7 QT Pentecost Weekend

1.  One of my five little brothers is getting married tomorrow, in St. Louis.  I'm so happy for him and his fiancee.

Yes, that is the original Voltron series on dvd.  

 I am also so very happy that my in-laws are shouldering all of my parenting responsibilities this weekend and taking my five exterior children to the wedding.  Being two weeks from my due date, Patrick and I are making a prudent decision to stay home.

2.  Do you realize what this means?  

For the first time, since May, 1996, Patrick and I will be home alone!  No kids!  All weekend!  The messes I won't have to clean, the curfews I won't have to negotiate, the silence!  Oh, the sweet, sweet, sound of silence!

3.

Tonight is Korean BBQ Night.  Patrick is taking me into the big city for some fine dining Korean style.  Micaela from California to Korea has given me her best menu tips, and I have long been waiting for this day.

Nope.  It's not a Meat Friday, so we'll make some other sacrifice (like NO KIDS!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!  I kid!  I kid!  Oops.  Horrible pun there.) so we can savor the grilled delicacies of the Far East.

4.

You can do that you know.  Make an alternate sacrifice like no caffeine, or bread, or make a donation to a charity, or some other act of penance in lieu of the meatless Friday.

But NOT during Fridays in Lent.

Susan had to explain this finer point of Canon Law to her classmates.  No, you cannot order carnitas at Chipotle on Friday in Lent if you give up the guac instead.  Fridays in Lent are no meat, no exceptions, unless you don't meet the age requirements, or have an illness, or are pregnant or nursing.  I'm guessing all of  you already knew all of this.

5.  Micaela (of the Korean BBQ wisdom) sent me some questions about St. Jude's School for Kids Who Want to Read Good and Do Other Things Good Too, aka our one student homeschool founded in October 2013.  She's running a new series/link-up, "How I Homeschool."

I went on and on and got all hormonal/emotional and she is still publishing it.

Read her own interview with herself for some good practical homeschooling advice from someone who knows what they're doing.  She's makes it look good.  I make it look messy.

6.  Other things I plan to do this weekend:  explore the better donut shops of the city.  Mary Bridget is due at about the same time as me, and she is always Instagramming donut temptations from donut boutiques around Chicagoland.

She should make a coffee table book of her beautiful donut pictures.  Which are all on IG, so I can't gank one for my blog.  So I took this one from the world wide web.

Dinkel's Maple Bacon Donut

I want.  I need.

7.  We are also going to an Ordination Anniversary party for our dear, dear friend Fr. Dan.

Fr. Dan is the man in black.

Fr. Dan is a former hog farmer, bluegrass mandolin player turned priest.  He has opened for Johnny Cash and played with Alison Krauss.  He was also president of the Illinois Pork Producers Association.

We went camping once.  Fr. Dan came and said Mass for us.  Those are my kids and they're all big now.

Then he heard The Call.  I'm so happy he did too, or we never would have met him.

Patrick and Fr. Dan on that singular camping trip.

Fr. Dan and I share a deep love for Jesus and bacon.  In that order.

Of course, all of the above weekend fun is made possible by Patrick's terrific parents.  I'm praying for their sanity this weekend, as well as praying that Thornton 6.0 doesn't decide to show up and spoil my plans. 

Though I suppose, Patrick could bring me Korean BBQ take-out and Dinkel's Donuts, and then we'd have to name the baby, Dan.

In the meantime, I am more than happy to offer congrats to Dwija and her family for the speedy delivery of their long-awaited son. Congratulations Borobia Family!

Linking up with Jen in City.

A Hodgepodge of Easter Quick Takes

1.

2.  This happened and it was Magical.

That's Lucy!

That's Susan as Mr. Darling.  Some nights, she had a mustache or 5 o'clock shadow.

That's the whole Darling family.  You know what they say about a tall girl at an all female school that does musicals?  "Once a man, always a man."

There's Lucy/Peter again with her amazing Capt. Hook co-star.

Peter and Tiger Lily

3.

This isn't creepy, not creepy at all.

A Facebook follower of Housewifespice recently liked a post, and naturally I had to online stalk her and read her blog and lots of her archives.  The Brayn of Chalayn is gut-bustingly funny, but my favorite post is this one she wrote back in 2012 about her family's long history with "VD" or Ventriloquist Dummies.  I found it both horrifying and hilarious.  

