Chocolate ice cream and sangria can fix anything!

As I sit here finishing some chocolate ice cream, with my empty glass of sangria in front of me, it's hard to believe everything that's happened, and that it's only been 2 weeks.

Two weeks ago, yesterday, I took Emma to the dentist for a regular check-up. We discovered she has her first loose tooth, and went around the corner to my mom's office to show her and say hi. A few short hours later, I was following my mom's ambulance to the hospital with Emma in the backseat, complaining how far it was. I just kept thinking that it was good that they hadn't put the sirens on. When we finally were allowed to see her, she was barely conscious, and even less understandable. The priest at the hospital, while very sweet, was from Nigeria, and also barely understandable. I was losing it!

My mom spent about 3 days in ICU, and 2 days in a regular unit. This all started on Monday (we almost lost her that night). That Thursday, when I saw her (I went every day, thanks to my many wonderful friends who babysat for me, as kids under 14 weren't allowed), she was very scared about going back to living alone. I went home, and gave my husband three choices: 1) I move in with my mom 2) my mom moves in with us 3) we sell both homes and get a duplex or home with an in-law suite. We decided she would move in with us. We would have at least until Sunday to get ready. We would clean out the playroom, making it back into a bedroom, and move her bed, dresser, and a few other things into it.

While I was visiting her on Friday, the doctor released her!!! Well, we obviously weren't ready, so she went home to her house that night until Sunday afternoon while we got her room ready. By dinnertime on Sunday, she was all moved in and unpacked, thanks to a good friend who came to help us.

Now that she's been here a week, my head is still spinning. We're still waiting for test results to get a diagnosis, so we can better understand her condition, and what the future may hold. At this point, we still don't know if this arrangement will be forever, or if she can go back to her condo at some point. The top choices that the doctors are looking at are: a tumor on her brain that's affecting her balance (that could be removed and she could get back to normal), or Parkinson's, or MS, or Myesthenia Gravis. We see her regular doctor tomorrow, and the specialist a week from today.

Today I took her to physical therapy, where we discovered that her entire left side is much weaker than her right side. Then, we went from there, to a yard sale, where I got an actual school desk for Emma to use for kindergarten this year (homeschool) for $20! From there, we met another good friend of mine, and Emma's godmother, who took Emma for me for the afternoon for our other appointments (I have the best friends!). We went to Catholic Charities, and got hooked up with all kinds of resources, including a possible chair lift to help mom with the stairs, very inexpensive counseling, and caregiver services for me (including a free massage!). We were probably there about 3 hours total. Then, we met with a disability lawyer to get that process going, as my mom will most likely not be working again.

After all of that, I'm getting very impatient to get a new normal going, and some of this craziness to ease. Long story short, chocolate ice cream and sangria can help fix all kinds of things!

Dana

First Communion!

 

This past Sunday, my oldest daughter, Chocolate Chip, celebrated her First Holy Communion! It was such a beautiful day! Even though it was a bit cloudy and rainy outside, the sun was truly shining inside the parish. She chose to recieve for the first time in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (proud mama right here), and it was such a joy to watch her stay totally on track and focused during the entire Mass. There was an actual photographer there to take pictures of her actually receiving Our Lord for the first time (still waiting to get those), but I did get a few pictures of her before with my camera.

 

Before the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue

(before Mass)

Before Our Lady of Guadalupe statue

(also before Mass)

 

Very excited - almost time!

 

Processing in

 

About to recieve the Eucharist for the first time!

 

Chewing :-)

She is the first to receive her Brown Scapular!

 

 

It was a very exciting time that I will always cherish. May all the children who receive their First Holy Communion always approach the Eucharist with the same joy and excitement as they had that day!

 

 

 

(Emma took this picture of her Sissy)



Cleaning Fairy...

This last weekend, the priest at our parish was telling the First Communion kids (including Chocolate Chip) that sloth is one of the 7 deadly sins, and that an example of sloth is not putting your dirty clothes in the hamper (go, Father!). I admit, that while I was going to explain this to Emma, as well, I haven't done it yet. That said, the Cleaning Fairy (my alter ego), and her friend the Laundry Fairy (my other alter ego) were at my house just now, gathering up stray books on the floor, and tiny clothes from Emma. But, wait...there was also a decent amount of Chocolate Chip's things scattered about - including her First Communion dress, and sweater on her bed where the cats could lay on them and get cat hair all over. *sigh* I guess we'll need a refresher on that whole sloth speech...

Although, it isn't the dirty clothes on the floor that bothers me. It's the clean clothes mixed in (on the floor) with the dirty clothes - mainly from Chocolate Chip. When deciding what to wear, she often takes something out of her drawer, for whatever reason it is then rejected, and tossed onto the floor among the dirty clothes. I come in later, not knowing what isn't dirty, or trying to remember what I've seen on a body recently. I've tried explaining that it creates more laundry when she does that, and that the Laundry Fairy doesn't appreciate it. It doesn't seem to matter much. But, like a friend once said, "when a mountain of laundry has you down or overwhelmed, just thank God you have a family who needs you to do it". So, I'll just thank God a bit more, I guess.

Dana

My Summer Look!

I got my hair cut on Friday (which Emma did NOT approve of). I was very excited, and had the image in my mind of how it would look. I ended up a little dissapointed. Here's what it was supposed to look like (except still brown):

Cute, right?



Well, I went in, all set. I had looked online at the official Pantene rules for donating hair, and it was supposed to be 8 inches. I had 9 I wanted to cut off. Well, the girl insisted that it had to be 10 inches for Locks of Love (a totally different organization), and didn't collect it for me, because I only had 9 inches. Then, she gets finished, and it doesn't look like the picture. Yeah, it's cute, and I can have it fixed when it grows out a little, but it wasn't what I had envisioned.

