Happy Birthday Baby!

Katie is ever so fond of saying to anyone and everyone who will listen these days “I was a baby last week and now, I’m a big girl.” She says this with a cocky little twist of her head and a dismissive wave with her hand. And that’s exactly how it feels to me. She was a baby last week and now…she’s a big girl. And I have no idea how that happened.

Happy Happy Birthday to my Baby who is also such a Big Girl!

the 50th...some formal pictures

the happy couple

all six girls with the scrapbooks

Mumma and her boys

And here we all are...all forty five of us

Mimi and Papa and the grandchildren...only one grandson is missing, he had had it with pictures

And so have the rest of us! I guess you can say they managed to pass on their sense of humor. Either that or we're just weird.

tea with me

This school year I was a bit sad sending both big kids off to school for the whole day. I will tell you it's not been an easy transition for Teresa. She is having a tough time adjusting to being in school for the whole day. Sam has adjusted to the school time routine more easily. But me...I am sad for me. I miss spending time with them. I miss eating lunch with them. I don't get to experience all the ups and downs of their days anymore. And while I know this is how things go, at least for our family, it still takes some time to get used to. Jen over at listmama has inspired us to begin a new ritual that is helping to ease the transition somewhat. Thanks Jen!

Every day about 3:00 pm I put out the blue speckled teapot and some Japanese teacups and the heart shaped plate. Each one of these pieces is special to me. The teapot sat on top of my mom's stove for years until one day she just got tired of washing the grease off it and gave it to me. The teacups were a gift from a Japanese friend of mine. She and I had an afternoon teatime ritual too, way back when I was a new graduate from college and on my own for the first time in my life. I received them when she moved back to Hawaii and paring back to only what she could fit in her suitcase. And the heartshaped plate I unwrapped as a wedding favor from a very very dear friend. Although we didn't take tea together, we were usually sipping some beverage on our outings. ; )

The teapot rarely has tea in it. Somedays it's milk, regular, chocolate or pink and others it's apple or orange juice. The little plate is filled with goodies; muffins, nilla wafers, teddy grahems or homebacked bread with butter. I set up the table and listen for the bus.

Sam and Teresa run in from the bus, shed backpacks and sit themselves down at the table. I pour the tea so we can sit down and chat. We talk about the funny things that happened that day. I'll tell them how one of the daycare babies nearly caught and squashed the kitty and they tell me the games they played at recess. They tell me who they sat with at lunch and who their buddy was at mathtime. We talk about the times they felt mad or sad or frustrated. We take the time to connect. For some reason I never get the standard "nothing" when we chat over tea. They are full of the goings on of their day and seem eager to share it. And what's wonderful is we no longer feel so disconnected from each other's day.

My home can be a chaotic place, especially just after 3 in the afternoon. What with the kids coming in off the bus, little ones waking and needing snack and new diapers and parents coming to pick up their children. But those ten minutes Sam, Teresa and I spend sipping our "tea" and sharing our day are precious. We are able to celebrate and commiserate together and somehow no longer feel cheated of each other. Who knew so much could fit into a little cup of tea.

through the years

My parents raised eleven children. ELEVEN! I have three and not a day goes by when I shake my head and wonder how my parents, my stay at home Mom especially, managed without going completely insane. Watch as the family grows from one to eleven.

The first born...little did they know they had opened the floodgates...no looking back now.

On the balcony of their little apartment in Germany. The little guy in my mom's lap fell off this balcony one day, three stories down onto the cement. We love sticking magnets to the screws of the plate he now sports in his head.
They arrived in Germany with three kids and left Germany with five children. My mom had to travel home, from Germany to Massachusetts with five children under the age of six and 6 months pregnant to boot, by herself. Have I mentioned she should be nominated for sainthood?
The clan now numbers six. And this is where things start to go to pot.
HUH??? We jump from six little ones to a bunch more, some full grown. That's what happens when you got so many, the picture taking falls by the wayside. There are now nine of us in the picture. We completely missed me and my younger brother and sister as babies. Oh well. My sisters loved to tell me I was adopted because of the scarcity of baby pictures of me. I'm the gorgeous child in the white dress. :)

In this picture we have extras...my Grammie, my aunt Sr. Teresa and my uncle Fr. Jim. Yep, a nun and a priest. Have I mentioned we're Catholic...oh yeah, eleven children...I guess you knew that. Only ten of the eleven here. Not sure where my oldest sister is, but this is the first with my youngest sister so technically the family is now complete. I'm the lovely girl on the far right.

