Benjamin's First Communion

 My nephew Benjamin made his First Communion at St. Louis Bertrand Church in Louisville, on the eve of the Feast of Divine Mercy.

With Fr. Peter Hagan, OP, who offered the Mass

Benjamin's family

Enrollment in the Brown Scapular

With his family at the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in the church

With our side of the family (except me—I was taking the picture!) From left to right in a straight row, Dad, Alan, Robert, Jeff, and Mom. Lynn is in the back. Molly, Benjamin, and Brendan are in front. Benjamin has gone back to his normal clown face!

There were 16 siblings, cousins and friends (just counting the children) who came to help celebrate afterwards at Grandma Baunach's. The kids had an Easter egg hunt in the back yard. The little girls all looked so cute in their dresses and hair bows.

Some of the kids with Aunt Katie and Aunt Bea (Margaret)

March 2013

My first sewing project for a child

Here is the first child's outfit I have sewn—a dress for Molly, in her "fav'wite cowors." The day I finished it, I was babysitting early in the morning, and the kids were still asleep. So I had to leave the dress there to surprise Molly when she woke up. Pictured below is precious little Sleeping Beauty herself!

 When I am at their house, I always enjoy seeing this handprint stone the kids made in 2010. Inside each pair of hands you can see the child's age when the print was made in wet cement.

Girls' getaway in Versailles

One weekend my friends Margaret and Mandy and I went to Versailles, KY, to stay at a bed and breakfast and shop all the little shops in that quaint town. I wish I had taken photos of some of the neat stores we browsed in.
We had a wonderful time. Here we are having lunch at the B&B with a nun friend.

St. Joseph's Day

I have a special devotion to St. Joseph, and I always get excited when his feast day comes around on March 19th. 

I made a little altar in my office that day. This statue I bought in 1994 with my first paycheck once I got out of college. I bought it at the Mission San Buenaventura in Ventura, CA. It was all of $4, but I really like it. I keep it on my desk all the time. St. Joseph has helped me to find jobs and housing.

With my friend Tamara, I went to Mass at the nearby Abbey of Gethsemani. The above picture was taken a couple of days later, but you can see how the trees were beginning to bud already.

Entrance procession

View from the choir loft

The abbey church is very plain, but there is a very peaceful and contemplative atmosphere. On solemnities they have Mass at a different, later time, and there is wonderful incense and beautiful chanting, some of it in Latin.


In the evening, some friends and I drove to Louisville, to St. Martin of Tours parish, to take part in a special St. Joseph's Day Vespers service and then an Italian meal in the parish hall. This sign greeted us at the door.

"Welcome to St. Martin's Restaurant."

The hall was decorated in Italian style. Pasta, bread, salad, wine, and dessert were on the menu.

They even had a St. Joseph Table, a Sicilian custom which I love.

VIVA SAN GIUSEPPE!

Easter Vigil

The choir and I practiced hard for Holy Week and Easter. Here is the fire from the Easter Vigil at Guardian Angels in Louisville.

"Lumen Christi!" "Deo gratias!"

We read all the readings and sang all the psalms.

And then the great Alleluia broke out....

A young woman was baptized and confirmed, received her First Communion, and (with her husband) received the sacrament of Matrimony at this Mass.

This is our beautiful church.

The end. (For March)

Wednesday 8:40 PM — FINISHED!!!

I have been very quiet lately because I have been spending many, many hours on a translating project. Years ago I translated a book of letters by St. Gianna Beretta Molla, which was published by the Daughters of St. Paul. Two years ago, her husband Pietro died, and now the sisters want to publish a complete book of his and her letters together.

This is the book I translated before, published in 2002. It is now out of print, but I am glad that Pauline Books will be publishing a new edition containing the letters of both husband and wife.

