I'm no St. Monica...

There are those days. Those blah-awful days. The days when there isn't enough chocolate to bring it back around. Sometimes they are the actual awful days: days of tragedy and evil, or hurt and anguish. I am just talking about the days when you'd rather whine than do anything, and chocolate and 10 silent minutes to eat it is all you want.

Because, for seriously, chocolate would make everything better:

Grandpa Joe has it right.
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We woke up this morning with a nasty-sore throat-sneezy-itchy nose-thing that just stuck around and got worse through the day. This, combined with not enough sleep (which I'm going to blame on Leo's new parlor trick of climbing into bed with us at o'dawn-thirty instead of late-night marathons of Fringe episodes...!) made me in ya know...a really great mood.

And so I consoled myself with reading endless blog posts whilst the boys confetti-ed the floor with their cereals. *yay*

And then a big rain storm came...and my fancy satellite internets stopped. We're talking #firstworldproblems like no other.

So then Leo came up and asked me to turn on the radio (Pandora) so that they could dance. Bless you child. Pandora was broken (dumb internets!), but we *actually* have a regular radio. With a dial. So I turned it on, and scrolled around the FM world until Leo said, "That one!", to Katie Perry. Wonderful. Go for it. 

I don't have pictures of the dancing for you, b/c if I had tried to take pictures, they would have stopped dancing. But Leo's dancing is a melange of jumping side-to-side mixed with spinning in circles with an added somersault thrown in for good measure here and there. Daniel just copies Leo, except that his spins are done on tip-toe (HIL-arious) and his somersaults are just him bending down to put his head on the floor and then popping back up to grin and take the applause. Also, his dancing was interspersed with shoving rice cake and leftover cereal into his mouth, making the floor look *even better* than before. (WHY?! WHY would someone pick SOLID DARK GREEN carpeting?!)

The next song was Pink's new one, 'True Love', wherein she uses the *bad* word "stupid". Leo pointed it out (thanks, Pink), but at least he said "we don't say that word". Win for Mom, I guess.  Pink was followed my LMFAO (obvisouly Mix 94.1 knew it was pre-schooler's hour), and then they'd had enough dancing and wanted to "draw" on paper.

Naptime was a complete joke wherein I dozed for 15 minutes while Leo fidgeted with pillows, animals and books until Daniel squawked enough to rouse me from my stupor to get him. Le sigh.

I had to laugh at myself at this point (which is always a good thing),when I remembered that today is the feast day of St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine. St. Monica prayed and prayed for her profligate son to turn from the errors of his ways (heresy, wine, women and song...you get the picture) and he did. Hence...Saint Augustine. I'm no St. Monica, ladies and gents...but I would like to become more like her someday...

So, I guess the moral of the story is:

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The day finished off with Leo watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Daniel clinging to my leg as I vacuumed up the rice cakes and cereals (party hard, boyos...). 

St. Monica, patron saint of married women and mothers, pray for us!

...and all you lovelies out there...send me your chocolate! ;)

Take Heart

{Favorite Quick Takes}

Joining Hallie for Favorites and Jen for Quick Takes

(because that's how we roll in the world of slacker-bloggers!)

Basically just what's on my mind and what I like this week. With pictures.;)

1. The Radical Life
I keep on talking about this Radical Life guy:

Matthew Warner

I like his stuff. This week's post is more good stuff: 12 Most Important Metrics for Your Child's (and Your) Education.


2. Freeset Fundraiser
You probably heard about the UPS plane crash last week. We should definitely pray for the families of the two pilots who lost their lives in the crash. There is another way to help the victims of the event. Freeset is a fair-trade company that employs women who were trapped in the human trafficking industry in Calcutta. They pay their employees about 3x what they would otherwise make. They make organic cotton T-shirts and jute bags.

They make some pretty bags, y'all.