And here we are in our uniforms. No, just kidding. We all ran in a road race called the Monster Dash. You ran in a costume. Well, we all didn't run in it but somehow we all ended up with t-shirts. Actually one of my older sisters is absent here. She was away at school. Notice a pattern . There always seems to be someone missing. Can you spot me here? I'll help out, almost smack dab in the middle.
Finally! It took till we were all grown but they finally got a picture of all eleven of us all at the same time. This was at my youngest sister's wedding. See how happy my dad looks...that's because he just married off the last of his girls.

And just for fun.....

This is all their fault. And as per usual people are missing. Can you find me now???

an endangered species

I am so good about making sure the kids clothing is current and in good repair. Their socks don't sport holes and they always have plenty of underwear. Why then, do I slack when it comes to my own clothing? I was in desperate need of new underwear. I was doing laundry more often, not because I am so on top of my domestic duties but just because I needed clean underwear for the following day.

The other night I was out running some errands at our local superstore and remembered the dearth of undies in my undie drawer. So I marched myself over to the intimate apparel and wandered through the maze of bras (thank god I don't need new bras at the moment!) and stopped in front of the long wall of underwear. And that's when I remembered why I'd been avoiding this unpleasant little task. There were briefs, bikini's, string bikini's, boxers, boy style, hiphuggers, thongs, girdles, boxer-briefs and g-strings. There were low cut briefs and hi-cut bikini's. There was lace and satin and ewww! polyester. Underwear in every shade and pattern. Black, pink, green, yellow (YELLOW?), red, floral, geometrics, cutesy prints, and even character sets (think underoos for grownups... which just begs the question, why???). And the sizing. Does underwear need to come in petites and talls? Because, I really don't think it does.

I stood there and did not know where to begin my search. All I wanted, call me boring, was some plain old white cotton bikini underwear. Not red, yellow, green, blue or even black and definitely no prints of any kind. Where was it hiding in this literal sea of bloomers? I started in the middle of the wall, not sure why, but realized I was getting confused and couldn't remember if I had looked at that particular floral pink pair of bikini style before or was that in the hi-cut low rise hiphugger? So I moved all the way down to one end and started over. Every so often I would get all excited because I'd see packages of all white cotton only to have my hopes dashed when I realized they were granny panties. When I arrived at the end of the wall of bloomers I still had buttkis. I slunk out of there with a package of three white cotton bikinis and three black. Not too bad, but not exactly what I wanted. Hmmmmm, maybe I should go back and stock up on them in case they become further endangered? I mean, I know it's not exactly what I wanted but what if they nix the white ones from the package altogether and I'm left with just black? What will I wear under my khaki's or whites? I think I may have to. At the very least it'll guarantee I won't have to shop for underwear for a while.

pizza for dessert

My sister thanked us for watching her little guy this afternoon with dessert. Ice cream pizza. The kids couldn't wait to finish dinner and dig in. Neither could I. It came packaged in an authentic pizza box and looked absolutely delectable. So I sliced it and we dug in. Sam, my picky eater, decided he'd rather not, so it was just us girls.


Teresa sighed deeply after each bite. It was just that yummy.
Katie started at the top and worked her way down to the brownie crust, savoring every morsel of chocolate, each m&m and the fudge topping.
This was what Kate's slice looked like when she declared she was stuffed. She truly is my girl. As a child, I was infamous for licking the topping off my desserts and then proclaiming I was full. My brothers and sisters never miss an opportunity to remind me of this.
When she was about halfway through, Teresa dreamily pronounced "I am in LOVE!"
She stated my thoughts exactly.

Guess what we went and did?

Meet Benjamin Baadaabooty


Disclaimer: I in no way, shape or form, had any input on this little guys name. Teresa came up with his first name and Katie inisted on the Baadaabooty. She is such a fruitcake...but it has a certain ring to it, don't ya think?