May Day 2017

This year's May Day was a "grin and bear it" kind, as I was in between surgery #1 and surgery #2 and had the 24/7 uncomfortableness of the stent.  Oy!  The things you do for those you love, even when you are not feeling 100%.  Thank God for His grace and strength.  The kids did 99% of the prep!  They needed a little help with set up  and the idea, but they carried it all out after that.  Ariel rocked the prep this year, since Melody and Fone were busy with their play.  And, for the actual carrying it out, I got to play chauffeur, which was doable for me too.  

(You probably wonder HOW DO YOU DO May Day with a crew of kids and the busyness of a large family living and homeschooling PLUS dealing with health issues.  Come check out my write up over at Cuppa Catholic....  it's "Easy as 1, 2, 3"!)

**the prep**

**ding and dash day**

++Thank you, Lord, for your grace and strength and traditions like this that bond our family together in love and generosity!++

~ Dance ~ Dance ~ Dance ~

Rather than having a party to celebrate Melody's Confirmation, her Daddy took her, Ariel, and Rose out to dinner and then to a Daddy Daughter Dance.  Here are pictures of their fun night...

**DINNER**

**DANCE**

What a blessed day it was!!  Melody's Confirmation in the afternoon and the Daddy Daughter Dance in the evening!!

Oh yeah...  Neil didn't forget his littlest girl.  When he got home, he played her song "My Girl" and danced her all around the kitchen with plenty of smooching and an occasional dip!  Such a good daddy!  And she giggled almost the whole time - she loves her daddy so very much!

++Thank you, God, for these fun father/daughter memories made!++

Celebrating A Special Birthday

March 4th

"March Forth!  
It's a command, you see!"  

These are words my Grandma Morris would share often regarding her birthday.  What a cool day to have your birthday - the date forming a "command".  I can almost see and hear her say that now, with her sweet smile and smiling eyes.  How I love and miss those times.  But, I am thankful for our memories and so blessed to be able to carry them on.  She would drop off yummy treats and baked goods every year on our birthdays and make sure to call and sing "Happy Birthday" too.  These small acts given were HUGE acts of love received.  Ones that I hope to carry on and bless us others with as well.  We've definitely taken over the singing of the "Happy Birthday" song and are known to even play the piano while we sing it.  She was my only grandparent who was musically inclined (piano and mandolin), and I know it brought so much JOY that my own children were in music/piano lessons.

One of her signature treats were Rice Krispie Treats - cut into squared, wrapped in wax paper (like a little present) and topped with a sticker.  It was so special to get them every year!  We looked forward to them on our birthdays and holidays.  She would never forget.  And who remembered them this year?  Not I, I must say.  My awesome husband!!!  He was the one who remembered and said we need to make them.  So it became a family project!  We used the standard Rice Krispie treat recipe and made up three batches and them shared them at a family get-together that same night.

I never had a write up on my Grandma Morris as she passed away in December of 2010, which was before I started blogging.  So this is my first sharing about her.  What a blessing she was to me!!  Here are some pictures I could find of her....

(A family birthday we had at our house - whose birthday - dunno!  But you can tell these kids have changed a TON since then!  Love the smiles from Grandma in the background.  She sure loved all the kids!!)

 (Grandma and Grandpa Morris with baby Melody)

(Grandma Morris, my mom, Grandma Hamerlinck)

 (Grandma and Grandpa Morris with Ariel, 7 months old)

 (Grandma and Grandpa always made it in to visit our new babies in the hospital, but little Max was born on a nasty snowstorm so we had NO visitors in the hospital for him.  They did make it over when he was a couple weeks old though - in this picture!)

(My dad with his parents - again another family birthday party at our house - for our August birthday kids, Fone and Melody) 

(Fone's 7th birthday party) 

(Grandma and Grandpa with Max, who was just a little over a year old here)

++Thank you, God, for the life and love of my Grandma Morris.  I pray she is already in her Heavenly Home, smiling down upon us.  May her love and intercession be with us daily!++

Why I Blog

Raising Young Ones has been online now for 7 years!!  And it seems like this time of year is always the time where I look back at the previous year and reflect on whether or not I should continue or if I should pull the plug.  I'm still trucking along, for now.  Not plowing.  But trucking along at a steady pace with many, MANY gaps along the way.  With very little consistency.  But HEY - I'm still here.  And, why am I here, you may ask?  ....for the same reason today as it was when I wrote my very first post way back yonder on April 27, 2011...

 "...to keep track of all the memories we have in raising our Young ones."

