Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Clover Angels & Flower Crowns: A Little Bit of Springtime

God is so good, and there have been some wonderful moments this spring! Before we suddenly find ourselves in summertime (because, with the way that times flies, I'm sure if I blink we'll be in July) I want to take a couple minutes to share a little bit of our life with all of you. 

Daffodils are abundant right now, 
and our neighbor invited us to come pick 
some of hers which were perfect
decorations for St. Joseph's solemnity!
Back in March, we celebrated two glorious solemnities-that of St. Joseph and that of the Annunciation. On St. Joseph's feast, my husband took the day off of work so we could celebrate as a family-we went to the park, we played games, and we watched Into the Spider-Verse, which was an AWESOME movie. Partway through the movie, our toddler ran out of the room and returned with his Spider-Man mask, which he wore for the duration of the film. On the Annunciation, we went to a funeral which was sad, but full of hope and trust in God's mercy. That evening, we went out for dinner and ice cream-and since we haven't eaten ice cream in months (due to Exodus 90), a couple members of the family were WIRED afterwards! Haha! 


I bought a bunch of new tea, and I am loving it. It's really tasty and it's wonderful to support a young family who is bringing joy and good tea into the world :) 



I received the surprise of my life a few weeks ago when I found out that a piece I wrote about FOUR YEARS AGO was just accepted by Judson Press for their quarterly devotional! That was pretty exciting, though I've decided that reading something I wrote four years ago makes me all cringy because I feel like I could do so much better now. Hopefully God takes the words I wrote and touches some hearts out there! 

My toddler wanted his own coffee, so I gave him some of mine, put milk and whipped
cream in it, and he had a "fancy coffee drink." He was pretty happy about that :) 
I have officially become a "coffee every day" kind of person. 

My husband took two Amazon boxes and cut and taped them to make this for our toddler (our toddler calls it his "fire engine"). The long part is elevated and our toddler crawls through the back all the way to sit in the front. He has had such a fun time playing with this, and watching him in his "fire engine" has been great :) 


We happen to have lots of clover in our yard this year (yay!) and I stuck the baby in it the other evening. When I picked him up, there was an impression left in the clover-it made me think of a snow angel, but a springtime version! 

The weather has been perfect springtime loveliness over here, and we are thoroughly enjoying it (though I'm told it's supposed to get REALLY COLD later this week, potentially with a frost). It's particularly helpful because our toddler has so much energy (see note above about coffee being a necessity). In addition to clover, our yard has lots of weeds, so I naturally had to make a flower crown. I do this pretty much every single springtime, and it's so much fun :) 

Ever since late November last year, our toddler has regularly pretended to be a priest while playing at home. The past couple weeks, he's gotten even more into it, setting up a "Presider's chair" (the rocking chair) next to crucifixes and prayer books. Throughout the day, he'll "Celebrate" by singing, carrying around books or a crucifix, raising his hands in prayer, or pretending to distribute the Eucharist. It's adorable!!!

Occasionally, we pick up a post-Mass breakfast from Chick-Fil-A, and one time they loaded us down with sauce. We had so many containers left that I threw them in our fridge and a few days later made a stir fry. This sauce is SO TASTY as part of a stir fry! I definitely recommend giving it a try-plus, it makes the cooking process so much easier if you don't have to make a special sauce ;) 

I hope that you all are having a beautiful week!

10 comments:

  1. Congrats on getting published, AnneMarie!! That is so awesome!!! I love the clover "snow angel" and beautiful flower crown. How adorable your son pretends to be a priest! Enjoyed reading this post :)

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    1. Thanks so much, Elisabeth! It was a reminder that the writing life is all about patience, because it can take forever for hard work to bear fruit. I'm a pretty impatient person, so this is a good lesson I'm trying to embrace. And yes, it is so adorable that our firstborn is in full-on priest mode! He's already tried making our baby hold a bible open like an altar server, but since the baby is 7 months, he's still a bit young for that. Catholic kids are so darling :)

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    2. Oh my goodness...that is the cutest ever. I love that he's so immersed in Catholicism that his play includes it too...we probably need to ease up on the princesses over here. :/

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  2. All of these updates are so precious...those ordinary days can be so sweet sometimes...it's the one reason I wish I was still on IG so that I could capture the little moments...but hopefully they will be memories for me and our kiddos. :)

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    1. I agree-the little moments of ordinary life can be incredible. My husband has talked about making a private/hidden youtube channel so he and I can put videos of our kids in one place (instead of videos from his phone on his computer, videos from my camera on my computer) and I really hope we can do this because I think it'd be a nice way to record some of these memories-particularly since I've been posting fewer pictures, details and cute stories from the lives of my kids on Facebook or on this blog.

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    2. That's a great idea. It almost seems harder these days to document our lives in a way that will be useful and accessible for our kids someday! I sometimes want to go back to the days of real camera film rolls. ;)

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  3. The "fire engine" is seriously cool! And congrats on your devotional getting published, although I can very much relate to the same feeling when seeing my own writing from years ago and knowing I could have written it better now!

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  4. Such sweet updates, AnneMarie! Springtime is so wonderful, and that's the cutest when toddlers show interest in things like celebrating mass. How precious!

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  5. I love how you guys used the boxes. We get so many that I need to become more creative in how I use them for the kids...they love having new "toys" and I love seeing them enjoy these!

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    1. Boxes are great! I am so glad that my husband has the kind of brain that sees plain boxes and then comes up with this elaborate project-my inclination is usually just to hand over a box to my toddler to use as a cave or something, and not get more creative than that ;)

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