Ash Wednesday

Matthew being silly at breakfast

Matthew took this picture - not bad!

This week was relatively low key. The kids were well so they were in good moods (compared to last weekend). Matthew is growing up so fast. He is independent and he likes to help out. He likes to clean the floors with the swifer and he likes to put away the silverware from the dishwasher. He is so much easier now that he has learned to be patient and he doesn't have as many crying tantrums like he did last year at this time. The one thing I will say is that he has formed an attitude that wasn't there before. I hear it's part of being 4 years old. Matthew is so excited about his birthday party and he talks about it almost every night. We have decided to host it at the same bounce house as last year. I ordered some pirate costumes that were really cheap on the internet so I thought we could let the kids wear those while they run around - or just take them home for a nice goody bag. In keeping with the pirate theme, I thought I would make invitations and get a cake with some sort of pirate ship. Matthew insists on a buzz light year cake so we will see if I can talk him into it.

Matthew and Audrey love arts and crafts time. Matthew likes to make birthday cards for his friends or family. They are so cute. Lori received one since her birthday is in February and the grandpas will receive one in March. Audrey likes to sit in the chair at the table and draw with the crayon or marker. She is learning words and although she only says a few, I know she is picking it up. She says "ball, no, mama, mill for milk". She loves to play with a ball and she likes to play with all of Matthew's toys - trains, cars, legos.

On Wednesday, I went to mass at 5:30pm for Ash Wednesday. It was my first time and I enjoyed celebrating the start of Lent. I am converting to Catholicism and I have been going to classes every Wednesday night - sometimes Andy joins me, too. I am enjoying learning about the Catholic faith and I am surprised to find most of the rituals and traditions are biblical. The priest that hosts the RCIA classes on Wednesday is married with 2 kids. He converted from a presbyterian church which is why he can be married. He is very knowledgeable with a degree from Duke so I enjoy hearing his lectures. It is also nice to develop friendships within the church and feel a part of a community. And the best part is the food. A couple from New Orleans makes a delicious home-cooked meal. One night we ate red beans and rice, pickled pig (so tender and delicious) and another night was jambalaya with home-made king cake.

I went to a 4-hour retreat at the church last Sunday where another priest talked about Lent. He said that there are 3 things the bible asks us to do during Lent: 1) Prayer 2) Fasting 3) Almsgiving. The first one, prayer, is pretty self explanatory. The second, fasting, the priest mentioned that fasting does not have to be food but rather something that will make you focus on someone else. For example, you could give up noise and spend 45 minutes every night away from the tv or away from the computer. He mentioned that some people give up red meat and it really doesn't do any good for anybody. It's almost like a selfish thing that people will give up chocolate or coffee or things they know they should cut back on in order to lose weight and he said that the attention was all wrong. I thought he had a good point. You could also give a lending ear to someone that needs some listening. And the last, almsgiving, is where you volunteer to help others. He said that you probably think this is a time of gloom because you are asked to sacrifice something and pray but it is actually very uplifting in that you can open your heart to others. I think this is a very healthy mindset.

Another thing the priest talked about at the retreat was an exercise where he asked us to draw a vertical line down the middle of our paper. We were asked to start with our birth and then write positive things (baptism, profession of faith, birth of kids, etc) on the right hand side and negative things (death in the family, doubting faith, bad job, etc). He asked us to look at everything and ask where was God in all of that. It was a neat exercise. He mentioned that life has peaks and valleys and if you connect the positive with the negative by drawing a line, it is like a cardiogram. If everything was a straight line, then it would be death. It was interesting to chart my life out, good and bad, and realize that in the future there will be good and bad but know that God will be there through it all.

On January 18th, I was in a car accident where a car turned in front of me while I was going through a green light. A car hit me on my front left hand side and then I proceeded to hit a light pole on my front right hand side. I had just dropped off the kids that morning. I felt so lucky that I could walk away from the accident AND the fact that the kids were not in the car when it happened. I have been going to the chiropractor to get minor adjustments and since my car was in such bad damage, we bought another car. A couple of weeks prior to my accident, I read a book "90 minutes in Heaven". It was about a guy that was in a horrific accident in the 1980's and he talked about going up to Heaven in one chapter and then the rest were devoted to his struggle to recovery. It gave me a good mindset so that when my accident occurred, I looked at the positives in that I was not hurt as bad as this man. I hope you will find these words encouraging as you embark all of life's journeys.