I have been working on translating Pietro's letters (and the 64 pages of introductions, prefaces, etc. etc.) for about three months. I have been letting just about everything else slide, especially as I realized I had delayed too long in starting the project, and this time I had a deadline (and I missed it). It took longer than I had expected. But I just finished the last punctuation mark and sent the book off to the editor.....

Whew.

I do have to say that it was a very interesting and moving task. The love between the husband and wife was so deep and tender. I could hardly imagine what it must have meant to Mr. Molla to lose his wife after only 7 years of marriage and then to have to go on living without her for almost 50 more years. Then I had to think about how incredibly happy they must have been to be reunited when he got to heaven.

Well, time to get some rest finally. In the next few days I intend to put up some other posts with pictures of all the events that have transpired while I have had my nose in this translation. I feel like I can start a new life now!

Isn't this...

..a Swiss Guard helmet on a snowman?! LOL I got this from weather.com this morning.

Miniature Dollhouse Display

This past Sunday, I took Molly out by herself, "without the boys," for the first time. We went to see a miniature dollhouse display at Locust Grove, the place where I recently attended the ball. I really wasn't sure what to expect. But it was amazing! It was put on by the Louisville Miniature Society.

By the way, my camera is putting the wrong dates on the photos, so I am not lying that it was Sunday the 17th!

Molly enjoying a miniature cottage house. The glass dome behind it looks to me like it houses a miniature Italian house, maybe, though I don't remember for sure.

We had to be very quiet and only whisper, because the Jane Austen Society was having a lecture right on the other side those cubicle dividers. A woman with a very British accent was giving a lecture on how Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice. Apparently this year is the 200th anniversary of the release of that book, so there are many events all over the world celebrating the occasion. Note to self: remember to start going to some of these meetings.

This house (above) was pretty amazing. Look at the tiny bookshelves in the front. Those tiny books and magazines on the shelves were each made separately out of paper! Each one had a title on the spine. I took this picture with Molly in front of it so you can get an idea how tiny the items inside were. Notice the bathroom at top left....

Here's a close-up of the bathroom. Look at the tiny pink fuzzy towel on the right wall! And the tiny, tiny garbage can... and the newspaper on the floor by the toilet. That cracked me up.

I was just entranced with the perfect little crocheted afghan in this tiny wooden cradle, and the tiny candle in the mounted holder on the left wall.

There were even displays guys might have enjoyed. This one was an old-fashioned filling station. On the other side (back) of it was a miniature auto repair shop with a little car lift and everything!

Some of the displays were in really unique containers, like this one. This one amused me because it's just like many guys' workshops I've seen—not too tidy! LOL
In fact, it looks a little like some areas of the print shop where I work!

Another scene in a unique container, a watering can. Look at the tiny green hose. Inside the brown tub were two tiny fish swimming in what looked like clear water (but it was hard). At the tops of the green vines growing up the wall were tiny pink flowers, with a tiny bluebird perched among the flowers. Unfortunately you can't see them in this photo.

This was one of our favorites. It was adorable.
There is even a tiny blue foil-wrapped egg on the ground in front of the table!

This was my second favorite scene. I love white wicker furniture. See the rabbit on the table and the Easter basket, complete with tiny plastic eggs, on the floor at left?

Now THIS one was my absolute favorite. The wedding cake was probably about 1 inch tall. There is a pearl-crowned veil draped across the sofa, and beside it is a white cushion with two minuscule wedding rings on it. The bridal bouquet is on the floor at left, and note the tray with champagne on top of the wicker tea cart..... The photos on the wall looked like real photos to me, just shrunk down tiny.

Only afterwards did I find out what Molly's favorite scene was, and I regret not taking a picture of it. It was a child's bedroom with white furniture, blue curtains and blanket, and a tall white shelf with a tiny Peter Rabbit ceramic plate sitting on one of the shelves.

Afterwards we went outside to walk around the fields and inspect the old cemetery and the log buildings which were once used as barns and sheds and an outside kitchen. We also walked all around the historic old house where George Rogers Clark spent his last years. I had to keep explaining that this item was old-fashioned and that kind of building was old-fashioned....

