Doodle Acres

My daughter, Hope, and I returned last night from a whirl-wind trip to beautiful Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the F-C Learning Conference.   We headed out Friday morning and arrived at our hotel about three hours before the Family Picnic at a local park.  After taking a quick tour of the area, we arrived about 10 minutes early at the park.  For those of you that know me in real life, you know that I am an early bird.  What a thrill it was to have Michele Quigley, the organizer of this extraordinary conference, pull up in her SUV and give me a great big hug!!!  Meeting Michele after getting to “know” her on-line was such a thrill!!!

Michele and I

Maggie Quigley blowing bubbles - it was quite a test of my poor photographic skills to finally capture a bubble on film 

Other thrills included meeting some of the bloggers that I “know” through their blogs.  However, I came home and added some new blogs to my Bloglines subscriptions after having met those bloggers in person.   Here are some more picnic pictures:

Margaret (Minnesota mom) and Maryellen (Tales from the Bonny Blue House)

Michele and Tim Quigley

Michele with a beautiful St. Anne’s chaplet (made by Kimberlee of Beads of Mercy), given to her by Alice Gunther (Cottage Blessings)

Margaret, Karen Edmisten (Karen Edmisten), Meredith (Sweetness and Light), and Diane (Journey of a Mother’s Heart)

The next morning we arrived early (of course!!!) at the Liberty Place Conference Center for an inspiring day of talks.  The day just flew by as I participated in the opening mass, listened to so much wisdom, shopped at the vendor tables, visited with old and new friends, and of course ATE!!! 

Maryellen (one of the wonderful speakers) with her very best friend, Chris Volpe (and my friend IRL)

Alice Gunther (Cottage Blessings and featured speaker), Meredith (another of the gifted speakers) , and Kimberlee (Pondered in My Heart and Beads of Mercy)

Hope and I

Sweet Erica Sanchez from CA - not a blogger YET!!!

So at 8 p.m. we hit the road to head back to Long Island.  We arrived home at midnight after experiencing heavy traffic in NYC, stopping at a most hideous gas station bathroom (I didn’t take a picture of that!!! Ugh!!!), and listening to the Mets lose a heart-breaking game in 14 innings.  But most of all, Hope and I arrived home happy that we had gone and looking forward to our next trip to PA to visit the Quigleys and next year’s Family-Centered Learning Conference (hint, hint, Michele!!! ;)).

We took a wonderful trip with some friends to the Bronx Zoo last month.  My husband is an avid amateur photographer and boy, does he take some terrific pictures.  His zoo pictures over the last few years have been just stunning and this year’s do not disappoint.  You can view a slide show at Flickr.  Here are just a few of my favorites.

Yesterday morning we were all set to leave from our Vermont paradise at Lake Dunmore.  We had kissed my parents good-bye, packed ALL OUR STUFF into my husband’s Expedition, complete with two carriers (one on top and one on the hitch), and stuffed two adults, four children, and five dogs into their assigned places.  And wouldn’t you know it - THE BATTERY DIED!!!  Well thank you Jesus for jumper cables and my father’s van battery.  We were on our way (although reluctantly) in a little over ten minutes.  Our trip home went very smoothly and while it was hard to leave Vermont, I must admit that it’s good to be home!!!

This morning we had the privilege of worshiping at St. Mary’s in Middlebury, VT.  And what makes participating in the mass at a parish other than our own so special?  It’s the continuity.    I love that going to one Novus Ordum mass is much like going to another.  And while we usually attend the Extraordinary form of the Mass (Traditional Latin Mass) back home, it is so comforting to know that we can find the mass (in some form - NO or TLM) just about anywhere we go, even in Protestant-dominated Vermont.  God is good!!!

During our recent car trip to Vermont, we listened to Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit.  My children enjoyed the ill-fated, although humorous wishes of the children in the story.  At one point, as the car ride seemed to be dragging, Hope (15) declared that if she had a sand fairy that granted wishes, she’d be wishing that we (including our Expedition full of stuff) were home right now!!!  Now that would have been a wish worth having!!!

I get wanderlust just looking at this map!!!

create your own visited states map

HT: Mary Ellen

One of the highlights of our road-trips is the books on tape/CD that we listen to to pass the time.  For this past trip, I didn’t do much preparation.  I just stood in front of the shelf at the library and picked out a few that looked interesting.  This method has had mixed success in the past as I have a problem with the way that “magic” is used in many books.  In my humble opinion, psychic powers are not God-given and should not be used by the hero in a book.  If you want to make the bad guys psychic, I can live with that.  But I digress…  This trips selections were Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, and 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.

