Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

I am sure many of you moms of many, or even of a few, know how stressful it is to take pictures of your kids. Well when your the photographer and the mom it is stress times ten. Since daddy works out of town this year I decided just a picture of the kids would do. I think for a quick 35 minute session we got some cute pictures (even if Gemma wouldn't put her bottle down for any)! I hope you all have a wonderful Advent and a blessed Christmas. I will not be sending out Christmas cards this year so please enjoy the picture of the kids and know that we love all of you! Here is the WHOLE family, all nine of our beautiful babies

And here are just the little guys

Liturgical Living

Something I have wanted to do for many years is to incorporate feast days into our daily lives. The saints and their stories are so helpful in raising children today.....Tonight we celebrated the Feast Day of St. Lucia. We read a neat story, and learned about the traditions associated with this day. The kids thought that we should make our neighbor some lucy cats so tomorrow I will grind wheat with our nutrimill and we will make the traditional little wheat buns with crosses on them. For supper we had Swedish food even though the story taught us she was not Swedish but Italian. If you would like to learn more about St. Lucy the book is available on amazon and I highly recommend it Lucia, Saint of light by Katherine Bolger Hyde with Illustrations by Daria Fisher. The picture I am including is Margaret, baby 7 of 9 dressed up in our version of St. Lucy. I had this cute little white gown and we put her hair in braids and incorporated our pretty Christmas tree lights for fun:)

Back to School, Homeschool Style.

It is always hard to me to believe that its time for school again. I am one of those crazy people that loved school. I love the smell of new books, fresh sharpened pencils and picking out the special outfit for the first day. So I try to re-create all of that fun for my homeschooled children. Since we had just had baby Henry I wasn't quite up to my usual self but the basics were ready. This year we have two high-school kids that are enrolled with Seton and will be spending time studying with their nana. I have a wonderful resource in my mother-in-law....a former teacher with a degree in English! Then we have a seventh grader, fifth grade, 2nd grade and a kindergartner. Margaret and Gemma want to join in the fun so I'm trying to do preschool once a week with them. We got a great start and this year seems to be going fairly smooth for us.

Meet Mr. Henry

All this talk about him and no intro. This, my friends, is baby #9!! Henry Elliot has been a wonderful addition to our crazy, chaotic family. We love having another boy around and picking his clothes out might just be my favorite part of the morning! It's so nice to see blue little outfits, tractors, and little denim jeans.

Good ole Pumpkin Patch Fun!

Every year we hit up at least one pumpkin patch. Our usual plans include Vala's Pumpkin Patch in the Omaha, NE area but since we have a brand new Henry, travel wasn't in our plans. The local homeschool group had plans for a trip to J&K Farms and we decided to join in:) These are the pictures of our family and some of the others. I am hoping all the other moms get to see these and enjoy! Thank you for the fun memories.