Our Lady of the Sierras

Celtic Cross and Mary.  

Last weekend we took an 8 mile drive south of here and visited a Marian Shrine to Our Lady of the Sierras. It features a a 75 foot Celtic Cross and a statue of Our Blessed Mother beside it.  It stands on a beautiful mountain facing north into Sierra Vista.  As you climb up to the peak, you can stop at the Stations of the Cross.  

The statue of Our Blessed Mother.  

Mike, James, and I made the climb up to the top while grandma and grandpa stayed in the car with sleeping Henry and Mac.  

Isn't this view spectacular?  This is from the highest part, where another station of the cross faces us.  This picture only shows part of the view.  I wish I had gotten one of the cross from the bottom of the hill.  

This is right outside a little chapel next to the base of the cross and statue of Mary.

 A special aspect of this shrine that I hadn't realized is that it can be a place of healing specifically for post-abortive women mourning the loss of their child.  This statue is of the angel of consolation.  The plaque below explains that a woman mourning her loss can pilgrimage to this shrine as part of her process of forgiveness and closure.  Inside the chapel is a box where the woman can place the name she chose for her child.

It's hard to make out, but there is a very small statue on the pile of rocks right outside the chapel. It is of a beautiful baby's face being cupped by large hands and angel's wings.

I'm hoping we can make another trip up here before we have to leave!

Sierra Vista, Arizona!

At In-n-Out in Tucson.

Yes, it has been over two months since I last wrote a blog post.  I have been a big-time blog slacker!  In all honesty I have been so overwhelmed with living our lives that the idea of sitting down and documenting it all seemed down-right daunting.  So I am easing back into blogging one step at a time!

First off, we moved!  Long story short, it was stressful and I was unorganized.  Yet somehow we arrived in Sierra Vista on January 2, 2013 with a van full of Simpson boys (and about a bazillion food crumbs and juice drops on the floor) and a U-Haul full of enough of our possessions for a few months.  Mike is attending his 4-month long Army course.  He is enjoying it and doing very well (aside from a pesky foot injury that keeps rearing it's ugly head).

Settling in here has been challenging.  I still haven't seemed to be able to get us back into a very good routine despite the fact that I've begun several weeks with lists of all the things I am going to try to get us back on track.  Maybe I'm trying too hard.

Despite the challenges, I do love Sierra Vista for many reasons:  

1:  We stumbled into a really awesome parish and a vibrant, active Catholic community!  It has made a huge difference in helping us feel at home and connected in a new place.

2:  It's absolutely beautiful here!  We have a ton of mountains all around.  It makes me feel so at home.  But it's also slightly different here.  It's not as desert-y as ABQ.  It's like a hybrid between New Mexico and California with a variety of cacti side by side with palm trees!  There are hills, snow-topped mountains, long expanses of grassy landscapes, and lots and lots of sun!

Mountains.

3:  We get to see Mike every night.  

Such a treat seeing him in his uniform every night. P.S. James took this picture.

4:  Our apartment is comfortable and (for the most part) roomy enough.

5:  We are within a 10-15 minute drive from Fort Huachuca.  It's a beautiful base and has a nice commissary and PX.  (In ABQ I would have to drive 30 minutes to the commissary).  And this base has countless parks for the boys.

Nice boys swinging. James was in timeout in the stroller.

There are a few down sides to living here:

1:  I miss my family and friends back home!

2:  Our kitchen/dining room are tiny

3:  Our dining room has carpet.

4:  We have no yard for the boys.

On a walk near our apartment.

So, see... I have a lot of good things to work with here!  Hopefully we will be able to settle in more now and feel more normal soon.  Stay tuned for more frequent blog posts from now on :)

December so far

James for a new carseat and Mac got his old one.  

James and Henry wrapped up a bunch of toys as presents using blankets.  

I started reading this book in the hopes of learning some tips for teaching James to read  next year.  

One of the many forts built in our living room since the weather started getting colder.  

