Family Happenings, or Why I've Been Neglecting the Blog

Note: I wrote up the following entry some time ago, in June, to explain to a few curious readers why I haven't been blogging.

I love summertime! I can usually be found working in my large vegetable garden, ignoring all other household chores. This summer, however, has proven difficult to find time to devote to my gardening passion. I now have several hundred square feet of 3-4 foot tall weeds that I first must eradicate before I can plant anything. All my seedlings, which I had started indoors in March, suffered from neglect and died. But I can't give up hope. There's always the garden center where I can spend oodles of money to buy lovely tomato and pepper plants and I still have some hope that I can plant some seeds and get something from my patch of dirt.

The dignitaries: Fr. Mitch Pacwa was the graduation speaker at Franciscan University of Steubenville (third from the left, looking down)

There are many excuses I could give for my lack of attention to the garden this summer. Perhaps the best excuse is that the month of May began with a 1450 mile drive (each way) to Steubenville, Ohio, to see the eldest son, Pier, graduate from Franciscan University. He finished his computer science degree (cum laude AND with honors, having completed the Honors Program). Seems like just the other day he was graduating from high school!

We got him and all his gear loaded up on the morning of Mother's Day, then drove for two days home. He was home for only two weeks before he left for his summer internship in Maryland. (Prayers for full-time employment much appreciated!)

the happy grad

Before he left I was able to get his help moving his older sister out of her apartment and into our garage. That is, her stuff was moved into our garage. We don't have a basement, so our oversized garage has become the main storage for our two college grads as they are transitioning into new phases in their lives, as well as our two college gals who have much of their childhood mementos stored in our garage along with all the various and sundry other artifacts one collects when one has ten children. (Why else would we have a dozen or so bicycles in the garage?)

After dear son left, we had to drive 70 miles north to move our next dear daughter, Kateri, from her old basement apartment to her new second story apartment. Fortunately, my dear husband didn't have a class for his PhD that particular Saturday.

Corpus Christi procession in downtown Denver

Next big event was oldest daughter, Maria, getting engaged, followed by her early morning departure to Maryland to begin her summer internship. She returned a mere five days later (for a weekend only) to be the sponsor for her youngest sister Bernadette's confirmation. It was a beautiful Mass with Archbishop Chaput, followed by a very traditional and lovely outdoor Corpus Christi procession around the church building in busy downtown Denver. Later that very same day our first of two French exchange students arrived for a three week stay.

sight seeing at Red Rocks park with one of our French exchange students

When writing about one's children

...it's usually a good idea to have them proof-read what you're writing, particularly if said child is old enough to read.

Such is the case with one of my recent posts about Twixters. In it, I mentioned the struggle we had getting our eldest daughter off to college for the first time and how she was going to pay for it.

She thought I painted a picture of her as a "slacker senior," which she most certainly was not. She and we, her parents, were treading unfamiliar territory and hearing new terms, like "FAFSA," "EFC," and "unsubsidized Stafford" for the first time. I failed to mention (due to short-term memory loss) that she had won a hefty academic scholarship from a private Catholic school and was a finalist on their math scholarship. However, she turned it down to attend a state university. (I have already edited the posting).

She has now graduated and has applied for PhD programs in nuclear physics and medical physics at five different graduate schools across the country. She found out she's not in the 8% of accepted applicants to MIT's program, but has sweet offers from two other schools while she's waiting to hear from the last two schools.

Yes, dear Maria (not her real name, but she knows who she is), we are so proud of you. Even if you don't go to grad school, you've already done something we were told was impossible: you worked your way through school.

Love,
Mom

Geography lesson: driving to Portland on the way to Indonesia

Got any extra prayers (or pray-ers) floating around? Send a few out our way, please.

My eldest, Maria, is on her way to Bali, Indonesia, by way of Portland.

She and her boyfriend and two of his younger siblings drove from Arvada, Colorado to Portland, Oregon yesterday morning and arrived safely this afternoon. (Thank you, Lord!)

But the best is yet to come as they are planning on flying from Portland to Vancouver, BC; then on to Tokyo, Japan; followed by Singapore; completing their trip to Bali.


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Her boyfriend grew up in Indonesia and is fluent in the language and they'll be staying with his folks, so she'll be pretty safe once they get there. It's the getting there that has to happen first.

And to think when I was a kid, taking the train to St. Louis from Denver was a big adventure!

Barfing and Breastfeeding

Monday mornings the kids are all at school, so I have a few free hours to spend perusing blogs I don't usually get to read. This morning I came across Kat's blog, and it reminded me of my own experience with kids barfing at Mass.

Maria was probably only 2 or maybe even not quite 2, so we really can't blame her. We were in the old chapel at Bolling AFB, in DC, where we lived during my last year and a half in the Navy. The chapel had lovely red velvet-covered cushions on the pews. And she barfed all over them.

At least we were in the back pew and we could make a quick escape. A nice older lady helped us clean it up. After that, I think we stuck to the new chapel, which had smooth, wooden pews. (Much easier to clean up messes).

That same daughter is now 21. She informed me this past weekend how glad she was that I never breastfed her...I then offered to get out the old slides and have a slide show. She was quite horrified at the prospect of seeing herself breastfeeding with her boyfriend watching.

Good thing there were no digital cell phone cameras back in the old days when I breastfed a newborn while in uniform on a 14-hour military flight from Naples, Italy to Washington, DC! I must've looked pretty sloppy, but then again, my baby didn't cry for 14 hours straight like the poor toddlers on that flight.

Nothing like being a mom to give you a large dose of humility.

The Fray's Next Venue Should Be My House

It was autumn 2005. The Grammy nominated rock band played a concert at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. My eldest daughter was a volunteer student helping to organize the concert. After the concert she helped them load their equipment into their truck. A large amp fell on her, trapping her ankle beneath its tremendous weight.

The guys were nice. Hey, here's a cute young co-ed helping to load their cheesy equipment into their U-Haul and she gets hurt. Maybe crippled for life. What could they do? They didn't have health insurance or even workman's comp. They were all still living with their mommas or living in a tent at Boyd Lake and dining at 7-11.

They did what any self-respecting rock band does when a pretty young co-ed is maimed helping you load your junk into the U-Haul. They signed her leg with a Sharpie and gave her a free CD.

Well, now that my daughter has suffered through four years of hard labor, toiling as a Physics major, hobbling along on crutches while carrying her 50 pounds of textbooks through the sleet and snow of Greeley, Colorado, don't you think you owe her a little more?

Her real friends drove her to the emergency room that fateful day that will forever be burned into her memory. They held her hand as the doctors and nurses examined the x-rays and pronounced her fate. "Severely strained ligaments," they said, fighting back tears while heroically doing everything in their power to save her life. Her real friends comforted her and helped her find her cell phone after she got back to her room after the quick pit stop to Blockbusters to check out "Batman Begins" for the umpteenth time, so she could phone her poor mother and inform her of the tragic news.

Mr.'s "How to Save a Life," went on their merry way, giddily going through the rest of the year singing at venue after venue, never once phoning to see how this poor, crippled girl was doing.

Perhaps we could find it in our hearts to forgive your insensitivities and bad manners, if you would but do one teeny tiny itsy bitsy favor for me: play your next venue at my house.

I have it all planned out.

We'll set up the awning out back and cook brauts and even buy a keg. We'll invite the people we like and not invite the people we don't. You'll turn your amps up really loudly and we'll sit there drinking beer and singing along and watching the kids splash in their wading pool while the dog tries to eat it and all our neighbors will be sooooo jealous.

Let's do it on the fourth of July. I will even cook some baked beans. See you then!