The UPS plane was carrying about $150,000 of their merchandise, representing 3 months of work by their employees. You can go here to donate to Freeset to help them cover their losses. In a truly lovely exchange of events, Freeset is also making a memorial T-shirt, the profits of which go 100% to the UPS pilot's families. (Thanks to Melanie @ the BigMama blog for sending me towards all of this).


3. Mom-couragement
I am always finding some good encouragements for moms. Here's a thought from a new source, Incourage. In a post entitled "10 Ways to be a Happier Mom" (who wouldn't click that?) by Ann Voskamp, I find:

 Love always begins with patience, and patience is a willingness to suffer.

How is that encouraging, you ask? --how could it be encouraging to suffer? Suffering isn't exactly what you think it is, then. Did you know that the root of our word, passion, is the Latin verb patior which means to suffer?! Think about it...what greater act of love is it than to give up your own selfishness (time, talent, wealth, wants etc.) for another?  Indeed..."Greater love has no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). When we sacrifice in the small things, when we make the extra efforts for our loved ones (and our un-loved ones!), we are growing in love. --and what could be better, or more important than that?

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4. Home Pre-schooling
SO, I'm not sending Leo off to a pre-school this fall.  I never really thought that I would be...he's only *almost* 3 after all...and I kind of like having him around...BUT I am going to be doing some more planned efforts at education (other than the constant stream of wisdom in didactic moments that comes out of my mouth ;) ).

This will perfectly describe me in the not-too-distant future...

What have I done to prepare so far? I made a Pinterest board (...but you should basically just look at Sarah's if you're in my boat...she rocks.) SO, I'm obviously Super Mom, and ready for anything. 

5. Veiled Truths...This week I read another post about veiling during Mass, this time from Jenna @ Call Her Happy. Basically, she's considering veiling during Mass, which was something women did *way back when* as a way to be respectful, and humble (and less distracting to themselves and others!). I was first intrigued by the idea by Jennifer @ Conversion Diary, a while ago. Kelly @ This A'int the Lyceum also wrote a good post about veiling, with some pictures of different non-veil veil options.  I think that where I stand on the idea is that I think it's kind of neat.  BUT I think this in a "I would wear a tasteful non-doily-on-my-head veil and everyone would love it" kind of way. 

Like this. Which you can find here. "Eternity scarf"

SO...pretty much defeats the purpose, which would be one of making my time at church more prayerful (HA! with two boyos...! yea...) etc. So, for now, I think I will remain unveiled...but there are these scarves...$5 only...BUT...then there's St. Paul, reminding us women to be adorned with "good deeds" and not with pearls and braids...SO, yes, for now...just me and my unruly (read: boyo-pulled) locks. 

6. Tie a Yellow Ribbon
You may have thought that all this was over, but we still have A LOT of soldiers out there in harm's way on our behalf. It may not seem to little old you and me like they are out there for us, when they go to places like Afghanistan to help those folks, but then I hear news from Egypt, and I compare it to news from here (which is horrible enough), and I know that our soldiers are out there for us. Case in point, my wonderful brother-in-law. Lt. JDB has just been deployed with his unit of the Army National Guard to Afghanistan, and he'll be gone for almost a year (with a stint in Mississippi first which sounds just as bad). So, as you go to sleep tonight in your safe and A/C'd home, remember all of our loved ones out there, and please pray for their safety. 

Two J's on Mag's #1 list today: and neither one missing her b-day for anything.

Which brings me to...

7. MARGARET's BDAY!! 
Younger siblings aren't allowed to get older (take note, Jono!!), but older ones DO...mwahahhaha. Anyways. Today is Mags bday. Or it was when I started finishing this post...anyways...AUGUST 24th is the best and so is she. You may remember her from her famous stints as guest-blogger here and here and here. Basically click the *snark* tag on the posts, and you'll get them all. Best older sister ever. Most of the time. Prettiest and smartest and most fun. Always.

Always got my back :)

So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY lovey. xoxoxo