That was numero uno then and is still numero uno now.  I learned long ago that the printing pictures, cutting, labeling, and pasting into albums or scrapbooks takes WAY too much time.  I have years and years of memories sitting in my computer in our picture files.  Years that have been stored away, not totally forgotten, but not at all tracked and in no way can be picked up and held and looked through.  Coming to terms that I was in the "thick of it" as a busy homeschool mom, I still wanted a way to keep these memories alive somehow.  I loved looking at all the beautiful pictures and posts written by some of my favorite bloggers (Shower of Roses, In the Heart of My Home, A Holy Experience and Danielle Bean) WAY before I started, thinking what a lovely scrapbook these moms have created for their families to go back and look at whenever they wanted.  If I loved looking through them, I can only imagine the JOY it brought to them, looking back over the years.  Seeds were being planted for me to start a blog, but I wasn't a writer, so there's no way I could blog.  Right?  I hated English in school.  I did not then and do not now have perfect grammar (blah!  what a cruddy sounding sentence right there - lol!).  Plus I have a perfectionist mentality, so writing up one post would take forever if I even had the courage to click "publish" and let go of the many mistakes/errors I know I'd be overlooking.  So really blogging wouldn't be for me.  Or would it?  I have all the pictures on my computer.  I'm somewhat computer savvy, but have an awesome hubby who IS very skilled with computers.  And, then a dear friend here locally started a blog, and I was inspired by her new beginning to start my own.  So less than a year after she started, I decided to give it a shot.  And so began Raising Young Ones.

I fought the "I"m not good enough" voices and still do today.  And, I'm not.  I'm not a good writer.  Probably never will be.  And, when the voices creep in, I kick them far away reminding myself of the purpose of my blog - to keep these precious years and memories alive for my family to have and look back at over the years.  The Holy Spirit kicks in every so often with the words and if I get the chance to put the inspiration to create the post, I may inspire a few people along the way.  But, mostly, this space is for my family - my 10 biggest fans (my 9 young ones and hubby!!).  Obviously, we have the actual blog address that can be visited and scanned through to look back upon the last seven years.  I don't hit every milestone, but it's a good summary of how things went, who was born, how the kids looked and changed over the years, etc....  My hubs was so sweet to think of gifting us with a printed hardcover copy of our blog, and I know a few tears of joy were shed when he surprised me with our first Raising Young Ones "yearbook".  We now have three copies.  Still have to print 2015 and 2016.  But, man, what a gift these books are!!  To hold and flip through!  My online scrapbook printed without the mess of glue and scissors and printed pictures to sort though and label.  Typing and uploading and creating posts is WAY easier, for sure!!

To offer a little encouragement and ideas to any of you who may be thinking about jumping into the blogging world, let me offer you a few of my favorite posts to write.  Sometimes it's nice to have a little starting point or some sort of schedule in mind to help keep things going...

1.  Birthdays - there are 11 of us in our family, so this makes for 11 "for sure" posts throughout the year.  Share pics from that year, old baby pictures of the special birthday boy/girl, or "things we love about you".  For the last few years, I've done the "things we love about you" where the number of things listed is the number of years they are turning.  Here's the last three posts I wrote on for the birthdays in our house...

7 Things We Love About You, Pookey!!! (Pookey's 7th birthday)

Four Blessed Years With YOU!!  (Rose's 4th birthday)

Turning 2 and What We Love About YOU!!!!!  (Yoda's 2nd birthday)

2.  Wordless Wednesday - just upload and share ONE picture from the week.  No words.  It's as simple as that!  And that counts for one post a week!  Sometimes, that's my only post during the week and that's ok.  I've shared before how life takes over so fast and blogging gets put on the back burner.  But if you could do one Wordless Wednesday post each week, that's 52 posts a year!  That's a lot!!  And a great starting point and something to keep you going.

3.  Link-ups and Blog Hops - When I first started blogging, I was drawn to creating a 1000 Gifts journal and tracking the gifts God blesses me with through a weekly post called Multitudes on Monday.  The link-up no longer exists, but we still have our journal that sits on our counter and actually flipped to a new page tonight.  As you can tell, we are WELL beyond the number 1000...

I sure miss this link-up!  Maybe I'll start sharing these posts again on Mondays and write them up, even though there is no longer an active link-up.  Just like the Wordless Wednesday post, this was a (somewhat) attainable goal and allowed for another weekly post.  Some other link ups I've taken part in and still do from time to time are:

7 Quick Takes

My Sunday Best (used to be What I Wore Sunday)

and now Siena Sisters Blog Hop

So there ya have it, folks!!  The reason why I started blogging and continue today.  Thank you for reading, especially to my 10 biggest fans - the 10 people for whom I take time to write about these days as a mom and a wife - my 9 young ones and sweet hubby of mine!!  They are the 10 people who keep me going here.  And, thank *you* for your encouragement to keep going too (bloggers love encouragement through comments - hint, hint!!) - it's sure nice to know that the things you share and write about are actually read by others and mean something to them.

To read on why the rest of the Siena Sisters are blogging, click on the image below....