Blogging, Babies, Cars, and More

I missed Quick Takes this past Friday, but wanted to share a few things on this Sunday night. In the last week:

I wrote another post for Catholic Sistas and it got included in a "Best of Catholic Blogging" post at the National Catholic Register.  Totally blew my mind!  Catholic Sistas is being picked up fairly regularly now by  New Advent and by NCR and a few other Catholic sites.  It's very exciting to see it grow!  And I love being a part of it, all the ladies who are contributors are wonderful women that I love being able to call friends, even though I've never met any of them in person.

We have continued working with the boys on accepting eating rice cereal.  They don't spit it out as much as they did at first, but they aren't enjoying it much either.  The looks on their faces ... priceless!  It's still early, I don't mind taking my time.  It may be that they won't be ready until they are closer to 7 months old.

We bought a minivan.  I've driven it only 2 or 3 times now.  Just haven't had to go anywhere since we bought it and when we have gone somewhere, we were all together and my husband drove.  This is a big thing for me.  I love driving my small cars.  Luckily, the Honda Fit actually feels quite similar to the Honda Odyssey, so the transition isn't so bad.  But in 18 years, I'm going back to a small car!  I know, I know ... everyone tells me that I will love, love, LOVE my minivan and will never go back.  But I know myself, I will always like having a small car to zip around in.

You really can't "zip around" in a minivan.

We had Thanksgiving with a large group at my in-laws.  It was a good time.  And apparently everyone got assigned to bring desserts!  Luckily, Hubby decided to do something non-traditional: a sour cream-blackberry cake (very similar to a cheesecake) and macaroons (because he had lots of egg whites left over from the cake).  I think we may have been the only ones to not bring any of our dessert home with us.  If you were a pumpkin pie lover (which I'm really not) there was a feast of pumpkin pie there!

We also brought a cranberry sauce that Hubby made from real cranberries.  And then we brought most of it home.  So Hubby bought a small turkey on Friday and we had a small Thanksgiving feast ourselves.  When we sat down for dinner on Saturday night with turkey, potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce, and green beans my husband commented that all this food was a result of wanting to use the cranberry sauce with something!!  Today he decided to make a corn casserole, so we repeated the feast again.

It's no wonder I need to lose weight!!  Has nothing to do with the babies anymore.   But I digress ...

I had hoped to do a Quick Takes on Friday and use it to share the things for which I am thankful.  Since I didn't get a chance to do that, I just wanted to say here how much I am thankful for my family this year.  It has been hard in the last few years to feel very thankful at this time of year.  This year was different!  I'm so thankful to have two little guys in my life and my wonderful husband.  Our lives are forever changed ... and it is a wonderful thing!

Speaking of the boys, we worked hard the last several days on trying to be on more of a schedule and have nap times.  I NEED nap times.  My sabbatical is just over a month away, if I can't get some nap times out of them I will never get any work done.  I think Peter will be easy to get on a schedule, he goes down for naps fairly well and sleeps well.  Ethan does not like naps.  But boy does he need them!!  By evening he becomes insufferable.  You'll probably see more posts on this topic in the future.  They have one more week of daycare and then we're full-throttle into getting into a schedule.

Finally ... Blessed New Year to you!!  Today we celebrate the beginning of a new Church year.  It's the First Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday in which we use the new translation of the Mass, and the first Sunday that my parish community moved back into our newly renovated space!  An exciting day all around.

Out of curiosity: How did using the new translation go for you at your parish today?  Would love to hear your comments, experiences, etc.

Not exactly a short update.  But if you made it this far, thanks for reading along!!  I hope everyone has a blessed and prayerful Advent.