Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Looking from Emmalines eyes...
This is Emmaline's view. This is what she does nearly every day when everyone plays outside she loves being on the back porch. We will not be surprised if she starts walking really soon. She has been on the fast track for movement since the beginning. She has been crawling since our Disney Trip when she first turned six months and pulling up at Christmas at 6 1/2 months old and three weeks ago she started pushing herself to a standing position in the middle of a room. I think it will be soon. You can see in these pictures why she would be so motivated to walk. She is ready to be off the porch and with everyone else!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
A glimpse of my heart...loving vs controlling
A glimpse into my heart...a struggling heart...a heart that is always learning because I am always falling...so far I continue to get up and try and again and learn from my mistakes. I do make the same mistakes often so I pray to persevere. The battle is constant and it is monotonous.
A few weeks ago Branden and I were disagreeing and he said to me "Do you really love me or do you only love the things you can control about me". I stopped dead in my thoughts and words and stood dumbfounded that my husband had in all seriousness just asked me that obscene hurt my pride and my heart question. I didn't know how to respond so I didn't. I left the argument in silence and went about my day contemplating those words. They really bothered me a lot and in prayer I began to realize he was right. This is exactly what I wrote to him in response after really thinking and praying about what he said.
You made a good point when you said you do not feel like I love you except in things that I can control. Unfortunately, you are right. The thing I would love the most is to be loved by you and ironically that is the very thing that I can't control at all. Love is freely given. Love cannot be controlled because that is in fact not Love at all, that is why God gave us free will so that we could choose to love. So in fact the thing I want the most cannot be achieved by anything I want you to do or control you to do it is a spontaneous act of your will to love me, not a Lauri controlled act. How deceiving love is and so often I fall for the path of control and manipulation. This is what happened during the fall of Eve women became controlling. It is inherent in me to want to control you and it is something I must strive to conquer because at the very depth of me as a woman I am seeking and yearn to be loved, but controlling and love are complete opposites and so contrary to one another. When trying to control everyone and everything there is no love from the other person that can be found, but in letting go of the control and loving the person for who they are and for their choices both good and bad for their qualities both good and bad and by not trying to change the person to be who I want them to be, but allowing them to become at their own pace or God's pace who God wants them to be. Maybe my vision of who I want you to be conflicts with Gods or maybe it is spot on, but neither matters at all because my primary concern should be with myself and making myself to be the best image of me. I do know that the controlling and manipulative woman I am is not who God wants me to be. I am sorry.
A few weeks ago Branden and I were disagreeing and he said to me "Do you really love me or do you only love the things you can control about me". I stopped dead in my thoughts and words and stood dumbfounded that my husband had in all seriousness just asked me that obscene hurt my pride and my heart question. I didn't know how to respond so I didn't. I left the argument in silence and went about my day contemplating those words. They really bothered me a lot and in prayer I began to realize he was right. This is exactly what I wrote to him in response after really thinking and praying about what he said.
You made a good point when you said you do not feel like I love you except in things that I can control. Unfortunately, you are right. The thing I would love the most is to be loved by you and ironically that is the very thing that I can't control at all. Love is freely given. Love cannot be controlled because that is in fact not Love at all, that is why God gave us free will so that we could choose to love. So in fact the thing I want the most cannot be achieved by anything I want you to do or control you to do it is a spontaneous act of your will to love me, not a Lauri controlled act. How deceiving love is and so often I fall for the path of control and manipulation. This is what happened during the fall of Eve women became controlling. It is inherent in me to want to control you and it is something I must strive to conquer because at the very depth of me as a woman I am seeking and yearn to be loved, but controlling and love are complete opposites and so contrary to one another. When trying to control everyone and everything there is no love from the other person that can be found, but in letting go of the control and loving the person for who they are and for their choices both good and bad for their qualities both good and bad and by not trying to change the person to be who I want them to be, but allowing them to become at their own pace or God's pace who God wants them to be. Maybe my vision of who I want you to be conflicts with Gods or maybe it is spot on, but neither matters at all because my primary concern should be with myself and making myself to be the best image of me. I do know that the controlling and manipulative woman I am is not who God wants me to be. I am sorry.
