Spring Break

Well the inspection seems to be going well so far. They are here for 2 more days and then we get a 3 day weekend for Spring Break! That will be nice. Maybe on my day off Friday our new DISHWASHER will be delivered and installed. How exciting! We decided to go with the mid-range Bosch. It is supposed to be very good and has some features that I think will make life much easier for us in the dish cleaning department. Bosch is also offering some good rebates right now, so bonus!

Emmelia did SO well at her recital. She was nervous ahead of time, but going to the rehearsal on Friday helped a bunch so she knew more what to expect and then I also went up on stage with her and helped her position her violin, etc. so she didn't have to go up alone. She played the rhythm (why can I never spell that word?) correctly and even at the correct tempo! Amazing kid. Sorry I don't have any still photos. The Deac had his hands full with Maura and the video camera. To answer Meesh's question - yes, we are following the Suzuki method. His approach to music education is that every child is as capable of learning to play an instrument as they are to learn their own mother tongue. So sometimes you will hear the Suzuki method referred to as the "mother tongue method". I would really encourage getting your kids involved!

This inspection has been particularly good in that it provided an impetus to get completely caught up at work! All that stuff (see previous posts on apathy - ironically, I'm too lazy to go find them and link to them from here - ha) I'd been procrastinating and putting off is done! I have a clean slate to begin working on some bigger projects come April and it feels so good!

Maura will be TWO years old in only five days. That is so hard to believe. This past two years has been a whirlwind. She sometimes acts VERY two already but sometimes she acts older - I think particularly because she has an older sister to copy. She has her own quirks too, though, such as an irrational fear of small moving creatures. Particularly when she is holding food. Hopefully she'll outgrow that one soon!

This is my week to go to the Presanctified Liturgy on Wednesday, while the Deac takes care of the kiddos at home. I'm looking forward to it greatly! And on Thursday, he is going with Emmelia to her violin lesson (for the first time) so I can go out with some friends after work. It really is beginning to seem like Spring Break!

Excited for the recital!

Holy cow, Emmelia did SO well at her violin lesson last night! She is learning to bow her rhythym on one string and (separately) beginning to learn how to hold the violin with her left hand and place her fingers. She has the rhythym down! And believe me, there were times I was really doubting we would get there - especially after only 4 months of lessons. I'm feeling much better about the recital tomorrow. She is really excited, too. In a couple hours I'm leaving to pick her up for the rehearsal so she'll know just what to expect. I will be up on stage with her, so I'm sure she'll feel fine about being up there. The teacher said I could play some of the advanced pieces along with the other students on my violin, too. Maybe I will. I want to keep it as simple as possible in case either of my children has a major meltdown.

Yesterday we got news that the promotions in our job classes we've all been waiting for (for over 5 years!!) in my office got approved. Yeay! It doesn't involve that much for me. I already got my raise a while ago in anticipation so now the only real change is that I am no longer eligible for overtime - now I can work more than 40 hours a week and they don't have to compensate me monetarily for it. Lucky me! :-)

Other than that, part of this bug we've been fighting seems to involve major eye irriation. Can't wait for that to heal up. In the meantime I'm having to wear my glasses because my eyes feel like there is sand in them or something (it's not pink eye, but similar symptoms). Oh well. The weather is finally supposed to be nice and spring-like this weekend. Personally, I'm looking forward to digging out the bike trailer and taking the kids on a Sunday afternoon ride. Besides that, liturgy tomorrow morning (Happy Feast of the Annunciation!), and possibly looking for a replacement dishwasher for ours that's on it's last legs, that's my plan for the weekend. Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

Photos G-I

I forgot to post the next 3 photos I took for my photography challenge:

G - Group Hug:





















H - Hair:
















I - Icicles:

Swamped

I haven't been online much this week. I am really swamped at work getting ready for our biennial (is that the word for once every 2 years?) inspection by our regulators. It's a Very Big Deal. Lots to do to get ready.

Plus we are all recovering from a strange bug - GI symptoms, muscle aches, fatique. No fun. Thanks to that we were kind of forced to have a quiet and restful weekend at home, at least. We got a few things done. I finally, years late, managed to clean out the aquarium. We have a grand total of 1.5 fish left. I say 1.5 because one of the fish looks like its on it's last fin. The trauma of the cleaning will probably finish the poor thing off.

This weekend is the Feast of the Annunciation, so we have liturgy Saturday morning and then Saturday evening is Emmelia's 1st violin recital! She's just going to get up (hopefully!) and play one rythym on the E string with the group. I hope it goes well! Actually, I hope she just gets up to play. She's so shy sometimes.