4.

Wondering what to serve on Canonization Sunday?

Never fear!  Melody has come up with the perfect dessert, rumored to be John Paul II's favorite!

Pair that with {insert favorite Italian entree here} to honor John XXIII and you're set!

5.

Jill:  Daddy, You are the King of Nerdingham.

Me:  gales of giggles

Jill:  And that makes YOU (pointing to me) the QUEEN of Nerdingham!

6.

The Royal Family of Nerdingham

I tried on a maxi dress the other day.  Maxi dress is a nice term for long, flowy tent.  Jill saw me and said, "You. Are. Really. Fat."  

Then she snickered.

So we had a little conversation about that Eff Word.

Now, she announces at random intervals, usually in public places, like a mall elevator filled with shoppers, "You have a Really Fat Baby in your tummy."

Toddlers.  Keeping it real from verbalization to adulthood.

7.  Same as Quick Take One but with a Different Picture:

From our family to yours, Happy Easter/Meat Friday!

Go see Jen's collection of Quick Takers and pre-order her book stat!

A Tale of Two Trilogies and a Winner!

First off,

We Have a Winner!  Congratulations to Jill L!  She has won the Driscoll's berry coupon giveaway!

Secondly,  I hope each and every one of you is having a wonderful Easter Week!

Public Service Announcement:  Don't forget - This Friday is Meat Friday! 

Now for some book reviews:

The third installment of Jennifer Niesen's The Ascendance Trilogy is out!  And it's awesome!

Young King Jaron and his landlocked country of Carthya are being attacked on all sides, by all of his enemies who have banded together against him.

With a few friends at his back, and lots of witty comments along the way, Jaron must face incredible odds while injured and grieving a devastating loss.

As usual, Nielsen combines great dialogue with action-packed adventure.  I was particularly impressed with Jaron's invocation of "the saints" as he leads his people into battle and his concept of an afterlife for those who've lived virtuously.

I'd say these books are appropriate for ten and up?  In The Shadow Throne, you will find battlefield violence, some tortuous beatings, death, blood, and the occasional kiss (maybe twice?).  You will also find sacrifice, true love, loss, and responsibility, not to mention an epic surprise ending.

I reviewed Part One:  The False Prince here and Part Two:  The Runaway King here.  You should definitely begin at the beginning.

Technically speaking, The Lunar Chronicles is a series, not a trilogy, with Part 4:  Winter yet to be released.

I greatly enjoyed Cinder, had some issues with Scarlet, and was delighted to find Cress not only resolves one of my qualms, but is a better book (than Scarlet) with better characters overall.

Cress is Marissa Meyer's sci-fi re-telling of Rapunzel, complete with a blind "prince."

Cress is a shell, which is like the Lunar version of a "squib."  Lunars, the race of people that populates the moon, generally have the ability to control the minds of Earthens.  But Cress doesn't.

She does have a gift for technology and hacking, which is why she has spent the last seven years of her life alone, in a satellite, monitoring all of Earth's secrets for the evil queen and cloaking the Lunar ships that are set to invade Earth.

Scarlet is only in this book briefly as she is captured by the Lunars and imprisoned on the moon.  In those brief moments, she mentally re-hashes her one night of passion with Wolf and makes it seem as though perhaps it was just some passionate kisses.

In my opinion, the best scene in Cress, is when she and Captain Thorne (again, the likeness to Captain Jack Harkness was striking) crash land on Earth.  Thorne has been blinded in a fight, and Cress has never been to the surface.  He must ascertain their location and manage their survival through the eyes of someone who has never seen an animal in real life, or the sky, or the sun.

Her total naivete and innocence is the perfect foil for his brash womanizing attitude and their romance is one of the greatest things about this series.

Unlike the previous two volumes, Cress is very clean.  Focused on fighting the evil Queen Levana and stopping her marriage to Cinder's heartthrob Emperor Kai, Cinder, Wolf, Cress, Thorne, and the lovable droid Iko face the impossible.

This series is definitely "young adult."  I'll let my high school kids read it, I'd probably let an 8th grader read it, but with the joking sex change reference in Cinder, and the love scene and references to porn (which is frowned upon) in Scarlet, I'd definitely reserve this series for teens.

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