes this buys me a few minutes while cooking.

This four-and-a-half month-old baby is so big that I accidentally put his 18-month shirt on his 34-pound big brother and it still took me till mid-afternoon of thinking Joseph's shirt was just a bit too tight before I realized the mix-up.

4.

Wednesday park play date with pals . . .

4.

John's bicycling range around our neighborhood has increased since his grandpa gave him 18-mile-range walkie talkies for his ninth birthday. It's not that John is allowed to ride 18 miles away, but he's allowed out of my sight!

Walkie talkie on Mama's Ergo belt

5.

This sign is seriously helping us. It deserves its own blog post some time.

6.

Another week of diligent music practice, another visit to Amelie's! This time the children and I took along "A Christmas Carol" to continue reading aloud. The event was lovely and I was so please we were spending our time in quiet interaction with each other.

I calculated that John and Mary are practicing about 130 songs per week now, a lot of them tough songs, like Valse Triste below, a piece in progress.

7.

On Friday, we attended a children's production of "Scrooge." I am disappointed to miss any chance at theatre, I enjoy it so much, but I had to keep the baby and two-year-olds out, so I sent my older ones in with another mother.

Look at that fat baby, not yet 5 months!

The production was a traditional interpretation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," even with the grim reaper as model for the ghost of Christmas Future, but was shortened from two hours to one for children and was not overly frightening. I am so happy to have the privilege of attending these events with my kids (even if I do have to sit outside sometimes!) instead of my children making these annual memories with buses full of fellow schoolchildren, as I saw many today.

During the play, I took my two littlest boys for a walk along a several miles trail through the woods . . .

. . . and then to the charming small town library, where we checked out a whole slew of new books on CD. As school slows down during the next few weeks around Christmas, I hope for many afternoons of us listening to classic literature while we play board games and such.

It is always a challenge when we visit the library for me to enforce my rule that "we're not here to sit at the computer, we're here to look at books" (or play with puzzles, if you're a little tyke!), but so far I've managed it. It's not that we never use computers, but I'm not going to pack up five children, drive us somewhere, and manage snacks, waters, and public potties so they can simply veg out in front of a computer screen, which they could have done at home!

I'm no Luddite, but I've got to say that it sure is nigh impossible for books to compete with flashy video games on an array of computer screens when we go to the library: getting the children to steer away from them takes a lot of parental strength.

Check out 7 Quick Takes Friday, hosted this week by Written by the Finger of God!