Archive for » July, 2009 «

Prayer Request

18 Jul 2009 by

I feel the need to ask some prayers…

My sister, tough as nails,  has had so many health issues all her life–mostly stemming from sports injuries. Her doctor recently discovered she has a crack or hole in one of her vertebrae bones. After two MRIs, the bone specialist is still unsure what it is. She is going to have a bone biopsy next week. On top of that, she took a bad fall at work last week and tore at least one ligament in her ankle and is on crutches. She won’t know for sure what the state of her ankle is until all the swelling goes down. She has certainly found humor in the recent fall, but please pray she finds God’s grace and healing in all of this.

Category: Family  One Comment

Chop and Stock 2009

18 Jul 2009 by

What do you get when you mix 3 hours, 5 friends, 1 baby G, 12 lbs ground beef, 4 lbs chicken, 3 tubs ricotta cheese, 3 tearful onions, 5 jars of spaghetti sauce, love and spice and everything nice?

4 good friends helping this pregnant woman stock up the freezer with 22 meals for her family and a load of fun! (We ended up making 4 chicken pot pies, 2 meatball meals, 3 sloppy joe meals, 3 meals worth of enchilada sauce, 2 meals of beef chili, 2 beef stroganoff meals, 4 trays of manicotti, 1 meat lasagna, and 1 veggie lasagna.)

Thankfully the only mishap we had was with some manicotti getting out of hand…thankfully high heat will destroy any bacteria involved. We learned that chopping 3 onions will have everyone in the kitchen in tears. And the funniest comment came from Lindsey: “Even the beer is made from scratch around here!” I had a great time enjoying the company of my girl friends. The time went by fast with 5 of us cooking and the kitchen heat was actually bearable.

Last time we did this was before Gianna was born. It was extremely helpful then and I anticipate with four children it will be even more helpful this time around. I love all the meals people bring us but eventually those stop and we are left to our own devices. The realities of our extended family unable to come and help after a baby is born requires a little more organization on my part to help the family with a smoother transition. So to answer Zvezdana’s question, “Yes, I’ve always been this organized,” or you might say self-sufficient.

My heartfelt and sincere thanks to Julie, Zvezdana, Lindsey and Lauren for helping me this morning cook up some yummy meals for our freezer, to Adam who took the kids out so we could cook peacefully, and to God who blessed me with these lovely ladies and their friendship and the family we got to cook for! (I’ll post follow up pictures on Monday since I’m off tomorrow. )

Category: Family, Friends, Fun, Recipes  Leave a Comment

Gospel Humor

16 Jul 2009 by

“It sounds like you’re reading a literal ‘Divine Comedy’.”

This was my wife’s response to yet another one of my musings from the Gospel of Mark. You may have heard the old adage that “God has a sense of humor.” Well I’ve recently been seeing it in a new way throughout the Gospel in the figure of Jesus. For example, who can’t help but see the lighter side of our Lord knowing he called two of his apostles “son’s of thunder” (Mk 3:17)? And these are the two along with Peter – whom he renamed “rock” – that he often took aside in private matters. I mean, can you imagine how the Lord addressed them? “Hey Rock and Thunder Boys, come with me.”

I’d like to share a few further reflections later as they certainly have been lifting my spirit.

Category: Uncategorized  One Comment

Catholic Women Go Green!

16 Jul 2009 by

Natural Family Planning Awareness Week starts on Sunday.  The Adult and Family Ministry Director at our parish has humored me and is co-coordinating, “Catholic Women Go Green- A Women’s Health and Fertility Forum.” I’m excited where this has taken us! It’s next Saturday, July 25, from 9-11:30 a.m. at the Pastoral Center in Austin. Here’s more information: womenforumflyer

The concept for the forum came from wanting to attract women to “natural” means of addressing health issues–especially their procreative health. Organic has become an ironic trend. Women are willing to pay more money for organic and ‘natural’ foods BUT are still loading their bodies with artificial contraceptives for regulating their fertility and addressing gynecological problems. In addition there are so many misconceptions about natural family planning and its effectiveness.  The Pope Paul VI Institute has made many advances in treating common hormonal problems and has success rates for infertile couples that are upto 4 times greater than invitro fertilization at a fraction of the cost.

