Archive for » October, 2005 «

All Saints Day Costume

This year we decided to take Therese to the All Saints Day party that our parish has for the kiddies. A couple of weeks ago when my mom came to help me out while Adam was in California, I had her bring up her sewing machine. Unbeknownst to her, I don’t know a lick about how to sew. (I took extra math classes in high school not home economics! Little did I know how domesticated I would be come!)

Before mom and I went shopping to materials, she asked me if I had thread, scissors for cutting material, needles, straight pins, and a pattern for the costume. My answer was an innocent, “no.” I don’t think I’ve seen my mom laugh that hard in a long time!

I hope those of you who know me would know exactly who I wanted to dress Therese as…St. Therese of course! Fortunately we have plenty of statues and holy cards of our little girl’s namesake. And the extra blessing is that my mom DOES know something about sewing even though she doesn’t do it very often…and some of my math backgroud did payoff.

So with unceasing prayers to St. Therese we did it! And Therese’s costume didn’t come out half bad thanks to my mom and some divine intervention.
Check out our All Saints Day pictures.

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We’ve been Tagged

Normally, I don’t do this sort of thing since it takes up so much of my time, but since it is the Devman, I’ll go for it. Being a couple, Sharon and I will do this tag-team style. We’ll leave it up to our readers to decide for themselves who answered what… or could they be both…

Five things I plan to do before I die:
1. Retire in Asissi, Italy… or just retire.
2. Go to confession… many, many, many times.
3. Sail the ocean blue.
4. Own a car that won’t break down.
5. Enjoy the gift of many children.

Five things I can do:
1. Maintain my own vehicle.
2. Natural childbirth.
3. Cloth diaper.
4. Play the piano.
5. Run a 5K.

Five things I cannot do:
1. Run a 5K.
2. Play the Canadian national anthem with my armpit.
3. Touch my tongue to my elbow (you’re dying to try, aren’t you)?
4. Epideral.
5. Sleep in.

Five things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Holiness.
2. Confession, Adoration, and Eucharist are their top hobbies.
3. Miraculous Medal (it works!).
4. The fact they are the opposite sex.
5. Loves their family.

Five things I say most often:
1. Therese, daddy is going to change your diaper.
2. Therese, mommy is going to put you to bed.
3. Boo-yah.
4. I love you.
5. No, Therese.

Five Celebrity Crushes or more Favorite Holy People:
1. Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
2. St. Gianna Berreta Molla
3. St. Gerard Majella
4. Servant of God Fulton J. Sheen
5. Pope John Paul II (the Great)
6. St. Therese of Liseaux
7. St. Don Bosco
8. Mary our Queen
9. St. Joseph
10. St. Catherine of Sienna
11. Michael Joseph

Pilgrimage to the Virgen de San Juan Shrine

This past weekend, we made our third pilgrimage of the year. (Don’t be too impressed that it’s our third, that’s just how things turned out.) This pilgrimage was made in Thanksgiving for Baby G. Early in our pregnancy when we weren’t sure what was going to happen, Fr. Don Sawyer from Our Lady’s Maronite Church in Austin, gave me an annointing and suggested we make a promise to our Blessed Mother. And as you may have guess by now, the promise was to make this pilgrimage.

We went to the Shrine of the Virgen de San Juan in San Juan, Texas. San Juan is a small town in the Valley and a nice 6 hour trip from Austin. The Shrine itself is quite lovely given it has a more modern architecture. (The orginal shrine was destroyed when an air plane crashed into it a while back.) We went to the vigil Mass on Saturday and Adam was able to experience English mariachi music. There was also no cry room! (This was excellent!) So we didn’t have to take Therese out since there were plenty of kids praising God in their own way!

We had our trials and tribulations on this trip. Our car broke down again on the way to Corpus Christi (only halfway through the trip). Fortunately my brother lives outside of Corpus and he picked us up. Another blessing was that he let us borrow his car to make it down to San Juan. I also realized that it’s not so much fun riding in a car for almost half a day while you’re 7 1/2 months pregnant. This pilgrimage was not an easy one by any means. I guess it was good that we had intentions for which to offer it up.