The weekend after that my baby turns 2. I can't believe it! We're sort of having an "un-party" - I don't really believe in 2nd birthday parties. We're going to bring food and cake for coffee hour at church on Sunday (her birthday) and then probably splurge on some calamari at Carabba's afterwards - it's a family favorite.

Assuming the inspection goes well, I'll be back to my normal schedule in April. By the way, I got a "B" on my Russian midterm! I'm not complaining. Given how many classes I've had to miss due to work and illness, a B is pretty good. This week we are learning vocabulary for food and finally learning the instrumental case. Now we'll be able to say: "That soup is made *with* chicken" or, since it's Lent, "with cabbage."

A layout for each girl

Here's a couple of layouts I completed recently of the kids. As you can see, I'm still busily scrapping the photos from our vacation last November. Both of these layouts use a lot of "white space" which is kind of a big thing in digi scrapping right now. It looks cleaner, saves on ink, and the file sizes are smaller. Plus, I think people like it because it is more reminiscent of paper scrapbook pages.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Although St. Patrick is sort of "trumped" in the Orthodox calendar by St. Alexis the Man of God, he's still celebrated today. Even now, my *new* slow cooker is busily cooking away at home making "Almost Irish Stew". The bread machine is set to have a hot loaf of Irish soda bread ready when we get home. Maybe we'll even crack open a Guinness to wash it all down and complete the festivities. No corned beef and cabbage for us during Lent, but I don't feel like we're missing much on that score.

St Patrick the Bishop of Armagh and Enlightener of Ireland

Kontakion - Tone 4
From slavery you escaped to freedom in Christ's service: He sent you to deliver Ireland from the devil's bondage. You planted the Word of the Gospel in pagan hearts. In your journeys and hardships you rivaled the Apostle Paul! Having received the reward for your labors in heaven, Never cease to pray for the flock you have gathered on earth, Holy bishop Patrick!

Troparian - Tone 3
Holy Bishop Patrick, Faithful shepherd of Christ's royal flock, You filled Ireland with the radiance of the Gospel: The mighty strength of the Trinity! Now that you stand before the Savior, Pray that He may preserve us in faith and love!

(from the OCA website)

Spring of Illness

I'll tell you, it's been the springtime of illness around here. This week, just 3 days after finishing a round of antibiotics for her UTI, Emmelia woke up with ear and throat pain... apparently she has a strep ear infection so another round of antibiotics has begun for the poor kid. Hopefully warmer weather will bring healthier immune systems around here.

Today is my pysanky presentation in my Russian class. I'm really pretty excited about it. I've brought in some of the best pysanky I've made over the past 9 years since Maura's godmother taught me how to do it. I've not made many for the past four years or so since young children and hot wax don't generally mix. But I'm hoping this year I might find some time to get back into it.

This weekend we made "enchilada-inspired polenta pie" in the crockpot. It was quite good, but our favorite is still the 3-bean chili (which we made again yesterday). Soon my new toy should be here - a new slow cooker that is larger and comes with the necessary accesories to make every slow cooker recipe I've ever seen. Plus it has a travel case so I can make things for pot-lucks and get them there and back safely. Unlike the time I tried to take bean soup for a potluck after a presanctified liturgy last Lent - oooh, that was bad. Bean soup all over the back of my car. Actually, it's a little sad how excited I am for this new kitchen appliance.

Photos A-F

My favorite scrapping board is running a photography challenge right now where you take photographs of items that correspond with each letter of the alphabet. I cheated a little - I took some new photos, but also went back into some of my old photos for certain letters. And, technically, Emmelia took the photo for "A".

On my calendar this week:
- Parent Advisory Committee meeting at daycare
- La Leche League Meeting (probably won't go)
- Presentation on Pysanky for Russian class
- Pre-sanctified Liturgy, potluck, discussion sans kids (yeay!)
- Russian MIDTERM (blech)
- Violin lesson with Em

What I'm NOT doing:
- 2-day Radiation Emergency Response training at nearby University
- Akathist service

I'm also not going to mess around with the stupid formatting on this post anymore. It's so frustrating! Hopefully you get the gist of the photos. You can click on the images to see them a bit larger.

Women with icons

Working diligently to avoid both work and studying whilst eating my lunch, I was trying to catch up on some old e-mail and came across this link. It's a pretty cool idea - a series of photographs of women with the icon of their patron saint.

Русский язык очень трудный!

I have a Russian exam today and I'm a little worried about it because I met with my tutor yesterday and my brain seems to have stopped working. Seriously, I couldn't remember even basic vocabulary, let alone the important vocab and grammer from this chapter. Oh well - the exams usually end up to be easier than I expect so we'll hope for that again today. In this chapter we learned about shopping in Russia. It was kind of fun. As I just e-mailed a friend, I figure if I ever go to Russia, the two most important phrases to know are:

Где ванную? (Where is the bathroom?) and
Вы принимаете кредитные карточки? (Do you accept credit cards?)

