I have this crazy idea to go to the beach again tomorrow. Jekyll Island is 2 hours away from us here and I think I have convinced my husband that we should go. I have to say, I have really fallen in love with the Atlantic. While the Great Lakes will always be my first love, the Atlantic takes a close second. The waves are endless and awesome to ride. The kids have lots of sand to run on and dig in and I can relax.

The weather here is in the 80s today and tomorrow! Of course, the cool weather of today is brought on by rain showers, a major down pour right now…nice.

Today I sorted the last box of kids clothes from the move. These are clothes that I just tossed in to a box, so they really needed a good sort. I put away all of Caecilia’s 18 month clothes and now she shares with Margaret. I have to roll pants up, if she wears them, but everything else fits.

Since I am willing to leave the house tomorrow, I think that means no baby this weekend! 🙂

The bedroom has been rearranged! The biggest bonus of the moving of the bed is that now the bed is directly under the air vent. Cool air is blowing on me now, I am somewhat chilly! Ahhhh.

A friend commented on my previous post about being excited about finding out the name and gender of the baby. I have to say, that I am like a kid on Christmas morning right now. I am very excited to find out what we are having and to share the name we have finally decided on. Trust me, they ROCK!

Dinner ended up not being the AB chicken. When I opened the packed, what I thought was an already butterflied chicken turned out to be just a whole chicken cut up. I placed it in a 9 x 13 pan, on top of chopped onions, carrots and celery then baked it  with a sprinkle of Old Bay Seasonings. Served with mashed potatoes and gravy, yum!

I was reading Laura’s blog and she has a nesting list. I am two weeks away from my due date and I am just now thinking of what to do for the baby. Laura has clothes washed and folded. Me? I thought of going to Target to pick up a packet or two of onesies to get through the first week. (After all, our newborn clothes are all winter clothes!!)

Sigh. Laura, you are my nesting hero.

I have had some thoughts of preparing for the baby today though. I have a nice list for Joshua started. It starts with moving boxes around the work room, so that it we can put more totes back there, moving the gray totes from our room to the work room, move bedroom furniture around for easier home birth set up and move the changing table in to our room for the midwife to use as a set up station.

Joshua worked from home today, so I took the older two to the library and they got their own library cards and were able to pick out a book each. I took out a Little House book to read to the kids along with a book about the citrus growing area for Karol to read with me. Last night I took the two older ones out to the park and they had such a good time. Fear not, I do play with Caecila during the day, but it is very hard for me to take all of them out right now.

I actually have this image in my mind of what October will be like. I will take the kids over to the park, with the wee baby in the sling, and while they play, I will read and drink coffee. I also imagine that there will be crisp cool-ish air. (Does the humidity ever quit down here?!)

I have plans for dinner tonight too, a roast chicken recipe from Alton Brown. AB has yet to let me down, so I look forward to making it. Thankfully it takes about fifteen minutes to prepare and a half hour to bake. I think I may make biscuits to go along with it, I really like AB’s biscuit recipe. Of course, one cannot have roasted chicken without having mashed potatoes. I really like mashed potatoes, really really really like them.

Have a great Wednesday, everyone!

Yep, yep, yep, we certainly are. We have been going back and forth about registering at a parish and have not quite felt comfortable with the parish here in town. The next parish over, while a nice building with a good homily has actually set the standard for the worst a Catholic parish can get in terms of music. (Yes, Marion, St Mary people, it was that bad, Joshua concurs).

We had heard about a parish north of here, in Macon. Macon, for your daily geography lesson, is 150 miles north of here. We had heard about it from Joshua’s boss, who has known the pastor there for many a years. Joshua contacted Father and after a conversation and an email exchange, we decided to head up there to visit the parish for Mass.

Best Call Ever.

We have been searching for a parish since we left Indiana three and a half years ago and we have finally found one where we feel at home, St Joseph in Macon, Georgia. Sure, it is 150 miles away, yes it takes two hours to get there, without traffic, no we will not be able to go to Mass there every Sunday, but we will try to at least once, perhaps twice a month.

We were able to meet with Father right after Mass also and set up a date for the Baptism of baby, provided he/she arrives on time. Father was very wonderful in that regard, opening his schedule and offering a date for us, shortly after my due date, but with understanding that we might have to change! (Pray that he/she comes early, for the sake of my sanity!)

(Major Topic Jump Ahead)

Groceries here in our part of the state are expensive. The produce is from Chile, Canada and California. The peaches at the store are from anywhere but Georgia. (Raise your hand if your grocery store had Georgia Peaches right now!) In addition to being from points yonder, produce is also expensive. We are talking about $2 for a green pepper, $1.50 for a single cucumber and 70 cents a pound for bananas. All of which go bad within two days of purchase.

I found a fruit and veggie market south of town that stocks more local produce, tomatoes from Tennessee, peaches from Georgia, cucumbers from a local grower with out wax four for a dollar and green peppers, three for a dollar! So, I solved my produce issue. However, we do eat other items, like cheese, milk and meat,  that are almost cost prohibitive for us and I really had to shrink back what we bought because I could find myself spending my weekly grocery budget on food that really would not last the week. Meal planning really helped stretch the food out, but I wanted to find more of a way to stock up on staples with out killing our bank.

Kroger is the answer, Kroger has always been the answer to our family grocery budget. Of course, we  do not have a Kroger here in town, but there is one in Macon! This morning, we put the cooler in the van and headed up the road. After mass we went to Kroger and honestly, I was so thrilled to be there. First of all, the produce section (though not needed) was nice and organized as well as very fresh looking but most of all, things were so much cheaper up there. Of course, we hit a few sales but also stocked up on things that we just cannot get for a good price here, like frozen orange juice and meat and loaded up the cooler.

