Once upon a time.....

... there was a woman who started a blog, then let it lie fallow for only a few six years.

Oops!

Unam Sanctam Catholicam: Exorcist Andrea Gemma on Medjugorje: "Absolutely diabolical"

Unam Sanctam Catholicam: Exorcist Andrea Gemma on Medjugorje: "Absolutely diabolical"

Figure Skating One Year Later - April 2010

Watch the video of her April free skate competition here.

Wow, has it really been a year since I blogged? LOL! This is Queen Lucy one year since the last skating video I posted. She has come a long way. She started private lessons the end of last summer, and had her first competition in September, and placed first in both her free skate and compulsories - both level Basic Skills 6 (USFS). Since then she joined the synchro team, and competed in 5 more competitions. Whew!

The above video is from her last competition earlier this month. She skated a clean program - the best I have seen (though she said she has done better). She medaled and got third place - EXCELLENT! Especially considering she just moved up to this level and learned the required three new single jumps (loop, lutz, flip) and two new spins (sit and camel) in only five weeks! She had a not-so-good practice in the morning, but she shook off the nerves! CORRECTION - She informed me she already kinda knew the loop and sit spin, though the loop was not consistent, and she didn't have the revolutions for the sit spin.

Excellent coach + hard work + plenty of ice time + prayer (with God first of course) = what you see above.

Thank you Saint Lydwina for your intercession!

Figure Skating - April 2009

The end of April, a dear friend recorded Queen Lucy skating. She was a little shy while being recorded. She is a "careful" skater, not quite ready to risk falling when learning a new move; and her teacher says the biggest thing holding her back is herself & the way she gets frustrated when a move doesn't go correctly. She has come so far - not just in her skating, but also in her self-confidence. She wants to go to her first competition in September (it is local), and now wants to join the synchro team (think synchronised swimming, except it is skating). Her long term goal is to teach. She spends every moment she can on the ice, and practices the whole time she is there. It has gotten to the point she needs some private lessons, in addition to her weekly group lessons. Her teacher says that the way she practices, one 15 minute private lesson every other week is fine. Of course more is better, but also costs more. Money is always an issue, and while we are going the "budget route", she can't do it without help. She saves every penny she gets from birthdays, pet sitting, etc for skating, but it is not enough if she wants to start competing, and/or join the synchro team. She is going to write up a proposal, seeking "sponsors" and pledges, and send it to the grandmas, aunts, etc. Since this video was shot (less than 2 weeks ago), she has already learned more combinations, and a new jump.

Click here to see the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDZiOr-0ZR0

Dr. Oz to Oprah and Michael J Fox: "The stem cell debate is dead."

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

I love anything to do with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. I have his book Life is Worth Living, based on his TV show, This is the Mass by Daneil*Rops*Sheen*Karsh, and I wish I had more. I want so share a couple of videos. One is from the television show "What's my Line", and the other is from his television show - about God laughing when people say He is dead. Enjoy!

Notice he writes "JMJ" before writing his name. I also laughed at the "crazy sponsor" comment.




I love how his advice is timeless.



I encourage you to read his books, listen to his shows, and watch his videos.

Preparing for Lent

How are you preparing?

We will be doing the Lenten Calender from Dumb Ox Publications. We have done it before & love it.
Dumb Ox Publications
10201 Grove School Road
Beloit, WI 53511
(608) 879-9400
They do not have a website, but I think think it is sold at Emmanuel Books.

I was looking through some old posts. We have sort of gotten into a slump, and these old posts reminded me of what we should be doing. I also found a forgotten recipe.
Lent is Fast Approaching - this includes a link to a blog dedicated to Lent. There is also a link to a friend's fantastic blog, one of her older posts on Lent (old post, but the info is still current).
Fat Tuesday - the name explains it all.
Mommia's Hashbrown Casserole - a recipe.

Marykeys Friends + wine + chocolate = loads of laughs!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

"The 12 Pains of Christmas"

Saturday, December 20. 2008 - Feast of Saint Dominic of Silos



A friend, her children, and her children's friends made this hilarious video! Make sure you watch it to the very end. Oh, an adult performed the third day.

The 12 Pains of Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bXRXq0RHLE

Reviews

Hearthside Homeschool Reviews has a great post on some books for children on cleaning (reminds me a bit of FlyLady). If my children knew about these books, they would beg for them to save them from my lectures on how they don't help out around the house! LOL!

Shrink Art

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 - Feast of Saint Bibiana

Queen Lucy is using Seton's Art 7 for Young Catholics (It is now "Art 6", but we have an older book). A recent lesson was on stained glass. One of the assignments was to color a picture of the Blessed Mother, Queen of Heaven, and her Holy Child.

I had the bright idea of putting it on vellum or something else that is "see-thru" to hang in the window, then I remembered something from when I was a child - Shrinky Dink!