We started with Chasing Vermeer.  It is a mystery story centered around a Vermeer painting.  It was so promising and yet so disappointing!!!  Great story possibilities but they insisted on including a psychic painting, a hero who used Pentaminos like a fortuneteller uses tarot cards, and the apparent worship of numbers (this last element was minor which I might have been willing to overlook if not for the other negative elements).  What was so disappointing was that this would have been a terrific story without these occult devices.  We did persevere and listen to the whole book because it was a mystery and we were interested in the ending.  However, we had extensive conversations about what was wrong with this book!!!

Next we tried Harriet the Spy.  We made it through about 1/4 of the first tape before we just plain gave up on it!!!  Ugh!!!

Finally we put in 101 Dalmatians.  This is the book on which the Disney movies are based.  It was super!!!  It was more complex than the Disney movie and we really enjoyed it.  This one I would highly recommend!!!

Given the dreadful lack of success we had with my book selections, Julie lent us some of her books on CD to listen to on the way home.  We listened to The Last Viking about St. Magnus of 12th Century Scotland and To Heaven Through a Window about St. Gerard of Italy.  Both were terrific, if not what I expected.  They are dramatizations of each of the saints lives but there is no attempt to use the accents or language of the time periods.  However this being said, the stories were wonderful and well worth listening to!!!  Thanks Julie!!!

If you have any recommendations, I’d love to hear them.  Our late February/early March road-trip will be here before we know it!!!

Well our final morning in Wisconsin was certainly eventful. It started at 7 a.m. This was the first morning that everyone adjusted to the time change and of course, it was the one morning I had to wake everyone up!!! LOL My three oldest children and I headed out the door to All Saints Day mass at the local parish. It was very nice. The priest reminded us of the many saints there are to emulate. He also explained the difference between All Saints and All Souls days - something I had been wondering.

Then we returned to find a beautiful brunch awaiting us - complete with stuffed french toast (they call it “Joan of Arc” french toast), sausage, orange juice, and fresh fruit served on china and in crystal.

Julie had prepared gift bags for each of us with special treats!!!

Julie is such a wonderful hostess. I learned a lot about hospitality from this sweet lady. We ate like kings and queens. She whipped up treat after treat and we never went hungry!!! Her ability to cook and bake for twelve children and three adults was truly awesome. She has inspired to improve in this area of hospitality.

Finally it was time to say good-bye and hit the road. Unfortunately, one of my tires was nearly flat. Fortunately, Julie has a compressor and we were on our way in a few short minutes.

We were on the road for the rest of Thursday, spending the night at a Comfort Inn in Ohio. By Friday at 4:30 p.m., we pulled up to our Home Sweet Home. My hubby worked from home that afternoon and we were all happy to see his wonderful smile upon our return.

Here are some pictures taken on the field next to their home:

The second day of our journey went very smoothly. After a 10 hour trip from Long Island to Michigan, the 6 hour trip from Michigan to Wisconsin seemed like a breeze!!! We arrived at Julie’s house and saw eight little heads peeking out of the various locations to survey their new house guests.

This trip was really a leap of faith for all involved. Julie and I “met” about a year ago on a Yahoo group called “Magnum Opus” for large Catholic families. We have enjoyed sharing our lives through that group, our blogs and email. However, meeting in real life (and spending four days in the same house with someone) is quite another matter. As an aside, Julie had someone tell her that I was probably coming to rob her and I had someone suggest that we were going to be their Halloween dinner!!! LOL But things couldn’t have gone better!!!

Julie and I were already friends but it didn’t take long for the children to become friends. They spent hours playing in the beautiful autumn weather with my children soaking in the rural surroundings of corn fields, hay bales, and chicken coops.

Chess was big hit with the older children. Lenny, the chess king in our family, enjoyed taking on opponent after opponent:

On Tuesday, we went to a corn maze with a tire playground, a great slide, and a corn bin:

On Wednesday we made our spoon saints:

And then had our All Saints Day costume party because we needed to leave at midday on Thursday (Lenny had a soccer game on Saturday morning at 9:30 - Praise God it didn’t get rained out. They played in the rain, winning 5-1 - Lenny scored two goals!!!).

These are Julie’s delicious cookies which are featured in Cay Gibson’s Christmas Mosaic:

Each night after saying the rosary (it touched my heart seeing the children praying together) and putting the children to bed, Julie and I enjoyed our time of uninterrupted conversation. What a joy this was - sharing our stories, our faith, our challenges, etc. God is indeed good and He demonstrated His goodness to us every day in so many ways!!!

More to come…