We figure that when we go up for Mass, we will stock up at Kroger also. Of course, we need to plan for lunch a bit better. We planned on buying something from the deli section of Kroger then eating at a park. We stopped at a rest area on 75 and were attacked by gnats, so just got back in the van and headed home, eating lunch at 230. The kids were good about it though, as they were about everything today!

So that is the update from our house. Tomorrow marks 37 weeks for me, safe home birth territory. My midwife has told me that she considers herself on call for me as of last week, so I hope hope hope to have this wee one soon. I have a lot of braxton hicks contractions and am totally uncomfortable all the time. I can breathe today, so perhaps the baby dropped a bit, cause yesterday, it was very hard to catch my breath.

Happy Sunday All!!

A few months ago, I came across this blog.  Take a moment to read it, if you can and offer a few prayers for this courageous young man.

For those who have not heard, we moved to Georgia! How did that happen? Well let me tell you a quick story on that, then I will update you all on what we have been doing. I think for fun, I will do this in a “bullet point” format. (That and it will help me to organize my thoughts.)

*Let’s start with saying that youth ministry is hard. It is also darned near impossible when one does not have much support in the parish. Joshua worked so very hard to bring the faith to the kids in the parish and was pretty much rejected at each point. He bore it very well but knew it was time to start looking elsewhere. I was looking at this website one day and came across a job that would be perfect. I mean downright, absolutely, positively, the best job that Joshua could ever in a million years dream up and get paid for it! I sent him the link and he replied “Heck no, it is in Georgia”. Ten minutes later, I got another message from him, stating that he would apply for it. Of course, my response at that point was “Really?!?!” then I started dreaming about what living in Georgia might be like (ha ha).

So here we are, living 15 minutes from the Georgia/Florida line, in the deep south. In the summer…and I am pregnant. It is hot. I am reminded of Father Vath’s statement during mass at St. Boniface in the summer time “If you think this is hot, imagine what hell is like”.

*When we moved, our house was under contract, but the buyers backed out, so please pray that someone else comes along!

*We have been preparing for the arrival of our newest little one. I am not due for another month, but I am hoping to have a nice birthday present for myself. Come one baby, what child wouldn’t want to share a birthday with his/her mother? We have been blessed with another awesome midwife for a homebirth, God is good. We have our home visit with her this week and are working on getting things set up for the new little one.

*This weekend we went to St. Augustine, Florida for an overnight. While it was a nice trip, I do not recommend anyone heading there in the summer. It was so very hot. We went to the beach, my first time seeing the Atlantic and actually swimming in an ocean. After the beach, we went to the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine. It is a zoo and they do not actually farm anything. It is a small zoo, it only took about an hour and a half to walk through and see everything (including stopping for a feeding show and a lesson about reptiles and amphibians) but it made it nice for the kids. We spent the night at a hotel and splashed in the pool for a while. Karol was very proud because he used his arm floaties to help tread water for a minute. Margaret was content holding on to the side of the pool while Caecilia was ready to swim.

The next morning, we headed off to Mass at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Augustine, the oldest parish in the United States. The church itself is not that old, about 100 years, I thing. It was very beautiful though, with a nice choir and Father’s Homily was very timely.  We chanted the Salve Regina (in Latin!) for the recessional hymn, ah, yes! It was wonderful.

We drove back up the A1A toward Jacksonville and hit the beach one more time. The waves were pretty big this time, so the kids just wanted to play in the sand. I went in the water and had a blast in the waves. I didn’t realize though that salt water would burn the eyes, it does. It started raining, so we packed up our gear and headed home.

I will come back to post pictures of the trip in a bit, but for now, I need to feed my crew!

…and was rather proud of it. I was in Michigan this past week with my family and had a great time. The house was over run with all sorts of grandchildren and the weather we delightful. While catching up with my little (ahem, younger) sister, she was telling me about the camping trip she just got back from and a conversation she overheard while hanging at the beach.

She said another group was talking about which K.ardashian was prettier. While she was telling how her IQ dropped 15 points just being in the proximity of this conversation, I was trying to figure out why anyone would think a Cardassian was attractive.

Honestly, I pondered this for about three minutes then figured it out.

Today I was singing this song as I went about my work around the house, so when I had a chance, I played it on Youtube.

refrain
You satisfy the hungry heart with gift of finest wheat,
come give to us o saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.

1. As when the shepherd calls his sheep, they know and heed his voice;
so when You call Your family Lord, we follow and rejoice.

(refrain)

2. With joyful lips we sing to You, our praise and gratitude,
that You should count us worthy Lord, to share this heavenly food.

(refrain)

3. The mystery of Your presence Lord, no mortal tongue can tell;
whom all the world cannot contain comes in our hearts to dwell.

(refrain)

4. You give yourself to us o Lord, then selfless let us be,
to serve each other in Your name in truth and charity.

(refrain)

I also came across this quote yesterday:

In a world where there is so much noise, so much bewilderment, there is a need for silent adoration of Jesus concealed in the Host. Be assiduous in the prayer of adoration and teach it to the faithful. It is a source of comfort and light, particularly to those who are suffering. Pope Benedict XVI

I have so much I want to say about the lack of love for our Lord, the lack of silence to listen to Him, to adore Him, to love Him. That post will have to wait for another day, as I put more thoughts down and work through them.