I got some Shrinky Dink Frosted Rough and Ready. I placed it over the picture, shiny side up, and traced with a black permanent marker (I simplified the smaller details). On the rough side, Queen Lucy used her colored pencils. I then trimmed off the excess plastic, punched holes in the top (regular sized hole puncher), put the picture on a cookie sheet & put it in the oven (per the directions on the SD package). I have a window in my oven door, so Queen Lucy and I watched in awe as the large piece of plastic melted, shrunk, and rolled up - uh, oh, I thought all of her hard work was ruined! But I remembered that the directions said it will flatten in the last 30 seconds.... so we waited. Suddenly, it unrolled! After it cooled, she checked out her finished project.

(I scanned this, and it looks much better in real life.)

Now all that is needed it to thread ribbon through the holes, and hang it.

Things we have learned:

***Sometimes it will stick when it rolls up, but it can be reheated, gently pulled apart, then left in the heat to unroll the rest of the way.

***The finished product stuck slightly to the pan, and left some of the permanent marker on the pan. I have read suggestions to use a non-stick cookie sheet, foil (shiny side up), parchment paper, or a paper sack (the oven does not get hot enough to burn it.) We are going to make Christmas ornaments, and will try the other suggestions.

***The softer the colored pencil the better (I guess they blend better, leaving less blank/uncolored spots). We are also going to try permanent markers.

***Plastic #6 (not the foam kind) can be recycled from various sources like food containers, to be used as shrinkable plastic. I have not tried this yet because I am confused about whether or not it emits gasses when heated, and I do not want to possibly contaminate the oven I cook our food in.

*** There are many projects on the internet - Google "shrinky dink" or "shrinkable plastic".

Excellent quote!

From one of my favorite authors!

Democracy put "man" on a pedestal; feminism put "woman" on a pedestal; but neither democracy nor feminism could live a generation unless a "Child" was first put on a pedestal, and such is the significance of Nazareth!
-Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Your oxymoron for the day - "Knights for Obama"

It seems there is a group out there, consisting of some (very few, I pray) Knights of Columbus who support Obama. They are "resisting church pressure to make abortion the primary issue that should drive Catholics' votes...." according to an article on Beliefnet.

For those who may be unaware, the Knights of Columbus are a Catholic men's pro-life group.

They need our prayers.

I rescued the Blessed Mother! (sort of)

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - Tuesday in Easter Week

I was passing by a thrift store, and found a statue of the Blessed Mother. She has some nicks, chipped paint, and her hands are missing, as is the head of the serpent. The owner said she was going to through it away, but thought that someone would want it. I rescued it for a dollar!

It's 15 inches tall & looks to be well made. You can see a metal support where one hand used to be. I am no art expert, so perhaps someone can help me identify it/tell me what I have. And perhaps someone can advise me on how to repair it.

*** I know it is Our Lady of Grace. I would like to know about the statue itself - it's history, artist, age, etc. (I included close-ups of imprints on the base.)

Christus resurrexit!

Monday, March 24, 2008- Monday in Easter Week

Lent is over, and we are now in the Easter season. Forty days of sacrificing ended, followed by a day of celebration. We went to a beautiful and reverent Sung Mass, then to my mother's for a feast.

This is the beautiful High Altar at a Novus Ordo/Traditional Latin Mass parish where we attended the Easter Latin Mass (notice they had moved the table - which you will see in later pics).

These are the young men who served the Mass with Father. In this picture are two seminarians, a soon to be seminarian, and a new member of the Catholic Church; as well as King Peter in front on the right of Father. By the way, for the first half of Mass, King Peter's surplice was all messed up, and I was mentally straightening it. Not ONE of those young men noticed! LOL!

Finally, here is Queen Lucy with King Peter.

Horton Hears a Who - Horton is Prolife

Sunday, March 16, 2008 - Second Sunday of the Passion

Taken from here -

Dr. Seuss Book
God is communicating His big dream of ending abortion in a most profound way through the dream stream story of Horton Hears A Who by Dr. Seuss. In February 2005, one of our youth, a 15-year-old girl at the Justice House of Prayer, had a dream. In the dream she saw a large, beautiful building with the words “The Who” appearing over it. She and her sisters entered the house and began to look throughout the building until they found the attic where there was a series of old books from the past that they knew would be needed for the future. She shared her dream with the JHOP team. I knew the dream was from God, but I wondered, “What is ‘The Who,’ and what are these old books?”

The next morning while pondering the dream, I received a remarkable email from a man in Kansas City that included a sermon he gave several years ago on what must
occur for abortion to end. He felt led to send it to me, even though he thought it was unusual that the analogy the Lord had given him was based on the Dr. Seuss book, Horton Hears a Who. When I read this, I instantly connected “The Who” in the dream with “The Who” in the book. I was immediately interested!