We also stopped in the gift shop, where Molly said she wants me to buy her (another day, because it was Sunday) a carved wooden fan and... a big plastic spider. We'll see about that one! I also showed her a quill pen set and explained how people used to write letters in that old-fashioned way.

When we left, I asked Molly what kind of a house she wants to live in when she grows up. It will be a big house, she told me, and it will be old-fashioned (I must have said "old-fashioned" once too many times!), and it will be painted light blue on the outside. Her bedroom will be white, with pink 'parkwy (sparkly) curtains at the window. Hmmmm. Can you just picture that?

She also said recently that she wants me to make her a dress with "ball sleeves." We are not sure what "ball sleeves" are, so my sister asked her to explain. She replied helpfully, "You know....the kind I want!"

So this Sunday, I asked her myself to tell me what ball sleeves are. She sighed. "Haven't you ever seen Cinderella?" she asked me.

Oh. That kind of sleeves.

My Week in Pictures

Last week was such a great week. Something interesting or exciting happened every single day!

SUNDAY

I attended Baby Liam Joseph's Baptism after Mass. He was only 3 days old. Congratulations, Bryan and Siena!

Isn't he darling? I am always amazed at how the human heart can seemingly love an ever-increasing number of people. There is always room for one more. Luckily I think there will always be one more baby coming that we can love!

MONDAY

My friend Margaret had just arrived home from a week in Rome. My family and her family got together to listen to the stories of her pilgrimage and look at her pictures. Here is the cake her sister Katie made to welcome her home. Wasn't that sweet?

Margaret came home late Sunday night, and woke up Monday to the very sobering news of the Pope's resigning. What a shock it was for all of us.

TUESDAY

It was Mardi Gras. According to our family tradition, I had to have pancakes for supper, so my friend Stephanie and I went out to Cracker Barrel. After that we went to Wal-Mart to look at fabric. I want to make Molly a dress, so I took some photos of some fun fabrics I might use. 

Molly liked this one when I showed her the pictures some days later. Oh, did you guess that she likes ladybugs?

WEDNESDAY

It was Ash Wednesday, so of course I was starving all day. But Stephanie remembered that she had an extra sewing machine that she could give me. It has only been used once. I was SO excited. Now I can sew whenever I want! I can't believe it!

After a dress for Molly, I need to make myself another Regency dress that is not for balls, but less formal.

THURSDAY

Today was Valentine's Day. On the way to work I was amazed to see that the daffodils are already "bloomified" as my brother Michael put it. We have had such a warm winter that they have bloomed quite a bit earlier than normal. Usually I see them around the first week of March.

FRIDAY

I had organized an afternoon tea at Theo's house. Theo is the lady in the middle of the picture. Our guests were Gwen (at left) and her lovely daughter Erin (on the right), who live next door to the community where I work. We were celebrating Valentine's Day a day late.

I am beginning to think I have a calling to revive the very civilized and civilizing custom of having fancy teas. I do love them!

Erin had brought some homemade chocolate eclairs. YUM! Take a closer look at our goodies.

SATURDAY

I went to Versailles, KY with my friend Pat to meet Sr. Gemma, and all 3 of us went out for lunch at the Woodford Inn, a historic house which is now a bed and breakfast/restaurant. We had a great lunch. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, and their website is not letting me steal any, either. But I assure you the dining room is lovely and the food was very good. I had fish 'n chips. We were celebrating Pat's birthday, which was back in January. (Website: Woodford Inn)

Sunday (yesterday) was a day all in itself, but I will have to do that post later... I am getting a little weary of waiting for photos to upload. It takes a long time! : )

Videos From The Ball

Videos at last! Please enjoy!

This dance is straight out of Pride and Prejudice - look for "Mr. Darcy" in the last clip: