Hey, Moms!  It’s time to sign up for summer camp!  Not for the kids…for YOU!

We have a great summer lined up here at How’i’wish Island.  I do want to warn you that many of the merit badges required for your SuperMom rank will not be offered at this camp.  This includes badges on child development from Infant to Teens, scheduling badges like Time Management, Multi-Tasking and Bi-Location, as well as badges like Homework, Chores, and College Applications.  It is our philosophy that those badges can be earned best throughout the year as needed.

Nevertheless, I assure you that the badges we do offer will be challenging and fun!

First off, we have many badges to appeal to your creative side.  From Scrapbooking to Photography, Knitting to Sewing, Painting, Drawing, Cake Decorating, and more!  New this year is Writing which will include blogging and other social media as formats for expressing your thoughts.

For those of you who enjoy cooking, we have several badges that may interest you.  The Surf and Turf badge explores recipes beyond pasta and pizza.  Learn how to make a perfect hollandaise sauce and remember how to savor every bite.  This badge will only be offered in the two time slots before lunch and dinner.  Also, check out our popular Internet Cooking badge.  Learn to navigate the world wide web to find the best recipes.  This badge does have a lengthy requirement to track several sites for 12 weeks and analyze your “likes” for nutritional content.  If that is not completed beforehand, we will not be able to present you with your badge at the end of camp, but you can always finish it later!

The Coffee and Tea badges have been combined into one time period.  That early morning time slot fills up quickly, so don’t wait!  For afternoons and evenings, we have another popular badge: Cocktails.  There is an additional fee associated with this badge.

For those who want to exercise, we have a wide variety of options.  Gym Time is a potpourri of typical classes from Spin to Zumba.  These are also offered individually for those who already know what they love.  We have Swimming which focuses on actually swimming and not lifeguarding.  The 5K badge is customized to work for both beginners and those who have been running for years.  Or take one of the many trails on How’i’wish Island while you earn your Hiking merit badge.

After lunch, we have our Napping badge, which also has a prerequisite.  Candidates must take at least 8 naps of 30 minutes and 2 naps of over an hour before coming to camp or they will not finish the badge.  If napping is not your thing, we have both the Massage and Mani-Pedi badges available.  These are offered pool-side as well as in the privacy of your own cabin.

The Reading badge will be offered all day long.  Consider combining it with our Book Club badge or our Movie Lit badge, in which you compare books to their movies. 

All campers are required to take the Single-Tasking merit badge.  We have found that campers get more out of their camp experience if they learn how to slow down and do just one thing.  Please also note that early mornings are reserved for meditation and prayer (and sleep), so no loud noises are permitted before 10 am.

Since we want How’i’wish Island to be the ultimate get-a-way camp for busy moms, please let us know what other merit badges we should be offering!

I suppose I should blog more often than once a month.

I do post on FB, but that’s only because it’s easier, when the Kindle is working.  Right now it’s dead, and not charging.

Most of my FB activity is all #Gosnell this or Boy Scouts that.  I did post about eagerly anticipating the end of May, because I have arranged for the kids to be off music lessons and gymnastics/sports for June, July, and August.  We all need a break from the constant running.

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Took George to the doctor today.  The doctor praised me for catching his ear infection so quickly.  No clever detective work occurred.  If I find myself strapping a kid into a car seat at 1 am and going for a drive to get him to fall asleep, something is wrong.

After his appointment, I had to get the antibiotics at the clinic’s pharmacy.  I waited for over 45 minutes, with a hungry baby who had an ear infection.  I thought I was going to lose it, and the only thing that saved me was another mom with two little kids in tow who was also waiting and who did vocalize her frustration to the people at the pharmacy. 

I gave her a mental fist bump.

While I waited, I had plenty of time to think about how the doctor tried to look in George’s throat, and he wasn’t complying, so she pried his jaw apart with her fingers and held his tongue down.  No big deal – I do that move multiple times every day as he finds things on the floor.

Except she wasn’t wearing gloves.

And except I realized, in the interminable wait for Augmentin, that she had not washed her hands when she came into the exam room.

I’m not a germophobe…but with doctors’ offices, I AM a germophobe.  Can’t wait to see what lovely viruses he brought home today.

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Since I have been accused, by my not-spontaneous children, that I do not give enough warning about upcoming, unexpected events, I informed them at dinner that we were all going to a sports banquet tomorrow evening.

They all nodded OK.