In this children’s book written in 1954, we find an elephant whose name is Horton. He is the prophetic Church with big ears and a large trumpet. He can hear what no one else can hear—the sound of these little people called, The Whos, who live in the microscopic town of Who-ville.

In the book, we also find a kangaroo who wants to kill all the little Whos, because he cannot see or hear them. He doesn’t believe they exist. Immediately the thought came to me, “The kangaroo is the kangaroo court!”—it stands for the Supreme Court who issued the death decree of ‘73 in Roe v Wade, and legalized abortion. Wow! I realized that what I was reading was a parable from the past that was now going
to be used en masse, for the ending of abortion. The theme of the whole book amazingly is, “A person’s a person, no matter how small!” And the remedy for the crisis is that every voice must be raised loudly and urgently to rescue all the little unborn Whos. With the kangaroo’s death decree hanging over Who-ville, Horton implores the mayor “to CALL a big meeting, get everyone out, make every Who holler, make every Who shout!”

This Book Speaks of Abortion
Graciously, The ElijahList blasted this story February 16, 2005. Amazingly, the next day I received an email from a woman who said she read The ElijahList article and received three confirmations the following day at her Day Care Center. One child came in with a Horton Hears A Who backpack, a second was carrying a Who-ville doll, but the third–a ten-year-old boy–came to her and said, “Ma’am, I had a dream last night. I dreamt of Horton Hears a Who, and all the little Whos were not saying YOPP; they were crying STOP!!!”

Oh, my God, there is a massive cry being raised up from the young ones of the earth, praying and prophesying, “STOP ABORTION, STOP! STOP! STOP!!!!!!!!!!” What are the chances of this divine confirmation? Those who read this are now held accountable. The whole Church must cry out now—STOP ABORTION! Soon after,
another man connected with me and said, “My ten-year-old daughter was reading Horton Hears A Who to her little brother.” She came to her father and said, “Dad, I think this book is about ending abortion.” That afternoon, he read The Elijah List article on Horton Hears a Who. This man now leads our Bound4LIFE ministry.

Again, amazingly, we found out that Fox Movies is doing a major
motion picture in 2008, called, Horton Hears A Who, starring Jim Carrey.

The Lord is SHOUTING to the nation! Will we have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying?

A great convergence is upon us. If the Church understands the times and what God is seeking to bring forth, we can shout to the nation, before the movie comes out, that Horton Hears a Who is about the ending of abortion–so when millions of people watch the movie, they will all be thinking, “A person’s a person, no matter how small–The Whos are the unborn!”

Can you see it? This is God’s trumpet to the nation! God is marching out, shattering ideologies, and moving His great Mind and Heart into the earth. He moves the media and makes it His pawn. Oh, the brilliant Wisdom of God! He takes a book out of the archives of history that millions have read since 1954, pulls it out, and slams it into the present through a movie. The light penetrates the lie, the armor of the strongman is stripped away, the demon is named, and can now be cast out!

Oh God, we need a national exorcism of this spirit of death that has ruled over us for 34 years! Every voice must be counted. Buy the book! Spread it around! Start children’s prayer meetings to end abortion! Support crisis pregnancy centers! May your voice be heard in your voting. Pray for Jim Carrey to be radically haved—he could shout to the world, “This movie is about ending abortion!”

A young woman had a dream knowing nothing of the movie or Jim Carrey’s involvement. She dreamt that Jim Carrey was a Christian and that he was carrying a briefcase with two books in it. The first one was called, Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting, by Derek Prince, and the second one was a book called, Mobilizing The Army of God. Could this man and this movie mobilize a pro-life army of young people who will fast and pray for justice?

The front page of Time Magazine (last year, 2007) showed a hand with four different-sized fetuses resting on it. The article is saying that there are more crisis
pregnancy centers than there are abortion clinics in America, and that abortion is at its lowest rate since the beginning years of when abortion was legalized. In the same magazine, there is an article about Jim Carrey, and he is seeking spiritual enlightenment, but doesn’t know Jesus yet. Save him, God!!!

“It is time for all the Whos who have blood that is red to come to the aid of their country, he said.” Suddenly, Dr. Suess kicks out of Who-ville and into national prophecy, not even knowing it. Christians must come to the aid of America carrying the Blood of Jesus, which alone can wash away our sins. It is not enough that Jesus died; the Blood must be applied to the doorposts of our national guilt. Oh, that millions of Christians would plead, “Jesus, I plead Your Blood over my sins and the sins of my nation. God, end abortion and send revival to America.” Go to http://www.bound4life.com/ to see how you can be a part of a mass movement of pleading the Blood of Jesus over our nation.

