Elena 
1. So remember how I said I was stepping down from my Pre-Cana ministry talk this year? Well I guess God had other plans. A dear friend of mine and her husband had stepped up to do the Marriage as a Sacrament talk, but then her ailing father passed away on Friday. Since she is grieving and planning a funeral (all out of state) I stepped back in to do the talk. alone.
God’s timing is always interesting to me. Either He thinks I really need to do this as a form of penance, or someone hearing the talk needs to hear something coming out of my mouth. Or both. Either way, I’m going to start preparing for it this week.
2. This particular friend, Patti, was a God send to me during my greatest times of need. When Raphael died, I had a cantor lined up for the funeral mass who no showed. Patti graciously and beautifully cantored that mass with her beautiful soprano voice. Seven years later, she happened to be visiting my mother in the hospital when the doctors came in and told mom that she had ovarian cancer. It was Patti who bravely called me to give me that bad news and I will always be grateful that she was with mom when the stupid doctors gave her such grave news. So this is a small way for me to make this time a little easier for her.
3. We started piano lessons with your new piano teacher Friday. It’s in a classroom at the Parish school – which is very different than what we have done in the past. But I think it will work out nicely. He spent a lot of time working on phrasing with Noah and getting Rosie started off. It does make our Friday’s interesting- I get them there for piano and then rush home to meet the math teacher for math tutoring!
4. Our Candlemas table.
The cow is a Christmas ornament that I picked up somewhere. I love Holsteins anyway because they remind me of growing up on a dairy farm. Anyway, this particular ornament lost it’s “hanger” so it can’t go on the Christmas tree anymore, so we put in on the creche in the stable. He doesn’t really fit but I sort of like it. This year, I decided to leave her out all year so I could enjoy looking at her. So here she is beside the Holy Family, sprinkled with Valentines Hearts, for Candlemas.
5. Rosie started art lessons with Izzy’s art teacher, Lucia, last week. Lucia thinks very highly of Izzy, and she loves Rosie too. So I worried about letting the girls be in the same class, because I was afraid that they would SCREAM AND FUSS WITH EACH OTHER and totally blow whatever illusion Lucia has about them being loving and warm sisters! But next week I’m in a bit of pickle as far as getting people where they need to be on Saturday, so they are both going to attend the Wednesday class. I have warned them both not to fuss with each other or I’ll pull them both out!! So we’ll see. Hopefully if they sit on separate sides of the room, they should be okay.
6. I was totally mesmerized by this post over at Equipping Catholic Families. So I bought some pegs and Rosie and I started making our own peg saints, and hope to keep them in order according to the liturgical year- more or less. So here is St. Agnes (with the sheep that ate Cleveland).
and St. Sebastian
7. As Peter gets reading for his music convention, Izzy came up with another design made of used flute keys- Here’ a flute necklace – silver keys all polished up – it’s gorgeous (but Pete’s phone camera doesn’t do it justice!)
Fwiw, I've been reading with interest about your marriage class gig. A priest told us the other day that in the parable of the seed God isn't choosy about where he sows his seed and that we shouldn't be either, so your noble project of sowing the seed of your marriage prep isn't dependent on the reception of the audience.
Also, I found the following link riveting and worth a read:
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/social-liberalism-as-class-warfare/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Thanks for the encouragement TS.
And yes, that article is riveting. In fact I had to print it out so that I can digest and ponder it in smaller portions! I think the last sentence sums it up nicely.