This one looks like it has a special garage for parking their shopping cart and wheeled toys :)  

Some doggies eating bones (popcorn).  

Henry decorating the tree.  

James decorating

The finishing touch of the star!  

Henry's ornament this year.  

James' ornament.  

James picked this out for Mac.  

And to all a good night!  

Baby Mac at 17 months

My littlest boy is becoming a big boy more and more every day.  

Racing with his brothers from one end of the house to the other.  

Mac's vocabulary has been growing lately.  Some of his favorite words are mama, dada, ball, car, rock, cheese-stick, o-plane (airplane), and boon (balloon).  He has several others and I pick up on new ones every couple of days.  

Baby Mac in the lead!  What a rascal!  

He also started saying one sentence a couple of weeks ago: It's a ball.  He would say this one sentence every day, whenever he'd pick up a ball.  And if he ever said any other sentence I could not understand it.  Just yesterday he added a new one: It's a rock.  And then this morning I am pretty sure I heard: I see a ball.  

They each get a wheeled toy like the lawn mower, shopping cart, and other baby-push toy and race around the living room.  They also pretend to be vacuum trucks while I am vacuuming :)

Some nights after James and Henry get tucked in, I take Mac to my room and we play on my bed before he gets his bedtime nursing.  He is fascinated by the cluster of family pictures above our bed.  There are pictures of Mike and me, some of all 3 boys, and one of all 5 of us.  

He adores his daddy and brothers.  

Last night I heard him saying James' and Henry's names for the first time while he pointed at their pictures!  I had been waiting for this moment for months.  When he pointed at James he said "Gee" and when he pointed at Henry it sounded like "Hidy."  

He can be picky about certain textures, but he's broadening his tastes a little bit.  He LOVES black beans (which is what is covering his face).  Yesterday he decided that he finally likes cuties and has been inhaling them ever since.

He is getting so big.  I used to wear him in the wrap to rock him to sleep for his naps, but he is so big that it has become difficult for me.  So we started a new routine last week where we go to his room and have a diaper change, a story (his current fave is Brown Bear, Brown Bear) and then I sing him 2 or 3 songs while rocking him, before being laid in his crib.  He took to this new routine so easily and now he even starts reaching for his crib to lay down before the song is done (possibly due to the fact that my singing voice leaves a little to be desired?).  

Such a big boy doing big-boy things and then he falls asleep in his high chair with food still in his mouth.  Well, I guess all that big boy activity wears a little one out :)  

Still my Baby Mac!  

the Election, the Rosary, and Hope

The Agony in the Garden

Well.  We have another 4 years of President Obama.  What will the next four years bring?  We will come to discover more of the Obamacare time bombs and eventually the full implementation of a new healthcare system.  We will continue to see our debt and deficits soar, plunging us at an ever increasing pace towards what I can only imagine as economic collapse.  (This would have happened under Romney as well, just at an ever so slightly slower pace).  Will we see the administration rescind the HHS mandate?  Or will churches and church-affiliated institutions be forced to pay for contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs?  Will the president get the chance to appoint another justice to the Supreme Court?  Will anyone be held accountable for the Benghazi nightmare?  Will the media EVER fairly portray the callousness of the President and Vice President toward American lives?  Will the unborn Americans continue to be murdered by the thousands daily and will those murders continue to be subsidized by tax payers?

I never thought that I'd live to see our religious liberties actually at stake. I never thought that I'd live to see more than half of voters elect a man who has lied to the American people on so many fronts, repeatedly. I never thought we'd elect a man who not only vocally voted against providing medical care to infants born ALIVE during botched abortions but also shows such a disregard for the life of one of our own Ambassadors who had repeatedly requested help and the hero who sacrificed his life to do the right thing.

I grew up learning about the saints who died defending their faith.  My sister and I learned of some of the terrible persecutions done against Christians.  Those persecutions brought out so mainly saintly qualities of bravery, loyalty, faith, strength, and most of all hope in the face of despair.  This is what I think we are called to today.  

