Sweet deal, we have an organic supermarket here in Valdosta. I love this little store already. Tonight I headed out to see what it was like and was not disappointed. I found organic butter, from a local farm for $3.50/pound. For real! No, for real!! I can’t even get crappy, stale,  refrigerator tasting butter from the local Winn Dixie for that price. I can’t wait to try some!

I also found some home made marshmallows, and am excited to try those. I picked up some rye flour to make rye crackers, maybe with the kids this week, if they are good and allow me time to do my regular chores! 🙂 My treat to myself was drinkable yogurt, for the times I need a snack or don’t get to finish my breakfast!

I plan on adding Whisked to my regular rounds of shopping, if even just for butter and drinkable yogurt.

Right Now…11:29 am. I am always amazed when I see Nadja’s times, always way before I am awake! Last week I stayed up after Benedict woke up at 5 for a feeding, I figured I would get some paperwork done, and maybe fold some laundry. Ha. Caecilia came plodding down the hallway around six. So much for that.

Anyway, it is sunny and cool here, around 70 degrees, according to my weather widget. The windows are all closes, so I can’t tell if we have swamp fire smoke still lingering out there. It was really bad over the weekend.
This weekend…was jam packed full of fun times. On Friday night, I went out for a bit and found a bookstore here in Valdosta. I thought it was going to be one of those discount stores, ones that are set up for a few weeks or months, then are gone. Turns out it was more like a Borders or a Barnes and Noble, coffee bar and all! Woot. I picked up a math workbook for Karol, as he is blowing through the kindergarten curriculum like nothin’ else. I also picked up an audio copy of Dean Koontz’s “Odd Hours”. We plan on listening to that while on our trip to KY. I found a copy of “Little Women”, from the kids section.

On Saturday we headed to an air show at Moody Air Force Base. That was a riot. It was great when Karol got so excited about all of the planes, he even got to sit in the cockpit of one of them.

After spending a few hours watching planes fly and seeing them perform death defying feats, we headed home for a bit of a rest. While everyone rested, I took Benedict to the produce market to pick up some much needed fresh items. I found tomatoes 3/$1 and in the shell fresh pecans $1.69/a pound and they are goood. The tomatoes are “real” tomatoes, not pretty looking at all and gooood too.

When I got back, we headed out to the K of C hall for the monthly social dinner. It was a nice dinner again this month, Thanksgiving food!

Between all of that, I discovered a new organic market here in Valdosta. I found out about it just before closing time on Saturday, so I am going tonight and am EXCITED. It opened just at the same time my grocery budget opened up, sweet. I hope to be able to get our grains from there. We get our produce from the market south of town, our meat from the local grocery stores, which ever are cheapest. I wish we could afford organic grass fed meat, but not right now, maybe in the future. Or if we find someone local who sells freezer beef for a good price. Any way, the local grocery store flour and oatmeal sections are pretty sad. First, most of the flour is self rising, whole wheat is hit or miss along with unbleached.Fresh herbs like cilantro would be nice to find too!

Sunday was a pretty full day too. We went to Mass in Moultrie then back home for a quick breakfast. We went out to the store for some things for the kids. We realized that we needed a light jacket for them, mainly in the mornings, for Mass. I had a coupon for Carters that was expiring this week, an this was the only time we could go, so we headed out. We picked up the outfits they will wear for the Feast of Christ the King and Christmas also, as well as a few more shirts for Margaret and Caecilia.

We came home, cleaned up a bit then made dinner. After dinner we tackled the laundry baskets and folded all the laundry, yes!

Some plans for the week…cleaning the house a bit and getting ready for a visit from my in laws. We aren’t exactly sure when they will be here, but sometime this week or next.
If I can find a little time for myself, I want to…clean my desk area and set up a sewing area.

Special prayer intentions for the week…For Nan, our dear friend!

Something that makes me smile: Caecilia pretending to feed Benedict and him smiling at her!

Do we pick great Godparents, or what?

Right Now…According to the clock on the wall, 11:45 but it is really 10:41 am. It is sunny and cool outside, just the way I like it.

This Weekend… Started out with a celebration! We sold/closed on the house in Marion on Friday morning. I spend a good part of my day checking our bank account for the funds and checking on things we have been wanting to buy but have put off until we had the money.

I bought or won you could say some gDiapers from a friend on Ebay then bought the inserts. We have a bit of traveling ahead of us and figure this would probably be the most eco friendly way to use disposables. (The inserts are bio degradable and the covers reusable!)