This of course is not at all to downplay the role of the Church’s teaching in using NFP as a natural means of spacing children. But since we actually want people to go to this–both NFP users and non-NFP users–we wanted to give a different spin to inform people about the many blessings of NFP. The reality is that most couples won’t go to a forum/talk that explicity has “NFP” in the title. I tried one of those a few years ago and there was almost no one there. Last year the diocese’s NFP coordinator pulled together a seminar on infertility at my suggestion–again to give a different spin to the NFP discussion. We had a great turnout.

So if you’re a women, come!! Invite a friend! Download and email the flier to anyone you think would be interested. Hope to see you there!

Category: Events  Leave a Comment

Summer’s Best and Worst

13 Jul 2009 by

1. Coolest place to hang out–the refridgerated produce section of Costco.

Hottest place to hang out–cooking in the kitchen all afternoon to start stocking the freezer with meals… and one my precious children turns on the HEATER!!!

2. Best time to go walking–6 a.m. in the peaceful solitude of my neighborhood without the children.

Worst time to go walking–anytime after 8 a.m. when it’s already 90 degrees and the kids want to come along and complain half way through my usual route that the want to go home.

3. Best bedtime–9 p.m while my beloved gives me a massage.

Worst bedtime–11 p.m. as it usually will take me two days to recover from that 2 hour lack of sleep.

4. Best hour of the weekdays–Adoration when the children behave.

Worst hour of the weekdays–Adoration when Fulton starts climbing the kneeler in front of Jesus.

5. Greatest accomplishment this summer–keeping up with Therese’s latin lessons.

Greatest failure this summer–the stinkin’ garden!

6. Best words to hear this summer–”love you, mommy,” from our precious Muffin in the way that only a 22 month old can say.  Second best words to hear–”Really? You look great for being 6 months pregnant.”

Worst words to hear this summer–”Sweetie, our insurance is changing on September 1.” (Baby G is due end of September.)

7. Worst aches and pains– My joints loosening last week.

Best remedies for aches and pains–A day at the spa!

Category: Family  Leave a Comment

Getting to Know RoR

09 Jul 2009 by

My professional career has taken a bit of a twist lately. My next project is a Web application that will not require an extensive use of my ActionScript programming skills. It has a fairly short deadline and requires quick iterations for client review which equates to an agile development process. Enter Ruby on Rails.

I’ve experimented a bit with this technology in the past and quite enjoyed working with it. It’s nice to see your application up and running in a matter of minutes – hence the joy of the Rails framework. However it certainly has its frustrating moments to be sure – like working with routing in polymorphic associations when the abstract class also belongs to another model and you want to dynamically create instances of the individual subclasses à la factory style – but I digress.

Anyway, here’s to happy coding and hopefully some decent hours of sleep in the near future.

Category: Work  3 Comments

Congratulations Haunspergers!

09 Jul 2009 by

Congrats to our friend the Haunspergers who welcome another son into this world, Zachary Peter.

Category: Friends  One Comment

I PASSED!

02 Jul 2009 by

I passed my glucose test! At 28 weeks with each pregnancy a woman gets tested for gestational diabetes. With a family history of diabetes and having failed my first test when I was pregnant with Gianna, I’ve been concerned (more like obsessed) that I would end up with gestational diabetes.

So for the last 2 months I’ve stepped up my exercising. I get up at 6 a.m. almost every morning to go walking. I walk between 2-3 miles a day. It’s been a great way to enjoy some quiet time before the sun burns off my flesh. It’s also be a wonderful treat to pray and enjoy my time with God and reflecting on how my day ‘should’ go before I have to face the demands of my vocation when I walk in the door. We’ve seen a significant decrease in dessert nights too. Now were down to one night a week–usually Sunday. Well, I’m mostly down to one night a week. Adam is still nursing four tubs of ice cream in the freezer! And the kids and I enjoy homemade juice popsicles occasionally on really hot days. I also learned some important dietary information to balance out our meals and my carbs and protein better. These changed certainly have made a difference and when I deviate from them I feel it.

Thank you, Jesus, for helping me to perservere!

Category: Health  5 Comments
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