Mama-luia

A few people have asked me to share about our kitchen renos and I have neglected blogging about it for a while. While I was and am extremely excited about the transformation, there was a part of me that was embarrassed by the process. You see, in the land of slick mommy blogging, DIY and Pinterest-hacks, it's so much more chic to say "look at this awesome work we did all by ourselves!" Also, "my three side hustles on Etsy paid for this whole thing!" ... Except neither of those statements are true. The beautiful work on our kitchen was a pure gift from my in-laws. I am still so deeply humbled by that. They know I had been dreaming about painting the walls for as long as we've lived here (five years now!) and the floor desperately, DESPERATELY needed to be replaced because the tiles were broken or had burn and smoke marks where our old wood stove had been. Such work, however, always eluded us. Certainly in terms of money - sigh - but also even in ter...

Our summers have always been a constant effort to cram the days as full as possible with outings, trips, activities and so on. This has especially been true for me the past two years, since having had my fourth baby. My summer survival plan, if you will, always involved lots of comings and goings, out of fear that too much time spent at home would result in bored, sulky children latching onto fighting with one another as a way to occupy themselves. Not on my watch, I'd declare! And promptly invent bizarre errands like driving two hours round-trip to get a Dairy Queen ice cream cake. "For my birthday," I'd tell them. And also two hours in a car when you can't even reach your brother to pester and poke him. A captive audience. This year we took a long hard look at our resources, both financially and emotionally, and realized we were maxed out on both accounts. A quiet summer at home, a "stay-cation," would be in order. I remember so vividly ...

St. Augustine once said, "one loving heart sets another on fire"  and I truly see that played out in the life of my dear Isaiah. On the feast of the Holy Trinity this past month -- incidentally, the same feast day as his baptism -- he received his first Holy Communion. It was a stunningly beautiful day. We spent the days leading up to this momentous occasion making beautiful art preparing our home and his outfit enjoying time with our family (harvesting rhubarb with my Dad) and praying daily for much grace to infuse his soul. On the day of, he was just so excited to get up and get ready. Not unlike both of his grandfathers, he's an early riser and an eager do-er, so he sought out ways to help me and Patrick as we bustled about. He wanted his outfit to look just so and was touched by the decorations I had pulled together. He was ELATED by the Sacred Heart cake my amazing sister made. That has been his one request -- a Sacred Heart cake. A...