We went out to dinner after Joshua got home then met up with his boss and his family for ice cream. The kids were great when we were out, no fighting with each other and they all ate their food, it was awesome. After we got home, I paid off the balance on a few credit cards, paid the midwife our final balance (the check is in the mail!) and found out that the woman who bought our home had everything switched in to her name before closing, sweet!

On Saturday, we got up and after breakfast, we headed out to pick up a few things that we had been wanting to buy. The first being shelves for the “work room” to store things on. What a difference that makes. Joshua thinks he will go back and pick up a few more for tools and one for the kitchen, for me to store pantry items on. We then headed for shoe shopping, for the kids and for Joshua. Karol is now in a size 10.5 and Margaret is a 9.5! Margaret’s old shoes were a 7, I almost feel bad but I think her feet grew overnight. We also found some clothes for the kids. Karol has some new pants, same with Caecilia and Margaret got a few new shirts and a few dresses. It is nice to have things rounded out for them again. It does take some time to find clothes for the kids these days. So many things are just the smaller version of adult clothes, with themes or ideas that I just don’t want my kids to be exposed to or wearing.

Saturday night, we watched two episodes of CSI-NY and I worked on a project for Vianney Vocations.I booked a hotel for us for  Thanksgiving weekend, as we are going to a wedding in KY. I also started planning a trip to Charleston, SC to visit my sister. I am glad that she lives near us, five hours is much better than 19 to visit family.

Sunday started with Mass then home for brunch. I went to the store after brunch, normally we do not shop on Sundays, but I was out of butter and nearly out of formula, so I headed to Target and then the grocery store. The grocery store had steaks buy one get one free, so I purchased two packages, and boy were they good. We were supposed to fold laundry after dinner, but I fell asleep in the recliner before I could get things started, so that awaits me this morning.
Some Plans for the Week…Find a piano tuner, take the van in to be looked at, work on the Vianney Vocations project some more, meal plan the rest of this month and next, school work and on Saturday, an air show at Moody AFB! Woot!
If I Get Some Time for Myself, I Want to…work on organizing my desk area and set things up for sewing.

Some Prayer Intentions for this Week…in Thanksgiving for the closing of our house.  For priestly vocations and for religious vocations. For those who are struggling in their marriages that they remain faithful to their vows.


Something That Makes Me Smile: Watching Karol sound out words and spelling words on his own!

The house is sold! The house is sold! Yippee, the house is sold. God is good.

Boondoggle!

We went to Florida on Sunday, originally to be able to see the Space Shuttle launch on Monday, however, the launch has been delayed, so we just kept with our other plans of visiting the Alligator Farm, camping, visiting the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame and visiting Showcase of Citrus.

The Alligator Farm was much better this time. I am not 8 months pregnant, it wasn’t 95 degrees and it was not that crowded. I wasn’t in the park for long before Benedict needed to eat, so I sat in the van and nursed the sweet little guy while Joshua walked around with the kids. We met back up, had a treat, watched a crocodile eat dinner then headed out to our campsite, down the shore.

Most campgrounds in Florida are geared toward RV campers, so the spots are usually treeless and only big enough to park the RV and extend an awning. Our site barely held our tent and mini-van. If we were to have a fire, the van would have had to have been moved. We didn’t have a fire as the blazing hot sun made the idea of a fire sound just awful. We set up camp, made/ate dinner and put the girls to bed. Karol stayed up with us to eat s’more that we cooked over the campstove. I was preparing to eat my second yummy treat, when I saw something moving on the table. A cockroach. Nice. That was the end of that. We packed up our stuff and headed to bed.

The next morning, we made breakfast then headed to the beach (we were pretty much on the ocean). We set up the little beach shelter and Benedict slept there while we went to play in the waves. They were pretty awesome and my fearless kids wanted to go deeper and deeper. Joshua carried Karol out for a bit and they were hit by a wave that must have been 4 feet tall! That was awesome.

We headed back to the campsite for showers and lunch. During lunch, Margaret started SCREAMING. SCREAMING like I had never heard her scream before. I was in the tent changing and Joshua was holding Benedict, so I threw on my clothes and ran out to see what was going on. She just kept crying and scratching her leg, I didn’t see anything and figured she was just being over dramatic (not unusual for her at all) and went back to changing. She was also calming down a bit. I was in the middle of changing when she screamed again. This time, Joshua got up to investigate and made a noise I had never heard out of him. It was part fear, part what the heck and part oh my. Then I heard him say:

I think Margaret just got bit by a scorpion.