Monday, February 6, 2012
In a Contraceptive Culture, Women can never rest
This is from the National Catholic Register a few months back. A friend passed it along to me. Wonderful article.
Blogs
In Contraceptive Culture, Women Can Never Rest
BY Jennifer Fulwiler
A recent study showed that one of the fastest-growing markets for plastic surgery is women who are over 65. According American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, over 85,000 people in that age group had cosmetic surgery last year; one 83-year-old woman recently made the news for getting breast implants.
This isn’t a surprising turn of events, considering that our culture now tells women that if they are not sexy, they are not valuable. This idea is everywhere. Women’s magazines and websites are filled with well-meaning messages assuring women of all ages that they too can achieve this all-important status. For example, Joan Collins wrote an article in the Daily Mail on this topic (which I’m not going to link to because of some of the images it includes, but you can Google it). Here’s an excerpt:
Many women over 40 are beginning to feel unsexy—and with that often comes a tremendous feeling of insecurity.
In a more sane society, here is where you might expect a rallying cry to remind women that there’s more to life than being sexy, a call to action for women over 40 to embrace their changing bodies and demand that our culture’s objectification of women cease. Instead, Collins posts pictures of 62-year-old Helen Mirren in a bikini and offers these words of comfort:
The truth is there are plenty of role models for them to aspire to: women like Dame Helen are by no means in the minority for looking sexy and stunning.
When Sophia Loren was 71 she posed in skimpy lingerie for the famous Pirelli calendar, and women’s magazines everywhere announced with palpable relief that this proved that older women could be sexy. Sixty-year-old former Vogue model Nina Carter reports casually that her boyfriend will make remarks to her and her friends like, “You need your eyes doing,” or “You could do with a bit of liposuction,” and she hits the gym regularly to make sure she still looks good in a bikini. If that’s not enough, aging women are now supposed to be concerned about knee wrinkles.
And then there’s the even-more-disturbing other end of the spectrum, with marketers now pushing tiny bikinis for babies, push-up bras for eight-year-olds, and racy lingerie for girls as young as three months. (No, that’s not a typo. I said months.) In other words, women are now expected to be sexy from the cradle to the grave. And the message is clear: If men are not lusting after you, you are “invisible.”
We have contraception to thank for this.
For better or worse, a woman’s physical appearance has always been an important factor in the way she’s perceived by others and the way she perceives herself. But before the widespread acceptance of contraception, there was more of an emphasis on being beautiful than being sexy. A woman with a few extra pounds, with wrinkles and stretch marks and callused hands and other physical indicators of a well-lived life, can still be beautiful; but, according to our modern definition of the word, she cannot be sexy. Whereas beauty takes the entire person into consideration, sexiness is about making yourself an object of lust.
The Church totally called this one. Back in 1968 Pope Paul VI made four predictions about what would happen when the world accepted contraception, and in one of them he stops just short of naming toddler thongs and octogenarian breast implants specifically. Dr. Janet Smith explains:
Paul VI argued that “the man” will lose respect for “the woman” and “no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium” and will come to “the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” This concern reflects what has come to be known as a “personalist” understanding of morality. The personalist understanding of wrongdoing is based upon respect for the dignity of the human person. The Pope realized that the Church’s teaching on contraception is designed to protect the good of conjugal love. When spouses violate this good, they do not act in accord with their innate dignity and thus they endanger their own happiness. Treating their bodies as mechanical instruments to be manipulated for their own purposes, they risk treating each other as objects of pleasure.
The world now sees all women through a lust-saturated lens, and values them accordingly.
It’s tragic to read some of these articles where women in their 70’s and even their 80’s report feeling bad about themselves because they can no longer rock a bikini at the beach, or to walk through the store and see racy, revealing outfits targeted at young girls. It’s bad enough that women in their 20’s face the pressure to objectify themselves, but now little girls can’t enjoy their childhoods free of worry about whether they’re five pounds overweight, and aging women can’t relax and embrace their new type of beauty. It’s a sad situation for a lot of reasons, one of them being the sheer amount of work women in our society feel they must put into their appearances in order to attain inappropriate and unrealistic physical ideals. In contraceptive culture, there’s never a time women women get a pass on not being sexy, and thus they can never rest.