The YOPPS Must Be Heard
The voices of Jo-Jos just bouncing their yo-yos must now be heard. The Jo-Jos are Christians who are enjoying their comfortable careers, but are oblivious to the crisis. They are the youth in our Church youth groups who play with their iPods and who browse in their Windows. While living for entertainment, they have no idea that they were meant to be a part of God’s great movement to end abortion! Their voices must be heard now!!! Let Myspace® and You Tube™ become their Eieffelberg towers from which they shout out their YOPPS and their STOPS.

Why would God give this dream stream to a group of young people who pray everyday in front of the Supreme Court calling on God to raise up righteous judges who will reverse Roe v Wade? To encourage hearts and release a movement through their prayers! So that it will be said:

“How true, yes, how true,” said the big kangaroo, “and from now on you know what I am planning to do? From now on I am going to protect them with you!”

Brothers and sisters, let us believe that the Supreme Court will protect all the unborn little Whos, that God’s big dream will come true, and that all the Whos’ dreams could come true too.

It is profound that in the dream, the young lady saw not just one book, but a series of old books needed for the future. Read Horton Hatches an Egg. It is about a bird who wants to go play, rather than sit on her egg. So Horton, the elephant again, sits on the egg until the egg hatches. When the egg hatches, out comes, not a little baby bird, but an elephant with wings.

The moral of the story is this: he who cares for the unwanted child—that child will take on the nature of the one who cared for it. It is the spirit of adoption! God is calling the Church to adopt and care for the unwanted children in the nation. We have got to be Jesus’ love answer. We can’t just be pro-birth we must be pro-life!

Let the prophetic Church arise and carry the heart of Heaven! Let them hear The Call for united fasting and prayer on behalf of those who have no voice! Let the prophetic Church hear what the world can’t hear, and may they blow the trumpet once again, declaring, “God has a dream, and we have His dream, and millions will be mobilized to become the river of justice rolling down again…”

~Lou Engle, TheCall

Hair today........

Passion Sunday

I have a LOT of hair. It is very thick, and grows fairly quickly. BC (before children) my hair was long enough that when I tucked in my shirt, I also could tuck in my hair. As part of Lent, I decided that I would chop off my hair, and donate it.

A "friend" suggested I go for this look:

(now you can tell what kind of friends I have)

I assure you, I will NOT go that route!

Anyway, here is my picture - taken today by Queen Lucy on our porch (yes, I still have Christmas greenery on my porch - in my defense the weather til now has been lousy; and yes, that is the same sweater as the one in my profile picture; and yes, I do have other clothes, but if you want to contribute some money so I can buy more, I will let you. LOL!) Oh, and my hair is longer than it looks in the picture; there is more, and longer, hair in the back.

This is the "before" picture. The big cut will happen before Easter.

Dissecting the Dead

Sunday March 9, 2008 - Feast of Saint Dominic Savio


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

King Peter is doing Apologia's Biology 1. He got to do his first dissection - an earthworm. He went through the lesson, pointing out the guts to Queen Lucy, and said "cool" when he found the "worm poop". Gross! How is it that boys kind find humor in waste? As Queen Lucy often says, "BOYS!"

It's Extortion, I Tell You!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - Feast of Saint Irene

A while back, I got some wonderful body spray from Bath & Body Works. It was from their aromatherapy line - Lavender Vanilla, Tranquil Body Essence. I loved the scent - more so because it did not trigger headaches (as so many scents do with me.) Of course, it went the way all good things go - it was discontinued. Yes, they still have the line of products, MINUS the body essence! I was very upset when I found this out, so I went to eBay. Of course eBay has it (what don't they have?), but for a fee nearly triple what I paid in the first place. It's extortion I tell you! Or perhaps it is a conspiracy by the store to drive up prices, and they are the ones extorting us on eBay? I better go now before the black helicopters begin to circle overhead.

Resurrecting the dead - a homeschool experiment

February 25, 2008 - Feast of Saint Walburga

Queen Lucy is using Jeannie Fulbright’s book Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, published by Apologia Educational Ministries. She loves creatures of all kinds (except spiders, but can you blame her?), so this course is right up her alley.

She is now studying insects, and one of the experiments, the Lazarus Experiment, required a live insect. Since there aren’t many of those around here in February, we went to the pet store and bought half a dozen feeder crickets (I think he told us they were Gulf Coast Crickets.) Queen Lucy set up a habitat for them in a larger peanut butter jar (she is hoping they will breed – ummm, I don’t think so!)

Back to the experiment. It required drowning a bug and bringing it back to life (I bet you can guess where it gets its name). I will let you research to find out why this happens.

First, let me introduce you to Lazarus –

Here is Queen Lucy drowning him –

Here is Lazarus – may he rest in peace –

This is Queen Lucy blowing salt off of him in an attempt to bring him back to life –

“I, Lazarus, declare this experiment a success!”