Enter frightened parents. Frantic parents. Are they poisonous? Will she die?  Do we need to get her to a hospital. Picture both parents on their cell phones calling their parents to find out the 411 on scorpions. From stage left entered the wonderful woman who would be our guardian angel for the day. She said she was a homeopathic doctor (or something like that) and asked if Margaret was stung by a bee and offered some lavender oil.  We said, “No, A SCORPION!!!!!!!!” (picture running around with our hands waving in the air, panicked!)

This wonderful woman told us that in Florida there are two kinds of scorpions, harmful and not harmful. Well, ones that look like scorpions, but aren’t and ones that look like scorpions and are. She thought the one that got M was the former, praise God. She even prayed over Margaret. We calmed down a bit and this wonderful woman walked with Joshua and Margaret up to the camp host to get his opinion.

When they got back, Joshua and I had one of those moments where we didn’t have to say anything and just said “we are leaving”. So we started packing up and left. No more Florida camping for us.

We drove south to Orlando for dinner and to find a hotel. We were not sure if we were able to use our tickets for the Hall of Fame or not, but we certainly wanted to go to the Showcase of Citrus, so we figured if we stayed on the East side of Orlando, we would be able to do both without too much trouble. Turns out the East side of Orlando is 30 miles from Titusville, where the Hall of Fame is, so we ended up in Titusville for the night. It was very wonderful to shower (as I hadn’t gotten one earlier) and relax in our room. The kids were great, Margaret was fully recovered and we settled in to watch the “Cooking Man Show” aka “Good Eats”. (We all love Alton Brown).

Our trip to the Hall of Fame was pretty neat. It is certainly for older kids, as there is a lot of boring reading and things that kids four and under find just awful. They had fun looking at the pictures of the Earth and climbing in one of the space capsules. Karol found a room with interactive video games and was set. Caecilia had fun playing on the Mars-scape and Margaret ran between the two. It was pretty neat to see the capsules that were used at the beginning of the space program.

After we left, we drove past the Kennedy Space Center to take a peak. From the outside, you can see real rocket busters and external tank as well as one of the space shuttles! It was awesome. Maybe next time we will go there, but for this time it was a bit out of our price range.

The next leg of our journey took us back to Orlando and beyond. We headed to Clermont, Fl and the Showcase of Citrus. This place will get its very own blog post, but let’s just say that it was awesome. We picked oranges, tangerines and pomelo in the rain (well, I did for a bit then headed for shelter).
Our trip home was uneventful and we arrived back safe and sound. So, what started out as a boondoggle of a weekend (no space shuttle launch, bad camping) turned out to be pretty nice after all.

Oh, and about that scorpion bug that really isn’t a scorpion, horse pucky. We looked things up when we got home, if it looks like a scorpion, it is a scorpion. However, they aren’t always poisonous, praise God.

Tonight we went to the church near our house for Mass as we have something else we are doing tomorrow and driving to the other parish would put us way behind. I doubt we will ever do that again!

For starters, we headed over early for Confession. While waiting for our turn, and preparing ourselves for the sacrament, I noticed that it was social hour in the church. People chatting away in not so quiet voices about this, that and the other. It made it so very hard to concentrate on praying. My kids were better behaved than some of the people in that church. I just do not understand why people come to church early, just to chat with their friends. Why not meet up at the local diner and do that, then head over for Mass?

I usually complain about the music, but to day, it was palatable. However, what was not was the homily. Did you know that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month? Father’s homily was about domestic violence. A  good topic, perhaps, but it was not connected at all to the Gospel reading today. He then perpetuated  the myth that Annulments are a way out of a marriage. A pretty close paraphrase of what he said: “I am not saying I want anyone here to get a divorce, but the Church has ways to help people in these situations. Separations, annulments…”  AHHHHH! Please let me pull my hair out now. No wonder we do not know our faith, from the pulpit things are being said, if not out or malice, at least out of ignorance.

I was in charge of Caecilia today, so I spent a lot of time in the back of the church. When I joined the family in the pew for the Consecration, Benedict started fussing, so I took him out, thinking he needed to eat. As I left the pew, Joshua told Benedict needed a diaper change. I finished that just in time to join the family in line to receive Our Lord. The Extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, “blessed” him. I loathe that. Loathe it. Seriously? You can “bless” people? I was pretty certain only a priest could do that. It’s bad enough that there is a need for EMEs, but please, let me receive our Lord without more that “Body of Christ”.  Hey, if you google “lay blessings during communion”, this comes up! If you read that article, it refers to this one. A quote from the second link:

“2. Lay people, within the context of Holy Mass, are unable to confer blessings. These blessings, rather, are the competence of the priest (cf. Ecclesia de Mysterio, Notitiae 34 (15 Aug. 1997), art. 6, § 2; Canon 1169, § 2; and Roman Ritual De Benedictionibus (1985), n. 18).