Blogs
In Contraceptive Culture, Women Can Never Rest
BY Jennifer Fulwiler
A recent study showed that one of the fastest-growing markets for plastic surgery is women who are over 65. According American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, over 85,000 people in that age group had cosmetic surgery last year; one 83-year-old woman recently made the news for getting breast implants.
This isn’t a surprising turn of events, considering that our culture now tells women that if they are not sexy, they are not valuable. This idea is everywhere. Women’s magazines and websites are filled with well-meaning messages assuring women of all ages that they too can achieve this all-important status. For example, Joan Collins wrote an article in the Daily Mail on this topic (which I’m not going to link to because of some of the images it includes, but you can Google it). Here’s an excerpt:
Many women over 40 are beginning to feel unsexy—and with that often comes a tremendous feeling of insecurity.
In a more sane society, here is where you might expect a rallying cry to remind women that there’s more to life than being sexy, a call to action for women over 40 to embrace their changing bodies and demand that our culture’s objectification of women cease. Instead, Collins posts pictures of 62-year-old Helen Mirren in a bikini and offers these words of comfort:
The truth is there are plenty of role models for them to aspire to: women like Dame Helen are by no means in the minority for looking sexy and stunning.
When Sophia Loren was 71 she posed in skimpy lingerie for the famous Pirelli calendar, and women’s magazines everywhere announced with palpable relief that this proved that older women could be sexy. Sixty-year-old former Vogue model Nina Carter reports casually that her boyfriend will make remarks to her and her friends like, “You need your eyes doing,” or “You could do with a bit of liposuction,” and she hits the gym regularly to make sure she still looks good in a bikini. If that’s not enough, aging women are now supposed to be concerned about knee wrinkles.
And then there’s the even-more-disturbing other end of the spectrum, with marketers now pushing tiny bikinis for babies, push-up bras for eight-year-olds, and racy lingerie for girls as young as three months. (No, that’s not a typo. I said months.) In other words, women are now expected to be sexy from the cradle to the grave. And the message is clear: If men are not lusting after you, you are “invisible.”
We have contraception to thank for this.
For better or worse, a woman’s physical appearance has always been an important factor in the way she’s perceived by others and the way she perceives herself. But before the widespread acceptance of contraception, there was more of an emphasis on being beautiful than being sexy. A woman with a few extra pounds, with wrinkles and stretch marks and callused hands and other physical indicators of a well-lived life, can still be beautiful; but, according to our modern definition of the word, she cannot be sexy. Whereas beauty takes the entire person into consideration, sexiness is about making yourself an object of lust.
The Church totally called this one. Back in 1968 Pope Paul VI made four predictions about what would happen when the world accepted contraception, and in one of them he stops just short of naming toddler thongs and octogenarian breast implants specifically. Dr. Janet Smith explains:
Paul VI argued that “the man” will lose respect for “the woman” and “no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium” and will come to “the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” This concern reflects what has come to be known as a “personalist” understanding of morality. The personalist understanding of wrongdoing is based upon respect for the dignity of the human person. The Pope realized that the Church’s teaching on contraception is designed to protect the good of conjugal love. When spouses violate this good, they do not act in accord with their innate dignity and thus they endanger their own happiness. Treating their bodies as mechanical instruments to be manipulated for their own purposes, they risk treating each other as objects of pleasure.
The world now sees all women through a lust-saturated lens, and values them accordingly.
It’s tragic to read some of these articles where women in their 70’s and even their 80’s report feeling bad about themselves because they can no longer rock a bikini at the beach, or to walk through the store and see racy, revealing outfits targeted at young girls. It’s bad enough that women in their 20’s face the pressure to objectify themselves, but now little girls can’t enjoy their childhoods free of worry about whether they’re five pounds overweight, and aging women can’t relax and embrace their new type of beauty. It’s a sad situation for a lot of reasons, one of them being the sheer amount of work women in our society feel they must put into their appearances in order to attain inappropriate and unrealistic physical ideals. In contraceptive culture, there’s never a time women women get a pass on not being sexy, and thus they can never rest.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Beat Train and Dancing with Daddy
During our school day we do the Beat Train: We turn on music and dance. We also get common household items such as pots, pans, plates, cups, utensils, keys, bags from chips, oatmeal canisters etc...and use those to play the beat and make different sounds. We create our own music. The kids love it and so do I. We have a lot of fun with it.