The saints got their hope from Our Lord.  I found it so fitting that yesterday, Election Day, was a Tuesday.  On Tuesdays, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary are to be meditated upon.  The first of the Sorrowful

the Holy Rosary

Mysteries is the Agony in the Garden.  Our Lord prayed in what I can only imagine must have been a spiritual agony.  He asked that God the Father take away the cup of suffering that awaited him at his impending arrest, scourging and crucifixion.  I know many who like me took it for granted that Romney would win this one are going through a mini-version of spiritual agony.  I am not sure what persecutions our country faces in the years ahead; what trials await us.  But I do think that things are going to get harder before they get better.  God is going to be asking a lot of us.

Today is Wednesday and we have the Glorious Mysteries to mediate on.  The first of these is the Resurrection of Our Lord.  Whenever I mediate on this mystery, I think of Our Lord's disciples and what they must have felt at the crucifixion.  Imagine the great despair they must have felt to have seen our Lord tortured and killed before their very eyes?  Many of the disciples fled after that.

Mary Magdalene I don't think despaired though.  She must have been full of sorrow.  Maybe not knowing what else to do, she approached Jesus' tomb with the other women to anoint his body.  Just when the women were discussing how to overcome the obstacle of moving the gigantic rock from the tomb in order to enter, they found the rock had already been moved and Jesus had already been raised!  What an emotional roller coaster that must have been!

Somehow God will show us the way.  I don't think everything that happens is something God intends.  We have free-will after all.  God didn't make the mob shout at Pilate to crucify Jesus.  Their hardness of heart did that.  We can be sorrowful, we can be disappointed.  We can worry a little... but I don't think we can despair!  I don't know what exactly faces us, but I do know that the saints always had hope.

We sung this song at Mass last weekend and I found a link to it on another blog:

And I have posted this before, but it is even more spot on today, so I will repeat these wise words from our Holy Father:

Dear friends, may no adversity paralyze you. Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world.  Pope Benedict XVI

3 and 28

 We had two birthdays last week.

First, Mike turned 28 and finally caught up with me (at least for the next 4.5 months).  I think he had the best birthday ever.  My parents and I got him a joint gift: a home brewing kit!  I also made my first ever gluten-free vanilla butter cake (but forgot to snap a picture).  It wasn't bad, no one could tell it didn't have wheat in it :)  

Isn't that cute? Beer makes him so happy!

Making his first batch of beer over the weekend. This is when he was taking the grains out of the wort. Right now the wort is fermenting for a couple of weeks before he can bottle it.  

The green paper is the birthday card James made for Mike. It has picture of Mike and James eating ice cream cones and says, "I like you." (I helped him write it a little, but he dictated it!).  He also drew a hammer, birthday hat, trucks, and bugs.  Henry's is the yellow card. It has a picture or Henry and Mac and I am not sure what else.

And then little Henry turned.... THREE!  Three years ago, I was holding this little man...

This photo was taken on October 30, 2009. So it was EXACTLY 3 years ago today

I still remember whenever my parents would come over to visit us while Henry was a newborn, Grandpa would always say, "That Henry is something else!"  And he still is.  In fact, 3 years ago I had no idea how unique he was.

I asked him if he wanted to open his birthday presents and he wasted no time. He started attacking all the presents.

His 3rd birthday was his first actual birthday party.  When he turned one, he and I were both down and out with a stomach bug that lasted a week.  The poor kid couldn't eat cake.  When he turned 2, my niece Jane and sister-in-law Tessie were visiting, we did a joint birthday part with Jane (who turned 2 juts 3 days before Henry).  It was a really nice party, but Mike wasn't able to be there.  So this year we finally got the chance to go all out!

Opening his gift from James: an astronaut Tow-Mater. James also made him the cutest birthday card ever.

