Baseball Season

It's Little League season!  

This is our first year of managing the balancing act of two teams.  Gabriel is playing his first year of tee-ball and Dominic has moved up to the Rookie (Coach-pitch) division.  It has been a busy couple of months with baseball generally filling up three or four days in our week, but the end is in sight with just one month to go.  It also helps that the boys are having a BALL.  They are working hard, practicing their skills and just LOVING the game.  So it has sincerely been a joy to make the sacrifices to get them to their practices and games.  I am very proud of both of them!  

Epiphany Party

We culminated our Christmas celebrations by hosting an Epiphany party with good friends.  This was our 8th Christmas get together-- We started out as engaged couples and newlyweds, and now each year we add more children!  We totaled 17 children this year.  :-) 

The kids put on their annual Christmas pageant, which was chaotic and sweet at the same time.  

2015 Reading Log

Six months of nausea followed two months in the NICU and more months of colic do not make for a very bookish year!  That being said, a habit of 5-minutes or so of daily reading did add up to about 30 books (hoping I recorded them all!)  And I do like having a record of what I read for myself however, so here we go...

Spiritual Reading

**Conversation with Christ by Rev. Peter Thomas Rohrbach

*Story of a Soul by St. Terese of Lisieux (reread)

The Way of Perfection by St. Teresa of Avila

Holy is the Day: Living in the Gift of the Present by Carolyn Weber

Lay Siege to Heaven by Louis de Wohl

Familiaris Consortio, by Saint Pope John Paul II

The Apostolate of Holy Motherhood, by Mark I. Miravelle

*Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves, by Jason Evert

Prayer Primer, by Thomas Dubay

**Holiness for Housewives by Hubert Van Zeller (reread)

33-Days to Morning Glory by Michael Gaitley

The Advent of Christ by Edward Sri

Fiction/For Fun

*Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

*Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

Anne of Avonlea by LM Montgomery

Anne of the Island by LM Montgomery

Anne and the House of Dreams by LM Montgomery

Lizzy and Jane by Katherine Reay

The Precious One by Marisa de Los Santos

Non-Fiction

**For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer-Macaulay

Blueprint Homeschooling by Amy Knepper

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin

Read for the Heart by Sarah Clarkson

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Anchored by Kayla Aimee

Teaching in your Tiara by Rebecca Frech

*Essentialism by Greg McKeown

I'll include a log of the many books I read with the kids towards the end of our school year.  Here is our list from early 2015.

*Favorite

**Drop everything and read it now!

Christmas Day and a 2nd Birthday for Nicholas

Through the week leading up to Christmas I kept experiencing panicky moments that I would forget to bake a birthday cake for Nicholas, our Christmas baby.  Navigating around a December 25th birthday is proving to be a new experience for us.  Thankfully we have a few early years to find our rhythm before his childhood memories catch up to us.  All was well in the end; we even came up with the idea of setting up a "birthday table", away from the Christmas tree.  This year's birthday table theme was Thomas the Train.  Thomas birthdays have become a right of passage for all of my boys!

Michael and I had anticipated that our little larks would wake even earlier than usual on Christmas morning.  I woke up around 6AM to a quiet house and was surprised not to hear a peep for another half-hour or so.  It proved to be the calm before a storm of surprises and fun!

Happy 2nd Birthday to our Nicholas!

The boys opened their stockings before heading to 8AM mass.

 

 

 

After mass we brunched and celebrated at home with both sets of grandparents, my brother and sister-in-law and the cousins. 

 

After brunch and afternoon naps we continued the celebrations at my Mom and Dad's house.

It was a lovely Christmas day, we are so blessed!