Ha, ha.

Seriously, I need my brain to start working again soon. In June I'm supposed to take a certification exam to become a Certified Health Physicist. It's a VERY difficult exam - over 8 hours long and full of Physics and Statistics equations. There is NO WAY that I will pass it at this point. So if those brain cells could start functioning again, that would be wonderful.

Speaking of Health Physics, on Tuesday night we had a meeting of the local Health Physics Society chapter. The President-Elect of the national Society was there and gave a presentation on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and their work in recovering lost and orphaned radiation sources around the world. It was fascinating. I would SO love to work for the IAEA - 3 years in Vienna, Austria... what a great experience that would be for the girls, too. Sigh... maybe someday (especially if I can actually pass that blasted exam!).

Clean Monday

Today is Clean Monday - the first day of Great Lent for we Orthodox Christians. Today is the day we begin fasting strictly - generally avoiding meat, fish, dairy, eggs, oil, wine - to prepare for the Great Feast of Pascha. It's called "Clean Monday" because the tradition is to spend this day cleaning your home (and probably doing some spiritual cleaning as well) and getting rid of or freezing all the leftover non-fasting type foods you won't be eating for several weeks. Some people try not to eat anything at all on this day. I personally can't manage that much, but I am trying to eat less. My goal during this Lent is to eat less in general while drinking more water. And to waste less time on vain pursuits like television watching but more time on prayer and contemplation. Hopefully this will help me manage to be less cranky, because those hormones are really kicking into high gear.

I have been thinking about whether or not I should separate out the parts of my life into different blogs - maybe a scrapping blog, a kids blog, the blog where I analyze my childhood... but that seems silly (and too much work!). So, you all are stuck with all of this - all of me. I've reached a steadier state lately with regard to processing my abuse issues (thank God!) so it's been nice to take a break from blogging about it. Don't get too complacent with the scrapping layouts and cute kid stories, though. Lent is upon us. It's the time of year to find oneself and sometimes come under spiritual attack. Hopefully not, but it's good to be prepared.

While the Deac was at the marathon Parish Council meeting yesterday, I spent the afternoon with a friend of mine who has had many pregnancy losses. She just found out she is pregnant again after undergoing surgery to remedy her issues. I hope against hope this one sticks and that she will be granted a happy and healthy baby this fall. The weird thing is that she would've conceived this baby at (almost exactly to the day) the same time of year we conceived our St. Raphael miracle, Emmelia. And I know my friend has been asking St. Raphael for his prayers. I will not be at all shocked if her baby is safely delivered on the first Saturday of November - the Feast of St. Raphael. If it is, I've already told her she has to include Raphael or Raphaela in the name somewhere.

It's colorful, at least

Not to be gross, but I think I've discovered one of the Most Disgusting Things to Have to Clean Out of a Carpet - ever. Unfortunately, motherhood is full of moments like this. But, the other night Maura choked on her chewable vitamin and up-chucked dinner onto the white carpet in the play room. The upside? My child has a diverse palate and well-rounded diet. The downside? Tomato soup, blackberries and the odor of rancid cheese and smoked oysters - while colorful! - was not much fun to clean up. It was a memorable moment.

Speaking of kids and food, I've been thinking about this general topic lately with Lent coming up. This is the first year, at 4, that Emmelia notices our fasting. It started with her asking about the more obvious fact that we don't eat breakfast on Sunday mornings even though she does. The other day she asked why we're not eating meat this week. So I told her we are fasting and it's something she will do later when she is older if she wants.

When we eat Lenten meals at home, though, it's not like I go out of my way to make the kids prime rib or something while we're eating twigs and sticks. I might microwave some chicken nuggets to supplement, but for the most part they eat what we eat. This works well for my kids because they eat breakfast and lunch five days a week at daycare and usually get meat, dairy, etc. with those meals. So a few vegan meals a home in a week is certainly not going to cause me to worry about vitamin deficiency or anything.

But what I think is most important is getting them used to the flavor and taste of Lenten foods while they are young. I think the foods you eat at home as a child determine what you consider "comfort food" for the rest of your life. I hope that introducing them to fresh fruits, veggies, seafood, tofu, etc. now will make it a little easier for them to fast when they grow up - so that they can spend less time worrying about food and more time praying and giving alms.

We had the most delicious chili last night - from that new cookbook I mentioned in my last post - Three-Bean Chili with Chive-Specked Cornbread. SOOO good, easy and healthy - and the kids liked it too! I can't wait to try another recipe. Unfortunately, I forgot to put in one of my crockpot liners so I need to wait until the crockpot is clean again to make something new. Maybe tomorrow, though.