The man whom I lovingly call "Pappa"

My dearest Pappa has turned 76 years old today.  I called him last night to wish him Happy Birthday!  It is always a joy to hear his fatherly voice on the other end.  I sometimes feel like I am the most luckiest girl in the world to have a father like him.  He was a man of strong faith.  All my life I have only seen him working deliberately to build up the kingdom of God.  

When I was young I never saw my Pappa come home early from work.  He would always go after work to help conduct a retreat, or help a family who is going through crisis.  He would share the word of God with them and he has helped so many families to grow closer to God.  Those days he would come home late and I would wait for him to tell me stories.  I remember he would lay in his bed so tired from working all day at his office and the extra hours he spent with people who needed the love of God.  He would sacrifice the time at home to build up the Kingdom of God.  I did not know any of this back then and I would ask him to tell me stories.  Despite being so tired and exhausted he would tell me stories...till today those are the greatest stories I have heard.  Stories of him flying on a helicopter above the forests of Africa and how his helicopter crashed and he fell on top of a Gorilla..hahaha  and he made friends with the Gorillas of the African forests... the story went on...  I can still see the scenes which I imagined in my mind as a 4 year old little girl fully believing in every single word he said.  He would fall asleep in between the stories and he would tell me that I could tickle him and wake him up if he sleeps and that's exactly what I did.  He would wake up immediately to tell me the rest of the story.  I go back down my memory lane and I don't remember a single time my pappa getting frustrated or angry at me for not letting him sleep or for continuously bothering him.  

Sports man

As I start getting older I continued to see my dad working every free time he gets, weekends, holidays for the Lord.  I don't remember him missing a single day of mass.  He would go to mass, drop us off at school and then go to work.  I remember he would wake us all up early in the morning to pray with him.  Even though it was hard to wake up I still cherish those days spending time in prayer.  He gave each of us children a Psalm to memorize and we would say our psalms every morning with him.  He gave me Psalm 127.  I still remember the entire psalm by heart.  He would tell us about Jesus all the time and his Love for us.  His signature quote of all times is "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and everything shall be added unto you".  How blessed am I to have a father who tells me to go give up everything for God instead of telling me to study and word hard to earn a living!!  When all the dads worried about whether their children will become a doctor or engineer my dad was praying for us to give our lives fully for Christ.  

I would sometimes tell him that you are the New Testament Abraham.  I have never seen a faith so strong in my life.  And to be able to witness that in my own father is just amazing.  Even in the darkest moments of our lives I have never heard a word of desperation from him but only continuous praises.  I cannot remember a single time my dad said something bad about others.  If at all one of us were to say something like that he would stop us immediately.  When Pope Francis recently talked about the role of a father in a family I remembered the example my pappa put in front of us.  It was easy for me to understand God's love because my own father loved me so much. 

I thank the Lord for blessing me with a dad like him.  I wouldn't be where I am today if it was not for him and his sacrificial life.  I thank him for the faith he passed on to me.  He helped me fall in love with my Jesus, he helped me to understand the importance of going to daily mass.  Every morning he would check upon me whether I did my personal prayer. 

A proud moment - Becoming a Citizen of America

One thing which sticks out about him in my mind is how he would gather all of us together during our family prayer and he will go around each one of us apologizing for everything he did and asking us to forgive him and at the same time forgiving us.  He encouraged each on of us to do the same.  It touched me a lot and inspired me to learn about the beauty of forgiving one another within our own families.  

There is so much more to write about him.  I can never stop.  I am so blessed to be his daughter.  And my children are even blessed to have a grandfather like him. 

My dear pappa, I don't know how to express my thanks to you for taking care of me and loving me the way you did.  I wish I could learn and practice your wisdom and gentleness you had with each one of us.  I am not anywhere close to that but I hope I will reach there one day with yours and mummys blessings.  

Looking forward to seeing you and spending many more years with you my pappa.....we love you very much and May God pour his abundant blessings on you this coming year.  

    

Please Pray

I request all of you who read my blog to just pray for this mom and her new born baby.  They are going through their toughest and darkest time in their life's.  I have been reading her beautiful and inspiring blog for the past 3 years.  She is a family with 8 children and was expecting her 9th baby when they found out that this baby has a disorder called Omphalocele.  She gave birth to her baby girl last week and the baby was immediately taken to the NICU.  The baby is going through severe issues and I can only imagine the pain they are all in seeing this tiny little infant going through the sufferings no baby should go through.  