Must run, I promise to have a good update soon!

I am here asking for prayers again for my Uncle Mike. His doctors have found another spot of cancer in his lung. Please pray that God’s Will be done!

Today it is sunny and 74 in Valdosta!

Right Now…10:05 and cloudy. Caecilia is playing, sort of quietly and the other two are playing a geography game on the computer. They work very well together.

This Weekend…we had plans for this weekend, doing things like making granola, pecan pie, grilling out burgers, you know, fun stuff. Well, none of that happened. We started Saturday out with Joshua letting me sleep in. I woke up around 915 and nursed Benedict until 945, just snuggling for the last few minutes and headed to the kitchen. Joshua was in there fying up some donuts, awesome. They were really really really good. I wish there were some left for this morning.

After donuts, I showered and got Margaret ready  we headed to the library, produce market and Target. I wanted to get the book “A Year Without ‘Made in China” and thankfully our library had it. Margaret picked out a book about the piano. Then we headed to the produce market. On the way there, we were stopped by a funeral procession. Down here, all the drivers on the road pull over to the side and wait for the procession to pass. I seem to recall some places up north do that, but I haven’t seen it in a long time.

The produce market is south of town and just wonderful. Two green peppers for $1 and four cucumbers for $1, much better than the grocery store. We then headed over to Target where we had a treat from the Target cafe and walked around the store for a bit. Our Target is pretty small and lacks a lot in the clothing department. It also does not have a grocery section, just a little area with some snack foods, cake mixes, flour and milk. Yep, you can buy milk there and it is cheaper than the local grocery stores. If I am at Target, I buy our milk there. I wonder how weird it looks to be buying three gallons of milk to the cashier.

We got home and hung out for a bit, then I got dinner started. After dinner, Joshua took the kids to the park while I nursed Benedict, then we went out for a ride in the van. We ended up renting movies (who does that anymore!?) We haven’t rented movies in a long time, because we own pretty much any movie we want to see. However, Joshua wanted to get Ratatouille, for the kids, so we headed over. Of course, for some reason, the DVD doesn’t work in our player. What is up with that? All of our DVDs work just fine, but when we get one from the library/netflix/movie rental place, it does not work. So we ended up a bit frustrated but put on a Star Trek Deep Space Nine for us to watch with the kids and they fell asleep.

We left them sleeping on the couch (Karol and Margaret that is) and headed to bed. Benedict was sleeping and all was well. Until about 330 when I heard Margaret coughing and crying. She then stumbled back to our bedroom where I was half asleep and half hoping I was dreaming. I also had Benedict next to me and really couldn’t move at the time, so I nudged Joshua and he started taking care of her. I removed myself from the clutches of Benedict and went out to help. She puked on the couch, floor, area rug. Nice. We got it all cleaned up and headed back to bed. Benedict was somewhat awake at this point and needing me, so I did not get back to sleep for a while. We think that Margaret ate too much popcorn, too late at night.

With our sleep interrupted, we were racing to get to Mass, but made it on time, thankfully. After Mass we came home and Joshua made breakfast for us while I nursed again. We all took naps yesterday afternoon and woke up not nearly as crabby as we all were before our naps. Dinner was hamburgers cooked inside with zucchini and squash on the side. Joshua played video games with the kids while I vegged on the couch looking at Made in the USA websites and tried to find all leather shoes for children.

Oh, I forgot one thing, when I was getting in to the van to go on Saturday, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was a little three inch lizard. Yes, I screamed, like a girl. I ran to the window and made Joshua come out and remove that thing from my van, all while having the heeby-jeebies. Lizards, ew.

Some plans for the week…Preparing for our mini-vacation coming up in November. For school, we are having Space Week. Karol and Margaret are fascinated with seasons and stars and the moon, so I picked up some space books from the library to read with them. We will also have more evening reading lessons. Karol is on the ball and sounds out words all the time. Margaret is remembering sounds and recognizing more letters, which is awesome for her.

If I find some time for myself, I want to…ha ha ha.

Special prayer intentions…that our house closes this week!

Something that makes me smile…Caecilia building Lego towers on her own.