Five Favorites: Mary & Max edition

hoping a little participation in five faves with Hallie can help jumpstart my entrance back into blogging

(if I had a quarter for every time I started a blog post with a similar sentence...sigh)

{1}

It's May. It's the month we focus on Mothers and well, I think this is the Mother of all Mothers.

ha

But really, I love Mary and I'm soooooo glad I have her in my court because I need constant encouragement and prayers and she has my back.

So when I heard our Holy Father, Pope Francis, had a special devotion to this particular image of Our Lady, I was all in. I mean, there she is, undoing knots and MAN, DO I HAVE A LOT OF KNOTS in my life. x16

real quick, the reason for this image is summed up here in this quote from a long long time ago from St. Irenaus:

"the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith." (Adversus haereses, 3, 22)

The painting depicts one angel handing Mary a ribbon filled with knots and another angel, turned toward us, taking the loosed ribbon to hand back to us.

{2}

this kid.

The "I used to be the middle child and then Sophia came along and now I'm not" kid.

He cracks us up, usually. 

He is my foodie.

We went out for a date a week or so ago.

I took him to confession as his First Communion was 2 days later.

(we go BIG on dates here)

Afterwards we had to eat so I talked him into my splitting my favorite sandwich at The Italian Bread Place on Noblestown Rd.

We kept saying things like "this is the best hoagie I've ever eaten" and "this is waaayyyyy better than Subway"!

yeah, I agree, Max, I agree. It was very yummy. It's the vinaigrette. so delish

And then we had ice cream, which makes it to my next fave....

{3}

we love ice cream.

my freezer is stocked for the time being with fun flavors of ice cream, sorbet and milkshake making ice cream (the big tub o vanilla).

THAT said... we love to go out for ice cream, too.

Since Max and I were in the area of my favorite sandwich a few weeks ago, we HAD to pay a visit to the homemade ice cream place, Antney's, on Poplar St. 

so happy for warm weather.

And the flavor we both got was Mexican chocolate.

oh joy! 

{4}

well, since this is kinda turning into a five favorites starring Max, I should mention this amazing milestone!

Max's First Holy Communion

And we were blessed with our former pastor celebrating the sacrament!

Max looked so charming and grown up and holy.

It was a lovely day.

{5}

Rounding out my five faves is a field trip I helped organize to take the first communicants and first graders on to St. Anthony's Chapel on Troy Hill.

This chapel is a true gem in the city of Pittsburgh.

Over 5000 relics of saints.... one of which was St. Maximilian Kolbe!  Several first class relics of the true cross, and lots of beautiful things to learn about our faith.

The kids were so good and really enjoyed this trip. 

I used to take my first graders there long ago when I had no children of my own and was a teacher.

I knew it would be a great place to take these beautiful little kids to commemorate their special day.

Hopefully it will become a yearly tradition!

Plus an extra....

{6}

while typing, I'm starting out my morning with this beautiful music

such beautiful music by the Benedictine sisters

order/listen here

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More Birthday- the March and April peeps

I need to squeeze in a March/April birthday recap before my futile brain loses all this information. 

That's why I blog. 

To help my memory.

And because mine is freshed in my mind... I'll start there.

I may have mentioned from time to time that I really enjoy celebrating my birthday. You can even read about why I do in this post "Why I Love My Birthday". 

So when I woke up that lovely spring day a few weeks ago, I set to doing something I enjoy.... making pancakes that I KNEW I would love and maybe my kids might not (Sophia and Gabriel did, the others, not so much). Hey, it was MY birthday.  They get ice cream for breakfast, I wanted oatmeal chocolate chip pancakes! 

While it was a very busy day with soccer and organizing children to get a few chores done (there may have been some yelling at said kids and "it's my birthday, be nice to me" may have been tossed around a few times), I had a dinner date with Mr. Crafty to look forward to that night.

Mr. Crafty spent the day with hundreds of men from our city at The Catholic Gathering of Men downtown.  He had my blessing to go. He was fed spiritually and would later attend to my literal feeding at a lovely venue downtown: Ruth Chris. 

I had requested steak for dinner. I've been itching to break out the Barbie but am patiently waiting to get some much needed deck repairs/spiffing up done, so no grilling yet.

It was a delicious and filling dinner and we had a surprise guest who is partially (his arm) in this (blurry) picture of us... my dad.

He likes to make an appearance and buy wine and dessert. He was welcome to join us. LOL

That dessert you see there was a gargantuan apple strudel thing-a-majig. I ate -maybe- a 1/4 of it and saved the rest for breakfast another day. 

It was truly a great day (weekend really) and I optimized all my free codes and treats that you get sent when you sign up for Redbox, Starbucks, Moe's etc etc.

Last month, the twins turned a whopping SIX years old. How....does.... this keep happening? 

ugh.

My babies are growing too fast. 

Here you see their build a bear counterparts. 

They would dress in camo (still) everyday if they had enough to make it through the week. Thankfully, they do not.

My mum took them to Build a Bear which I had no idea they would be remotely intersested in at all. After a recent birthday party there though, they requested "pants" for their nekkid bears and so they got unders and a whole lot more for the bears!

Ah the cake. 

This year the request was for the "Pirate Ship like you made Max"

So, I did as requested... not too shabby for an "oh my goodness where has this day gone I haven't even started the cake yet and it's 3:00" kinda cake.

I made it a wee bit different but it was still accepted by my fickle twins.

We celebrated with close family and they have a classmate party coming up in a few weeks (it had to be postponed due to the ugly stomach bug).

There haven't been too many new likes/dislikes from these guys in a year. They still love camo and wrestling each other (or any willing person). They still say the funniest things and have the most passionate expressions.

They are REALLY into Playmobil now and have received many of those sets as well as lego kits. Their brothers are finally leaving them alone and letting them build them all by themselves.

They both still love all things military and monster truck related.

And at six, they're both still melting my heart with those smiles and hugs and kisses that they, thankfully, still give their mama and their dad, too!

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20 minutes

I was in such a sweet little slumber when the phone rang. And woke me up.

I guess I shouldn't be too upset but man it's the perfect kind of napping day: rain is imminent, sleeping toddler, chapter of my book read, I know what's for dinner for a change.

So before the crazy people arrive - er- I mean my lovely crew of swashbuckling boys... I catch up on another chapter and eat this to redeem those stolen napping moments.

(this is how much of the cookie was eaten during the typing of this post)

**Ironically, while this was typed up Wednesday, a very similar scenario is playing out on Thursday.... hopefully the phone won't ring and a few more chapters will be read!

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