“It’s dressy,” I said, clarifying “church-clothes.”

They all nodded OK.

“The theme is Italian,” I said, absently, thinking about the covered dish I planned to make.

My reverie was disturbed by the animated discussion of my children about how they would accomplish this theme.  Fritz thought he would draw a thin, black moustache on his face.  Billy thought he would wear his father’s fedora.  I’m pretty sure I heard the phrase “tommy gun” before I interrupted.

“The theme is for the food, not the clothes!!”

And that was the end of that conversation.

So I’m slowly making some aesthetic changes to my blog…right now I’m not really digging the pink which is coming up orange-y on my screen…and I need something better for the header…some other day.

BUT…

I did think it was really important to change George’s photo on the sidebar from this:

to this:

Big difference.  He’s now 17 lbs 7 oz, which they say is still under 10%, but that’s normal for my kids.

Also, big thing I realized.  Remember when I moaned about not being allowed to upload photos, having reached my maximum permitted amount?  A bunch of you said you had the same problem.  I really can’t find my post about it.  Blogger wanted to charge a fee to continue to upload pictures the easy way, or I would have to upload them from another service.  I went with the other service.  Some of you may have paid that fee.

Well, I tried uploading photos the old way with my last post and it worked.  These pictures, too!  So, if you’ve been going through the pain of uploading to one site and linking to them, try it the old way.

I can’t say that the issue was the sole reason I have reduced my blogging…but it sure didn’t help.

Easter Sunday, George and I

Yesterday was my 42nd birthday.  I don’t mind telling people my age, most of the time.  When I was pregnant, perhaps I did a bit.  But I’m getting a bit more comfortable being an old momma.  It’s becoming fashionable.

It’s hard to feel like an old woman when you have an infant.  As long as I avoid the mirror which shows off my gray hair and wrinkles, I can pretend I’m just 38 – my birthday age when Mary was an infant – or even 28 – my birthday age when Fritz was an infant.

Raise your hand if you’ve had a baby in your 20’s and your 30’s and your 40’s.

9 people really isn’t that many

My birthday presents reflect how much things have changed in 14 years, and how much things have not changed.

I received, for probably the 30th year in a row, a handmade birthday card from my brother, Glenn, who has Down Syndrome.  He turned 43 sixteen days before my birthday.  We are almost Irish twins.  His cards are fairly identical from year to year.  Happy Happy Day…Happy Birthday Day…Happy Good Day…I love you, Michelle.  I love you, too, Glenn. 

My husband, what a cutie

I also received, from my husband, a covered casserole dish set.  One of the dishes replaces one broken by George when he opened the cabinet door and pulled it down on our unforgiving tile floor.  Fourteen years of parenting inquisitive babies and it still takes a minor disaster to get me to start baby-proofing the house.  My husband also promised me a new paper towel holder, broken by an older child replacing the roll.  I don’t know who or how, but I was very thankful.  It’s gotten dingy and I’ve seen many others I liked better…but I’m not one to replace a perfectly useful gadget “just because.”  So my birthdays and Christmases are occasions to replace the things my kids have destroyed.

My parents came into town and treated all of us to a baseball game, Tampa vs. Cleveland, where we did not root, root, root for the home team, which did win, and it was a shame.  It brought back memories of many times we did root for the home team in Cleveland, and they didn’t win then either.

The boys

But unlike even 5 years ago, I also received 4 additional homemade cards, a cardboard pyramid with hieroglyphics on each face spelling out a personal message (Katie), a hand-embroidered bookmark (Katie), and an entire 30-something page book entitled “I Love You Because You’re You” written and illustrated by Jenny.

The girls

In the afternoon, while the sleep-deprived kids (from the late baseball game) were vegging in front of the TV and the baby went down for a nap, I slipped out of the house for a pedicure, my birthday present to myself.  I came back an hour later, baby still sleeping, older kids oblivious to the fact that I ever left.  The girls, though, noticed my toes immediately.  Pedi-vision – like “spider-sense” for girls.  I did not normally get pedicures 5 or 10 years ago.  It’s this southern living and beach crawling that has changed me.

My favorite people in the whole world

Today, we’re back to school.  Some of us have only 8 weeks left.  Some of us have 10.  Today’s math lesson was: if there are 32 weeks in the curriculum, and you take 8 weeks off for summer, 1 week off for Thanksgiving, 2 weeks off for Christmas, and 2 weeks off for Easter, how many weeks do you waste by procrastinating and not doing your work in a timely fashion?  We do this exact same math problem every single year, right about this time, and they still have not learned their lesson well.