 

 

So, I was talking to a friend at church yesterday about it, and she was telling me a very interesting theory she has, that made a lot of sense. She said that she thinks women are always upset about their looks because of Original Sin. She pointed out that all women have something they wish they could change about themselves: their hair isn't right, their waist is too big, chest is too small, whatever. Right after the Fall, God told woman that her desire would be for her husband. Perhaps an effect of that is woman's displeasure with herself. A feeling of lacking in some way, that comes out in our obsession with how we look. Or, maybe it comes from a deep longing for God that we can't quite recognize because of the Fall. Whatever the reason, I think we can all agree, it stinks. One more reason to look forward to Heaven, where things like big hips, uncooperative hair, and flabby arms will no longer matter, and even better, will finally be seen as God sees us: utterly perfect for who we are supposed to be, and look, just as He created us.






Kermit Gosnell, Round 2

The Twitter campaign was a HUGE success! Some of the mainstream media have started covering the trial, and letting people know how horrible, disgusting, and just downright dangerous his clinic and practices were. However, the people that organized the "TweetFest" are concerned that if we back off of the media, that they will stop covering the trial. This is extremely important, that they keep covering it, and letting people know how horrible this is. It could get a good number of people who "would never get an abortion, but want to keep it legal for others to have that choice" to consider just how awful abortion really is, and maybe get them thinking about how violently these babies died, and if they had been just a few inches up the birth canal, it would have been perfectly legal and socially acceptable.

Therefore, we are going to be having another "TweetFest" on Wednesday, this week. If you already have Twitter, please consider joining us. If you don't have Twitter, please consider joining it (for free, very easy to join), even if you only plan on using it for things like this. As a full-time mom and housewife, who works outside of the house part-time, I know how busy life gets, and how hard it can be to be as active in the pro-life movement as we would like to be. Using Twitter and/or Facebook to get the word out, is so easy, and so effective! I can do it while the kids are eating lunch, napping, playing outside, whatever. It doesn't require me to go alongside a busy street with a 4 yr old and pray in front of an abortion clinic. I don't have to organize some massive movement, I just spend a couple of seconds on my phone or computer throughout the day, as often as I can. Any help is greatly appreciated. If you decide to participate, please remember to use the hashtag #Gosnell in your tweets (this allows the relevant tweets to be counted and polled). Once again, if you are on Facebook, there is a page where you can find all kinds of information, pictures to share, and already written tweets that you can copy and paste (or you can write your own)!



Even just changing your profile picture on Twitter/Facebook to this or this would help spread awareness about this trial.


God Bless!
Dana

Kermit Gosnell

If you've been on Facebook or Twitter today, you've probably been seeing the name Kermit Gosnell a LOT. For those that don't know who he is, or what it's all about, here's why all of Social Media is buzzing with his name:

Kermit Gosnell is a late-term abortionist in Pennsylvania. He has murdered at least 7 newborns (born alive) by "snipping" their spinal cords, separating the brain from the body, essentially beheading the children. There has also been at least one mother die from his "care". He is currently on trial for these charges (click here for the timeline).

His clinic is/was so filthy, and disgusting, that it has been nicknamed the "House of Horrors". Blood everywhere, severed feet of babies in jars, bags of waste tossed about, just horrible. The whole reason for the social media campaign today, is that the media has blacked out this story, and coverage of his trial completely. The goal is to let as many people as possible know that "back-alley" abortions still take place, sometimes forced (see video), and to do the job that network news stations refuse to do. If this is the first you've heard of it today, it's not too late to help. Even if you aren't on Facebook or Twitter, you can spread the word via email, or just talking to your circle of friends about it. Be disgusted, be horrified, but please do not be silent.

If you do use Twitter, please tweet with the hashtag #Gosnell.

If you are on Facebook, you can go here to get ideas and more information.

God Bless, and please pray for the conversion of all abortionists.

Dana

Skirts, skirts, skirts!

I recently went to a class on modesty at my parish that was very interesting, and eye-opening. We were given a book at this class called "Dressing with Dignity" by Colleen Hammond. I admit that while I love to read, it generally takes me months to get through a book these days. I read this one in just a couple of hours. In this book it talks about the different fashions of women throughout history, and what the different popes at the time said about them. We were also given CDs with talks about modesty. One of the things that struck me the most on the CD was this: men are the physically stronger sex, and should always use that strength to take care of women, never use that to harm or dominate them. Likewise, women are the spiritually stronger sex, and should always use that to help men, who are weaker and more prone to temptation than we are.

 

The biggest thing I took away from the book (which was also on the CD), was that when a woman wears pants, a man's eye tends to follow the line of her pants all the way up to her bottom in the back, or her crotch in the front! Since learning these things, I have stopped wearing pants completely, except around the house, in front of only my husband. Of course, I really only had two skirts that were long enough (one of them wasn't quite long enough, but close, so I added a ruffle to the bottom), and not enough money to give myself a makeover. So, I have taken my favorite pairs of pants, and turned them into super-cute skirts! It was hard to rip apart my first and favorite pair of jeans, but once I got over it, I haven't looked back.

 

 

 

After just a few days of wearing skirts, I put on one of my favorite pairs of jeans to get an idea of where to cut them to make the skirt, and couldn't believe I'd thought they were so comfortable before! They felt so tight, and they weren't even leggings! It was crazy! I really enjoyed this book, and would highly recommend it. It also gave guidelines for dressing modestly, and a list of stores and websites at the back of the book where you can find modest clothes to buy.

 

I think in my upcoming posts, I'll give instructions and pictures on how to turn pants into skirts in case you want to make some for yourself.

 

God Bless!

 

Dana