Grateful for...

...favorite books,
these two,

a much anticipated breakthrough...

and a man who grants his wife her only birthday request - a roasted artichoke and a margarita :)

Life is good.

As Promised - Updated

All reliefs are taken at this time. Thank you! I am so happy you like them. Please check back next Thursday for more....

More sculptures available here. My humble gratitude for your interest....

St. Giuseppe Moscati

Have you seen this movie? Wonderful! Patrick and I both thought it was one of the most inspiring films we'd ever seen. Very well done.

One Morning

A butterfly landed on her finger. I didn't capture it in time, I was too captivated by this face.

Zoom in if you want to see the cutest freckles in the world. :)

A Little Throw Up Goes A Long Way

The other night as Patrick and I were tucking the girls into bed, I sensed the familiar feeling of something warm and slimy all over my shirt and running down my arm. Kilian is quite the spitty baby and I just....laughed. It reminded me of an evening last month:

We were just about to leave for a formal event....dinner, champagne, lots of people dressed in suits and pretty gowns. We don't do formal very often, and honestly I feel sort of silly all dressed up. Embarrassed. I do love the look of pretty dresses, but I'm much more comfortable in jeans. So, I was kissing my girls farewell as we headed to the car and I took Kilian into my arms to get one last embrace. As I kissed his face and inhaled his sweet forehead one last time....well, you know what happened.

My floor-length black dress was now graced with a familiar white, slimy substance and my whole person smelled like stomach acid. Had I no children and this was perhaps a beverage running down my front I wonder how I would have reacted. With irritation, at minimum. But I am a mother. My "Oh no!" was followed by laughing and smiling, and I kissed my baby even more. Inside I exclaimed "thank you, thank you, thank you...". As we drove away all I could be was grateful. I never did get the stains off that night, but I wore them with great pride and gratitude all evening long.

One of the many, many small miracles of motherhood. To be able not only to accept the mishaps, frustrations and causes for anxiety, but to Love them and laugh at them - to see such occasions for what they are....real gifts and our way to heaven. I know, I'm taking a small, silly example and broadening it to mean something huge. But really, a mother's joy at throw-up isn't a small thing when you take into consideration all her other misfortunes - some quite large, embraced with love or mercy or even laughter on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.

Sure, not every frustration is accepted with patience, much less joy. Of course not...I get that. But countless misfortunes dealt by our children are embraced lovingly. Motherhood changes a woman daily. It frees her from laziness and general self-absorbed ugliness. Some would consider the foul-smelling, white, dried spit up all over my dress that night an "ugly" aspect of motherhood. To me it was nothing short of beautiful.

Uh-oh

Oops. I just tried to trim my own hair and...well...cutting a straight line is not as easy as I thought it would be. I may have to go get it cut, which would be the first professional haircut I've had in four years. It's funny, we all have things we're willing to spend money on - I've no problem buying pretty bed or table linens or other happy-household items, but I can't bring myself to spend on getting my hair done. My husband has been cutting it for years. But he's out of town. There's a little salon just down the road, but as I'm typing this I'm thinking I'll just wear a ponytail for a while until his return.

Sculpture Status

Wow, everyone. You people are fast! All sculptures are currently spoken for. For those who purchased, thank you...very much. I do hope you like them! For those who missed round one, I should have more available toward the end of next week. So stay tuned...or tune out and back in again after Wednesday. :)

Just in Time for Christmas...

10 8 6 3 0 available here. More to come later....

Personal apology/disclaimer: the reliefs are listed at a price higher than I would like (though I assure they are worth it - they are heavy, highly detailed sculptures), but the price is necessary to cover my costs. I know you understand, so....thank you!

Big Boy

I could have...

....written this myself, only not so well. Her thoughts are precisely what I was trying to relay last week. Though I left out so much of what was on my mind (which may or may not have anything to do with a baby waking up and needing me), she filled in all the blanks perfectly. Danielle....I love you.

Schooling, and Gifts

We started the school year last week. I'm more encouraged now than I was a few weeks ago when I was feeling like a failure of a homeschooling mother. We're down to a bare-bones curriculum - faith, reading, writing and arithmetic during the day, and my husband does history with the girls in the evening. It's pretty dry right now as I'm working with the girls when the baby naps or when we're in the car, but just getting the basics done is encouraging enough for now. I am not a very good homeschooling mother. The Lord gave me gifts and natural inclinations in other areas - mostly related to making things prettier (you could say I'm good in superficial matters?). Don't get me wrong, the daytime hours around here are wonderful. I think my children have a very pleasant childhood. But the wonderful is generally experienced outside the schooling framework. I think that is a shame, but I don't seem to be able to do well what other mothers accomplish with their children's education. Let me be clear - it isn't about comparing. I'm beyond that at this stage in my life. The wonder and beauty of another's homeschooling atmosphere is nothing short of pure inspiration to me.

It can be a challenge, sometimes, to accept that we are not good at everything. Even more so when our shortcomings affect our children. But embracing our natural gifts while still working to improve in areas difficult for us is extremely freeing, as I'm learning. It frees us to be able to do well what God wants for us, not what we think we should be good at. It really isn't about us anyway. Our gifts aren't really ours. Anything good we do is from above.