Blair's Blessings

Sunday, January 10, 2016

366 Project

I'm in a photography group, and many of the ladies in the group did a photo-a-day project last year. I attempted, but didn't make it very far. This year I'm motivated and ready to improve on my photography skills, especially since I just got a new lens (and am hoping at some point this year I might be able to get a new camera). Here are my first 10 of 366....

Saturday, January 09, 2016

A Sunday at the Museum

Starting with mass and then the pizza place

with some fish

and some Pac-Man

Museum with Mom while Daddy and napping baby hang in the car

Mom and Dad switch for a bit and then Dad wrangles them all back to the car

Thanks to the Adore silent auction and the bank's free museum weekends

for our free trip to the children's museum!

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Beach Birthdays

I've been thinking a lot about family traditions. What are the things that our kids will remember most about the ways we celebrated birthdays, feast days, and holidays? Will they remember our attempts at the Advent wreath and Jesse Tree? Will they remember reading all those beautiful Christmas picture books together? Will they remember our special birthday meals and the fun parties they had? What about all the celebrations with friends for different holidays? Will they remember getting to choose a special treat on their feast day? Are the ways we celebrate indicative of what is truly important to our family? Are we spending too much money on these celebrations and letting materialism affect the way we celebrate? Or are we just trying our hardest to mark the seasons and feasts of the year in a meaningful way? Deep thoughts to ponder in this busy but blessed time.

This is a season of celebrating for us. After we get through Halloween, All Saints' Day, and Thanksgiving, we enter into Advent and the feasts and other celebrations of this season: St. Nicholas Day, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Santa Lucia Day, and then it's Steven Joseph's Birthday, Christmas, the memorial of St. Stephen (which we usually forget), New Year's Eve, the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, Mary Clare's Birthday, the memorial of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (Ellie's patron), and Epiphany. I'd actually like the kids to celebrate their feast days at another time of the year, for example Steven Joseph could take St. Joseph Day, when things aren't as busy, and we're always encouraging Mary Clare to have a half-birthday in the summer! But they haven't taken us up on those suggestions...yet! We just can't do it all, so celebrating some of these days just doesn't happen. But the big feasts and the birthdays...always!

We're grateful that the extended family now has this beach house to share special memories. On Saturday we drove down for the day, to celebrate Steven's dad's birthday which was a few days before, and Mary Clare's birthday which was that day. They grilled burgers and hot dogs, had cake and brownies, some time to visit, always some jigsaw puzzles to work on, and even a new tradition...a lip sync battle! What a fun time we had, and we also brought Ellie's friend MaryKatherine along.

Katie Grace with little Scout!