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Home–almost–Alone

Well, Adam is away on this business trip this week. Tonight he gets to go to Disneyland! Poor him, huh?

Fortunately I’m not home alone with Therese. Grandma Lozano came up to spend a few day with us and become indoctrinated with the Gretencord household rules before she comes to help us out when Baby G is born. It’s funny our lives change when we live on our own.

These past few days have not been without their events. Therese is cutting– not one– but TWO teeth. And for Therese that means lots and lots of screaming. I’ve been nesting these past couple of weeks…organizing things before the baby comes has been a little obsession of mine. I just hope the baby doesn’t decide to come anytime soon…I still have a 8 weeks or so to go.

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Melts My Heart

As Sharon alluded to in her last post, I simply adore Thérèse and her admiration for daisies. So last week I brought my girls home some flowers: gerber daisies for Sharon and simple, white daisies for Thérèse. As soon as the little one’s eyes fell upon the bouquet I was greeted instantly with bursts of “fwower!” and “day-ze!”. The video shows it all. Thérèse got so excited, she even told us how old she is.

I am a proud father.


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Therese Funnies and Loveables

Therese really is so delightful (when she’s slept well and has had a good nap).

She’s quite the collector. She finds more joy in collecting items and organizing them than she actually finds in making use of the item…examples: she likes to collect the crayons and carry them in a cup. She like to collect her spoons and carry them around (for hours). She like to collect loose button and take them to her little garden house.

Her latest funny was a few days ago when we were having salad…All of a sudden she likes salad. Ok..that’s not so suprising. But then she sees the slices of red onion and wants those too. She starts eating them just plane and raw. Adam and I were stunned because neither of us are that crazy about onion. Luckily our child isn’t too weird. When she had enough in her mouth, she spit them all out and made a rather, “ewwww,” face. It was the best laugh Adam and I had all day!

Adam has been in love with how Therese says daisy. I won’t even try to write that out. He’s working on getting a video on the website so you too can fall in love.

The other endearing thing she says…when she sees a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she says, “mommy!” That’s too sweet.

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Almost Stress-free

I had the intention of giving Adam a stress free weekend.

Saturday was Therese’s Name day. It was the feast day of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. We went to Mass that morning as I had the intention of the Mass at St. Louis said for her. That afternoon we went to make our pilgrimage to San Antonio. We had an early dinner at our favorite restaurant, Mi Tiera. Then we went to the Mass of the Roses at the National Basilica of the Little Flower.

We met a lovely woman who shared her prayer guide with us. She has 5 kids and one of them is also named Teresa. She was without the kids and offered to sit next to us to share the prayer guide. We told her we were there from Austin to celebrate our little girl’s name day. She was so sweet to even help us calm our little one down during Mass. Afterwards we learned she home schools and is joyous about living out the Church’s teaching. We know this was God-incidence.

Anyway…the day was complete with some sweets from the reception after the Mass. And we even shared with Therese since it was her special day. We asked one of the Carmelite Priests to give her a blessing…it was one of the most beautiful blessing ever prayed over our daughter. We were quite grateful!

Then Sunday hit…neither Adam nor I slept well last night. Therese slept with me…and hopefully will never again. Adam slept on the air mattress. The morning came much too soon. My sister cooked us breakfast. And we were off to Oktobrefest in Fredricksburg. It was mildly disappointing not to mention HOT! I didn’t think it worth the $6 admission; but being from a small town, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. At least we can say we went.

On the way back to Austin, the car broke down. The engine light came on and it was not a pretty ride. We managed to make it to the center of town when we called a friend to give us a lift home. Say a BIG prayer for us that all this gets resolved soon and cheaply.

We’ll be seriously looking for a new car next week. By the way, we learned during our car problem that Therese is now into repeating what we say…not a good thing!

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