The Hughes and Simpsons

Gluten-free chocolate ricotta muffins with a tiny bit of yellow frosting. The yellow plate on the right was decorated by James and Henry (while taking turns snacking on the frosting)

They were a hit, at least with Henry :)

Happy birthday my little Henry! You are my quirky, sharp, sweet little boy.  I cannot wait to see what God has in store for you!  And happy big 28 to my husband Mike. We have another 28 years + ahead of us!  (And I will still love you when you are totally bald :)

In the homestretch of 2012...

 These last four years our lives have been so busy.  By the time Halloween rolls around, the rest of our year is pretty much booked.  I hate having time go by so quickly. I cannot believe Halloween is tomorrow already.  

My little old men in the snow. December 2011.

Next week is the Election, which is a very big deal in our house.  Then, a trip to Portland (yay!).  As soon as we get home for Portland, we have to get ready for Thanksgiving.  The week after Thanksgiving our family has FIVE birthdays!  That takes us straight into December, which I just know is going to be totally crazy.

James, Henry and me. Henry looks like a baby!  And my hair is about 11 inches shorter now! December 2011.

Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year.  But between Mike's job always getting busy in December and all the special Christmas things like going out and getting the tree, trimming it, planning gifts, baking goodies, and the 3 December birthdays our family has, busy is an understatement.  This year we have an added layer of stress... we are moving right after New Years to Arizona!

Playing with Daddy.  Those green things for J and H's Christmas tree hand print paintings. December 2011.

Last year I started to get stressed about it all at the beginning of December.  But then I snapped out of it.  I remember thinking to myself, "Christmas is my favorite time of the year, so I am going to enjoy it! if I let every stressful situation bother me this much, then I am going to watch my entire life slip by without having enjoyed any of it!"  I was also on the "Oh my gosh I have 3 kids now, I need to embrace the chaos" kick.  (Which, by the way, works!)

From Grandma's birthday. December 2011.

December 2011 ended up being a very good month and full of so many great memories.  I remember taking the boys the the Boy Scouts Christmas tree lot in the biting wind and trying to pick just the right tree (and trying to keep James from throwing his ball into the street and Henry from slipping on ice and Mac's feet warm while in the carrier).  When we got home Mike arranged all the lights on the tree and then we stood back and let the boys decorate the tree (with shatter-proof balls).  Then I unpacked our other Christmas decorations and really enjoyed setting them up around the house.

Baby Mac from Dec. 2011.  About 6 months old.

On Christmas Eve we tried to go to the children's Mass in our new parish only to discover that unless you are a parent whose child is in the program (and therefore arrive an hour early), it's impossible to get a seat!  This year we'll have to pick a different Mass :)  The night before Christmas we had a nice meal (I think it was flank steak and glazed carrots) and then got the boys cleaned and all snug in their special Christmas PJs.  Then we loaded them all into the car and went on our 2nd annual Christmas light-viewing drive.  We got home and tucked the sleeping babes in their beds.  Then Mike & I put on our (figurative) Santa Claus hats and worked some magic under the tree.  I have to say, even though we stayed up too late that night... it was an awesome memory!  Being able to set up a bunch of goodies for your kids to see under the tree and in their stockings the next morning is one of the most fun things to do!

When I think back on memories like last Christmas it makes me realize that we have many, many more years ahead of wonderful Christmases.  I can only imagine the new things we'll be able to do and the new joys we'll have with our little boys.  And hopefully at some point we'll be able to add another stocking or two to our mantle and share these memories with more SimpSons or daughters :)

Mike and me after we set up the Christmas gifts for the boys. Christmas Eve 2011.

While I often complain that life goes by too fast, I know that is just because we are doing so much living every single day because there are FIVE of us now under this roof.  We are making many memories as a family and (most of the time) enjoying it as much as possible.  I am so excited that we've entered the holiday season.  Hopefully I can take my own advice from last year and find that sweet spot, despite the extra stress of packing and moving.