Apparently the olden days have a lot of carnival rides...

We hit up the local historical village(?) (what are these things categorized as anyways?) this past week. It was a fun filled couple hours of herding children in and out of very old buildings, riding some merry-go-rounds, and watching my mom capitulate to the cries of "Treat! Treat!" whenever my children saw candy, which of course was only every five minutes. 

Dom was pretty bummed he wasn't tall enough to ride the merry-go-round by himself. Apparently its a huge drag riding with your Aunt.

Mr. Happy Pants even clapped in joy at the sight of watching everyone else enjoy the ride while he was trapped in his sad little umbrella stroller. He's clearly already the saint of this family.

Thank the good Lord that my children were tall enough to ride the Farris Wheel or else I would have endured what could have only been endless hours of whining disappointment at not being able to ride! 

I'm pretty sure all her dreams came true in this ride.

Having to ride with an Aunt didn't ruin the awesomeness that was the Farris Wheel though!

Here's Auntie Lexa with the toddles. Yay for my sister who spends most of her civilized time at fancy Catholic schools around the world, then offers up a few months in unpaid nannying/slavery/putting up with boys calling her "Uncle Lexa" really loudly in public.

I get this face a lot. 

We let them play with the antique game until we started getting looks from the guy dressed up in 1920's garb. Heaven forbid we damage priceless artifacts. Oh wait. Edmonton is about 100 years old...sooo....

Further proof of the excessive amount of sugar my mom supplied them with. And pardon my dreadful hair. I spent all of 5 minutes on how I looked before walking out the hotel door that morning. 

But we left Fort Edmonton intact, even after a couple time outs on wooden sidewalks, a few incidents of tossing one's garbage into the strategically placed wooded areas and then spending 20 minutes forcing the offender to find said garbage, and remarkably no priceless artifacts were permanently damaged! And that marks the true success of an outing right?

Tanks-so-much!

Just wanted to pop in and thank all you lovely readers for your prayers and good wishes! They mean a lot, and I still need them a lot! 

Not much has changed, I'm still barely getting by, it feels like, and some waves of anxiety make me feel like a zombie. My mom and wonderful husband have been doing lots for me, like distracting me and taking me to the city to stay in hotels. We took the kids to some fun places and swimming and their hilarity is a good way of attempting to enjoy the day. 

Since I'm not quite up to talking about it all, I will cease the sad-sack posts and post things like too many baby pictures. But I would be very grateful if you could keep me in your prayers if you remember, I need all the help I can get!

Trying not to pout and other truths.

Sorry for the blog silence around here. I've spent the last week or so not wanting to get out of bed. No the news isn't of the life threatening sort, its of the sort I can't seem to talk about yet though. But needless to say I'm doing an awesome job dealing with it.

Isn't it funny how we spend so much time talking about suffering and God, as in the way God works with suffering in our lives, helps us through it with grace and all that other great stuff, but when you really boil it all down the suffering part really sucks. You just can't get around it. I also suck at suffering, and can't seem to get around that either.

I feel the most frustrated at this all-encompassing frustrating situation at my own emotions. I feel as if my emotions are almost making this situation impossible to deal with. The situation cannot be changed and yet my emotions are making it about 100 times worse than it already is all by itself. I seem to be asking God what the point of these emotions are because they just keep making things more awful. If God was going to give me this problem, why not cut me a break on my emotions and feelings towards it? Where's the magic "saintly feelings" dust?? If God is asking for heroic things, where is my heroic feelings of self sacrifice and joy?

I can't figure out if its just me, if I've bought into our cultures "must feel good all the time" mandate, or if maybe these emotions play into the situation on a level which God's ok with. Its really a vicious cycle of feeling horrible, then thinking about why I feel horrible, then coming up with only horrible reasons why I am feeling horrible.

Basically I'm a hot mess. For all the craziness the future holds, I'm still having a hard time just dealing with today. Getting through today in all my questioning, anger, frustration, and basic strange communication with God right now. Trying not to let my emotions control me and keep me in bed all day. I feel immature and silly knowing its God's will yet feeling so generally horrible about it all.

I'm sorry for all my vagueness that may one day become clear. I'm off to fold more laundry, give more cuddles, and clean up more messes. Please spare a prayer for me when you can!

Feast of St. Dominic today!

Just thought I'd say a little mention for the feast of St. Dominic today. We've somehow started the tradition of having a special dessert/treats on each of the kids feast days...when I remember in time that is, I may have pushed St. Luke's feast day a couple of days back last year. So Dom was pumped when we made a big deal for him and his saint today. (He insisted on chocolate cake not cupcakes, because apparently cupcakes have now officially been labeled "extremely girly".)

“Saint Dominic recalls the origin of the testimony of faith that every Christian should give to their family, work, social life and in the most relaxed moments, those of prayer. Only the constant relationship with God gives us the strength to live every day intensely.”

-Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience Aug. 8, 2012

Love that!

Also; Fr. Murray has a nice reflection on St. Dominic as well. 

Why I don't travel with my children...

Over the last couple of years our very limited travel/vacation budget has largely been spent on trips that just the husband and I take. We like spending our scant vacation time in hotels, going out for lavish multi-course dinners and alcohol. This has given us some parental guilt. Not because we're jet-setting every other weekend, but simply because we don't travel far with our kids. Both our families live within about an hours distance, and the prospect of travelling more than that for the sheer heck of it just doesn't hold so much appeal after spending even that amount of time in the car.

This past weekend we went to the busy metrop of Calgary a mere five hours away for four days to attend the wedding of some dear friends. We hit up a hotel (with a giant suite, we're not completely crazy) and had plans for a trip to the zoo, the wedding, and visiting more friends and family. Doesn't that sound low key? Easy? Then why was I completely exhausted by the end of day one??

Well heres ten reasons why both the hubs and I were exhausted in mere hours and have now assuaged our misplaced travelling without kids guilt:

1. None of my kids can use a public washroom. A pit stop becomes a 45 minute adventure in avoiding the diseases that cover public washrooms.

2. Travelling with a extremely wiggly 7 month old who isn't eating a ton of solid food equals the inability to put him down for 4 days, and a proportional amount of shrieking for restaurant food.

3. How many kids can you get to nap in a hotel room at one time??

4. I've come to the conclusion that its less work to cook than to figure out what they will all eat off a restaurant menu. 

5. At least one child will throw up at some point.

6. Car seats times 4 times a million stops equals....well....theres a couple of four letter words that would be appropriate.

7.  I will never buy the boys non-identical toys again.

8. It took longer to pack for the trip than trip.

9.  Even the prospect of driving for 5 hours filled me with dread...luckily everyone needed gravol on the ride home.

10. But one day having four kids within four and half years of each other will make for really great trips....right??...right???

G.K. of the Day!

via

"I believe myself that the universe

is monotonous like a child's game

because there is behind it

an unexhausted Will."

- G.K. Chesterton, Daily News, Jan. 24, 1906.