Please read her blog here

Just moments ago I was complaining and whining in my heart about the frustrations of taking care of my children and being home all day.  I was tired and irritated.  That's when I just went on to her blog and got the update about this poor child.  I started crying not being able to comprehend the situation they are in and at the same time feeling so guilty for the complains I make due to the little struggles in my life.  

Dear Lord, please bring peace into this family who is going through a lot.  Help us to remember the pain that you endured while dying on the cross for our sins when we go through hard times in our lives.  Dear Mother, please be by this poor baby and mother to console them and comfort them.  Amen. 

My dear friends, please please pray for them and the 8 children who have been left behind at home.  Thank You!

May God bless you all.

Snow Day of 2015

We had our biggest snow day on Superbowl Sunday.  The next day Sony did not have school.  Sony being home makes all of us happy.  Sony went out to shovel the snow that morning and George wanted to accompany him.  Anna stayed with me.  George was out with Sony for almost an hour.  

View from our bedroom window.  Felt like we were in a winter wonder land

this is right outside our front door.

Anna was so delighted to see her big brother come in from doing a lot of hard work.  

I had made some hot chocolate for both my hard working men.  They enjoyed it with some whipped cream on top.  

Happy Feast Day of St. Blaise

Today is the feast day of St. Blaise.  Happy Feast day to you all!  Today we started off with our prayer to St. Blaise and made Edible candles from the left over cookies from yesterday.  We were also able to go to mass and get the special blessing from the priest for our throats.

You can find out more on this saint here Catholic.org

This is not the first time we celebrated this feast.  I came to know about this feast day last year when my Anna was just 6 months old.  I never got to post those pictures then.  Here they are:

Feast of Candlemas

The feast of the Purification is called Candlemas.  The feast commemorates the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the presentation of Christ in the temple, which took place 40 days after his birth as Jewish law required.  It is also called Candlemas day, since the blessing of the candles takes place on this feast.  

This year for the first time we celebrated this feast day. The feast falls on February 2nd. I had invited few of my friends also but none of them were able to make it due to the heavy snow up to 21 inches that day.  Sony was off due to the snow and we were able to celebrate this beautiful feast as a family.  

On the menu we had: (Inspired by Alice at Cottage Blessing)

Water - represents Purity

Pretzels  -  Holy Simeon's arms

Dove Sandwiches - Humble offering of St. Joseph and Mary

Cheese cubes with swords - represents the message Simeon told Mary about a sword piercing her heart

Mallomars - Anna the prophetess

Edible Candles - Jesus the light

Building a Command Center

I kept hearing this word "Command Center" through out the Homeschooling world of mothers.  Command Center is a place where the mom keeps all the items that are necessary for her to run the family.  Here you can stack up your planners, cook books, other books that you reads, phone, diary, calendar etc.  It is basically an area in the kitchen which helps us coordinate our day to day activities better.

This is exactly what I needed for my home.  I did not have the luxury of getting a new shelf or even an old shelf to build up my command center.  So I came up with a new idea to use the area I already have in the kitchen and make it into a small command center.

I bought these two jars you see in the pictures to hold the coins I always find all over the place.  I have another jar to put all the miscellaneous items we find around the house like pencils, safety pins, crayons etc and by the end of each month I go through them and put it in their appropriate places.  I love this place and now its a lot easier for me to plan the schedule and meals since I have my planner sitting right next to me in the kitchen.  I have a quick access to my laptop, planner etc even when I am cooking or feeding my kids.  Also when I find just few minutes while I am waiting for the food to be cooked or warmed up I can easily take the book from my book basket and finish reading a page or two.  Isn't that awesome!! I love it.

Basket I bought from a goodwill store to keep my books

I would also like to share this great resource written by a mom who is a regular writer for the Seton Magazine.  She explains how we can have a command center of our own and how to set it up step by step.  It really helped me and I still don't have everything that I want in my command center but I hope to add more items as our family increases and as I find more items in Goodwill or Thrift stores.

Here you go:

http://www.setonmagazine.com/latest-articles/simplifying-the-command-center#Our-Command-Center