Poem of the Week: Good Friday

Good Friday

Am I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

HT: Poem Hunter

Image: Tissot's The Crucifixion,Seen from the Cross 

Happy Birthday, Leena!

Leena is 16!

We had fun celebrating her birthday with a dinner out with extended family, bowling and cake with us, and a trip up to NJ, complete with photo bombing cousins!





16 Great Things About Leena
1. Holy cow, she has over a thousand subscribers on her You Tube channel!
2. She has more than 50 compositions on her Sound Cloud Channel!
3. She tells horribly hilarious jokes and puns.
3. She's always willing to help out.
4. She likes to do math with me.
5. She plays piano in the basement and the whole house sounds great!
5. She really cares about other people.
6. She is a gerbil whisperer.
7. She loves to swing dance.
7. She likes to cheer people up.
8. She has a beautiful singing voice.
9. She's a sweet and loving sister.
9. She draws amazingly well.
10.  She can have fun with people much older than she is.
12. She can have fun with people much younger than she is.
12. She's great at audio and video editing!
13. She's a sweet and loving daughter.
13. She makes great baked beans.
14. She writes scripts, short stories, and novellas.
15. She's always up for an adventure.
16. She's a wonderful voice actress.
16. She and I are in charge of the flowers for our parish!

Wordless Wednesday: First Day of Spring (Seven Inches)

Jersey Trip

 Earlier this month, Klenda, Leena, and I drove up to NJ during the time that brother and one of  his sons  had flown out from Oregon to see my parents.


 Although we text all the time, it's very difficult for my brother to travel, so we rarely get to meet up, so it was very special!

It had been six years since I'd last seen him, and that was before his spinal cord injury had really progressed.

We had a great time, playing Skip-Bo, telling jokes, and catching up.

We also celebrated Leena's birthday (more on that in another post), had fun with Mumpy and Pa,  and had a great girls' road trip experience!

Poem of the Week: St. Patrick's Breastplate

St. Patrick's Breastplate

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

HT (and the longer version): Prayer Foundation

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Sorry, I've been off Ye Olde Blog for a bit.  I've been busy both having fun and putting out fires.
Which reminds me, I have a ton of things to blog about!

 

I'll get to everything eventually.  Probably.

Right now, it's St. Patrick's Day!!!!   I'm cooking 20 lbs of corned beef, 3 large cabbages and 10-15 lbs of potatoes. Klenda just finished making a double batch of Irish cream flavored Oreo truffles for dessert. Here's a post on why this day is special to us.

We are feeding the 16 gentleman our parish is currently housing for Safe Haven, as well as another 10 or so here at home.  Yes, I realize that's a lot of meat for 26 people, but I'd love for everyone to have as much delicious corned beef as they want to eat!

This year I'm trying the enormous pressure cooker my mom gave me.  If it works, it'll be by far the easiest way we've ever done this.  It's just the "If" that worries me!

In the meantime,  let's enjoy a discussion of the Trinity with St. Patrick's Bad Analogies!

And, of course, the Lorica, St. Patrick's Breastplate:

Kid's Astronomy: Planets 2

Creating Saturn's rings and shepherd moons

This was this week's class, the outer solar system.  The original of this class was blogged here, I'm just adding current pictures and noting anything I did differently.

Building the comet

Comet after sublimation

The big thing I did differently was to get extra dry ice (note to self, 5 pounds was plenty).








We put it colored water and chemistry glassware to look like mad scientists.

And we put it into juice for the kids to drink!

I also showed them why proper ventilation is needed.  I lowered a candle into the CO2 filled ice chest, then poured it from one of their bubbling flasks.

A marvelous time was had by all!

Mostly Wordless Wednesday: Last Week's Kids' Astronomy, Planets 1

Thanks to Shelli for taking pictures!

The original class is posted here.

I added a demonstration of how true planets clear their orbits (as opposed to dwarf planets).

I tried picking up scattered paper clips by dragging a refrigerator magnet across them (too small and weak to pick up all the clips in it's path), then using a large magnet (cleared it's entire path).

Also, I couldn't find my scanning thermometer for the heated tiles (one is covered with a thick wool blanket to mimic Venus's insulating cloud cover) , and I was using chemistry thermometers, but, at 150 F for the insulated (warmer) tile, the kids were able to briefly touch the tiles, and this made more of an impression.

Two Busies and Two Funnies

Before

Well, we've had a crazy few days.  Last weekend we got hit with the edge of that giant storm.  We didn't get snow, but we got an alarming amount of wind- about 24 hours of howling 50 mph, with gusts up to 80 mph!

Leena and Oob were watching out our window when they saw our dear neighbor's tree come down!

After

On the plus side, it fell where it probably did the least damage (not on any houses, and missing her main car), on the down side, it took power lines down across the road, and it did hit her convertible.

After the winds had died down, we went over to help clean up.
Many hands, as my neighbor observed, make light work, and many hands are our specialty!

They came to fix the power lines the same day, but many others, including my parents, were not so lucky.  They live 200 miles north and were out of power for 5 days!  It's a bigger problem when no power means no water in the tap (well with an electric pump) and lots of water in the basement (no sump pump), and when you are also getting snow.  Fortunately they have coal, so they didn't freeze.

They are getting over a foot of fresh snow today...  Prayers are appreciated!


On another note, Leena and I have finalized our plans for the Easter flowers and decorations!

I thought we were really early this year, but then I realized that tomorrow is day 20, so we're already half way through Lent!

So, not early, but at least not late!

We found these great crosses at Hobby Lobby, but you'll have to wait for Easter to see what we are doing with them.

We also found this sign!

Also this week, I was waking up the Zoomlians when I stepped on saw this cute little duck puppet which I had completely forgotten about.

How sweet!  I decided I'd wake them up with it.

Who are you calling cute!

I hadn't realize it wasn't a cute cuddly duck puppet.

It was an angry bad tempered duck puppet.

The kids will probably recover.

Eventually.

Maybe I should have them set their own alarms.

Poem of the Week: The Well and The Gift

Theoretically, we are year B and the Gospel is Jesus Cleansing the Temple, but our Archdiocese is using the year A reading (always an option), the Woman at the Well. That first poet you might know by his other name: St. John Paul the Great!

The Well
by Karol Wojtyla

It joined us together, the well;
the well led me into you
No one between us but light
deep in the well, the pupil of the eye
set in an orbit of stones.
Within your eyes, I,
drawn by the well,
am enclosed.


The Gift
by R.S. Thomas
Some ask the world
and are diminished
in the receiving
of it. You gave me
only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.

HT: Moved to Greater Love