Dancing in the living room. When daddy is home this is where we dance. We love dancing around here.
Dancing in the living room. When daddy is home this is where we dance. We love dancing around here.
Friday, January 27, 2012
ahhh....life
This is an email from my wonderful mother in law. I thought it was great! She is the mom of 8 with my husband being the oldest and the youngest is 7. I was talking to her recently and telling her about my days to get advice. She sent me this a few days later. It is always nice to know you are not the only one!
The email was entitled ahhh...life
Today (Monday)
Have to leave for the March for life by 8am….
Breakfast?… yes, you have to eat breakfast…no we cannot stop somewhere along the way… you know that…why do you ask every time even though you get the SAME answer???...
Still cleaning up from Saturday’s party… slow and steady wins the race right?? trying to do a little before we left for the March
Cleaning the big coffee pot …. Spilled the coffee grounds (a lot) all over the kitchen floor… great, this was supposed to go fast so I could get dressed and ready
i am cleaning up the coffee grounds and Peyton yells…. “gross!!” “what iiiiis THIS??” ohhhhh she says, “someone barfed!” what? Who barfed??
Yuck….. the dog barfed… I am still not ready, I moved from the coffee grounds to the barf…. As I am barking orders…. Clean up after yourself…. Get dressed, brush your teeth… I don’t know where your shoes are… you should! You wear them!... get coats…yes you DO need a coat!! It’s rainy and cold… and yes you DO need socks …get off the couch…ect..ect…
Wrangle the kids… ok really?.... just kidding…more like herding cats… seriously!... we were supposed to LEAVE at 8…not sit down to START eating breakfast (hmm guess who that was?) the wonderful dog throws up in the TV room… again
We leave at 8:27…. Mass starts at 9am at St Bens… yep…we were late… on a bright note, God blessed us with unusually light traffic even with the crazy weather.
Got to mass 10 minutes late…just in time to catch the last of the Gospel… we gathered with the other families for the rosary. Went to lunch with everyone and headed down to the March traffic was horrible due to the rain… (we decided that God must figure “well they are doing it, let’s make it REALLY count” and He turned up the rain…so the graces would be multiplied!)…but, true to form… God saw fit to stop the rain right as the rally and march began
All in all the March went well… not as many hecklers as in years past … powerful, as always to see the huge number of people, primarily Catholics, gathered for the same cause… the music concluded with an amazing rendition of a song I wish I knew the name of!! Then as always… they broadcast a real recording of the heartbeat of a baby in utero…. Then it stops abruptly…. And the trumpeters play “Taps”…. And I cry
We climb back in the car… tired, satisfied and changed… now … back to the same life… how can we make a greater impact though?... how can we be a bigger voice for those sweet babies?.... all within our state in life? how?
Home again…. More barf… thanks Nikki… I offer up the cleaning of the carpets for an end to the killing of babies and for anyone affected by it. I can do that… it’s what I am being called to do right now … it is my state in life …right?
Several hours later… carpets clean (as much as possible) … house is still in disarray but ….dinner was made, I finished planning the school week for Cameron which got put off because of the busy weekend… the little people are in bed, the big guys are at hockey… off I go now to plan for Landen and Peyton’s school week…
God Bless you my sweet daughter in-law!...
Count on my prayers as you fight the good fight!!
Much love,
Ruth
The email was entitled ahhh...life
Today (Monday)
Have to leave for the March for life by 8am….
Breakfast?… yes, you have to eat breakfast…no we cannot stop somewhere along the way… you know that…why do you ask every time even though you get the SAME answer???...
Still cleaning up from Saturday’s party… slow and steady wins the race right?? trying to do a little before we left for the March
Cleaning the big coffee pot …. Spilled the coffee grounds (a lot) all over the kitchen floor… great, this was supposed to go fast so I could get dressed and ready
i am cleaning up the coffee grounds and Peyton yells…. “gross!!” “what iiiiis THIS??” ohhhhh she says, “someone barfed!” what? Who barfed??