Thanks to everybody who sent birthday wishes.  Facebook is good for some things!  It really is nice when your email is full of happy happy day greetings.

I was all geared up to attend the Easter Vigil Mass this coming Saturday.

Then my pastor last night mentioned that there would be forty baptisms.

WOW!

But, no thanks.  I just don’t have the energy for that this year.

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Last night, I took the 5 youngest kids {five youngest kids: that phrase makes me laugh at the me of 10 years ago who could barely handle 3 little children}…I took the 5 youngest children to the 4 pm vigil Mass.  We arrived about a minute before show time, later than I hoped, and the church was pretty full.  I pushed my way toward the front, even though it would mean we would not have an aisle seat, a risky move when one has an infant.

Side note: why, oh why, does everybody come in and sit on the aisle?  I guess it’s ok if the church isn’t typically full.  But our Masses are all very full.  If you sit on the aisle, people will have to ask you to move, either to the middle or out of their way as they climb over you.  I usually sit in the middle when entering an empty pew.  Unless I have George.  Or unless I’m with my entire family.  We take up the whole row.

I ended up squeezing 6 of us into 4 seats – our church has individual chairs because we are saving to build a real church.  Fortunately, the seats are connected, and George doesn’t need a seat, so it was crowded, but fine.  We were in the middle of elderly couples, all of whom had secured the aisle seats.  I felt a chill in the air, as though I were an interloper sitting in reserved seats.  It was bad enough that I had sat among them, but I had children, too.  Horrors.

Fortunately, God was smiling on me and George fell asleep without much ado.  He stayed sleeping even through being buckled into his seat and driving home.  After Mass, one smiling woman felt moved to tell me how wonderfully my family had behaved.  I hope the other couples felt the same way.  It’d be nice to think we’re spreading a bit of joy to others.

Note to self: do not be a grumpy old person.

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Speaking of spreading joy, I was at stations of the cross two Friday evenings ago, and had to relocate to the rear of the church with a fussy baby.  A woman entered a bit late and sat right next to me as I was nursing him, even though there were plenty of empty seats a bit farther on.  Later I realized she was waiting for someone.  After George was done, I allowed him to crawl around as we alternated between standing and kneeling.  At one point, while kneeling, George crawled over to her, climbed up on her and allowed her to hold him while he smiled and laughed.  It is not at all like him to be that way with strangers, but I think he was fascinated by her glasses which were so much like mine.  It was only for a minute or two, but I could tell she was absolutely delighted.  She seemed about ten years older than I, so likely there are few infants in her daily life.  I was happy to share mine with her, even briefly.

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Since the new year, I’ve been participating in The Year of Faith 90-Day Bible Reading Challenge which takes you through 14 narrative books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Maccabees, Luke, and Acts.  I had already read all but Ezra, Nehemiah and 1 Maccabees, but I had not read them straight through in such a condensed time period.  Most days, there were 4 or 5 chapters to read, which took about 15 minutes, sometimes a bit more.  It’s been great.  One new year’s resolution this year was for me to read the whole Bible.  13 down, 60 books to go.

I’ve been using the USCCB’s online Bible for my reading.  (This was fine until my kindle died.)  I have also been reading over the footnotes, which I find very helpful.  I don’t go to all the cross references, but the remarks on the historical/social aspects of the various stories help put things in context.  For example, the many times that Luke portrays Christ’s treatment of women or non-Jews with respect outside the norm is highlighted and is something that a modern reader like myself might not notice – so what? that Martha’s sister Mary sat at His feet, except that was a big deal, apparently.  Also, noted was that big portions of 1 Maccabees are given to lauding the Romans who offered protection to the small kingdom of Judah in that 1st century BC, but since it was the Romans who destroyed the Temple and sought to obliterate Judaism as well in the 1st century AD, the Jews of that era struck Maccabees from their scriptures.

Politics.

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And a great quote for the beginning of Holy Week, especially if you’ve been thinking you did a great job with your Lenten resoutions:

So should it be with you.  When you have done all you have been commanded, say, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we are obliged to do.”  Luke 17:10

As my husband always says: nobody gets an award for just doing his job.  Keeping the commandments, loving our neighbor, imitating Christ.  It’s our job.

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Have a fruitful, blessed and fulfilling Holy Week.