Yuck….. the dog barfed… I am still not ready, I moved from the coffee grounds to the barf…. As I am barking orders…. Clean up after yourself…. Get dressed, brush your teeth… I don’t know where your shoes are… you should! You wear them!... get coats…yes you DO need a coat!! It’s rainy and cold… and yes you DO need socks …get off the couch…ect..ect…
Wrangle the kids… ok really?.... just kidding…more like herding cats… seriously!... we were supposed to LEAVE at 8…not sit down to START eating breakfast (hmm guess who that was?) the wonderful dog throws up in the TV room… again
We leave at 8:27…. Mass starts at 9am at St Bens… yep…we were late… on a bright note, God blessed us with unusually light traffic even with the crazy weather.
Got to mass 10 minutes late…just in time to catch the last of the Gospel… we gathered with the other families for the rosary. Went to lunch with everyone and headed down to the March traffic was horrible due to the rain… (we decided that God must figure “well they are doing it, let’s make it REALLY count” and He turned up the rain…so the graces would be multiplied!)…but, true to form… God saw fit to stop the rain right as the rally and march began
All in all the March went well… not as many hecklers as in years past … powerful, as always to see the huge number of people, primarily Catholics, gathered for the same cause… the music concluded with an amazing rendition of a song I wish I knew the name of!! Then as always… they broadcast a real recording of the heartbeat of a baby in utero…. Then it stops abruptly…. And the trumpeters play “Taps”…. And I cry
We climb back in the car… tired, satisfied and changed… now … back to the same life… how can we make a greater impact though?... how can we be a bigger voice for those sweet babies?.... all within our state in life? how?
Home again…. More barf… thanks Nikki… I offer up the cleaning of the carpets for an end to the killing of babies and for anyone affected by it. I can do that… it’s what I am being called to do right now … it is my state in life …right?
Several hours later… carpets clean (as much as possible) … house is still in disarray but ….dinner was made, I finished planning the school week for Cameron which got put off because of the busy weekend… the little people are in bed, the big guys are at hockey… off I go now to plan for Landen and Peyton’s school week…
God Bless you my sweet daughter in-law!...
Count on my prayers as you fight the good fight!!
Much love,
Ruth
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
DISNEY!
We were Blessed with an opportunity to go to Disney for the first time! There is an older couple at our church (we didn't know them) that had booked a week at a resort in Disney and could not use the week. It was a non-refundable trip. Our family was attending the Advent mission at church and they were as well. On Tuesday the 6th of December Branden was running around the Parish Hall like a crazy man playing with our kids (he does this often and some times gets in trouble - he is a big kid himself). The man and his wife see him and they say I wonder if that guy in the plaid shirt over there running around with all of those kids would like to go to Disney. SOOOOOO Long story short....we said yes and left for Disney on Saturday the 10th!! We stayed for a week and had the best time ever! Disney is the happy place. It just makes you smile and for some reason we all seemed to have an odd amount of energy that propelled us from the wee hours of the morning to very late into the night without naps. Yes that is right we park hopped and would wake up to take the first bus to the park. We would get there as it was opening and stayed until they kicked us out. If the parked closed at 6 or 7pm we would hop on the tram and go to Epcot or Disney until they closed at 9:30pm and then after that we would come back to the resort at 10pm and swim. Then around llpm we would sit in the hot tub drinking wine while the kids continued swimming. Then we would start all over again the next morning! We did all of this with all of our five children. I know it sounds crazy, but it is true and it was a lot of fun! We unfortunately do not have many pictures, but we have a few. The more kids we have had the less pictures we get and slowly I am learning to detach from having pictures of everything all the time. It is a major stress to stop and get pictures of everyone when the moment is good and the attitudes are positive so we keep going in the good moments and stop in the bad moments, but in the bad moments I don't want pics either!! Can't win either way so I just let go of pics and enjoy the moments. Also in Disney to keep up with five kids with two adults is a lot of work. Adding pictures into the mix was at many moment just too much!
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