A basketball kind of weekend!

The PECSAA (Piedmont Elementary Catholic Schools Athletic Association)  tournament was this weekend. 

We had a game Friday night and we won!  Then we played Saturday and lost against the team that ultimately won the tournament.  And then we played Sunday and won which means we came in third!

It was a great weekend of basketball and now that the PECSAA tournament is over we have practices this week and then on Friday we head to Charlotte for the Shamrock Tournament!

Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

And a picture of the team with the 3rd place trophy!

Did you guys hear??

Of course you did but I would be remiss if I didn't write about it for my little family scrapbook!

Sunday was Super Bowl LI (51) and the New England Patriots were playing the Atlanta Falcons.

All week long Dan kept hearing all the predictions about how the Pats were going to cream the Falcons.  And the more predictions he heard like this the more worried he got.  Because even though my husband is a devout Catholic, a God-fearing man, and just completely full of logic and reason, he believes in Jinxes.

So he began to fret and start to talk about how the Patriots were going to lose.  (He also thinks that if he talks about how they are going to win, they will also be jinxed as well. Silly, right?)

Because the Patriots were playing, we didn't have anyone other than my brother over to watch.  And Brad knows the rules - minimal talking during the game. 

I made my delicious pepper jack pimento cheese toasts, chips and queso and meatballs.

The game did not go as we had hoped.  The first 3 quarters were extremely hard to watch.  Dan was sullen during most of the three quarters but Peter was doing his best to be positive using the logic that the Falcons scored all their points in one quarter so there was no reason the Patriots couldn't do the same!

And, well, you all know how that turned out!  A neighbor behind us even set off fireworks after the game so we went outside and yelled like a bunch of rednecks!

While I am very glad with the outcome, I do feel like the NFL needs to change their OT rules.  I think they just need to play a whole extra quarter - otherwise, just toss the coin and call the winner of the coin toss the winner of the game.  But that's just my two cents.

Now all that's left to do is find Tom Brady's jersey!


When my brother is in charge of the camera, there will be a lot of outtakes!

Dan's brother who still lives in Massachusetts sent us these cool shirts. Aren't we cute?? 

CSW - It's a wrap!

The rest of Catholic Schools week went well.

Thursday was the annual 8th grade class versus Parents and Teachers.  It was a lot of fun to watch.  The 8th graders won the game and no one had a heart attack or got injured on the parent's team!

Here's a little video:

One other nice thing our school does during CSW are prayer wreaths.  Each class has a wreath that hangs on the door and each student decorates the outside of a card and writes a prayer intention on that card.  They are reminded to pray for their intentions and their classmates intentions each time they walk through the door.  The wreaths are beautiful to look at and the prayers on the inside are equally beautiful and always heartfelt. 

Here are the wreaths from the 7th and 8th grade:

This year the school also did spiritual bouquets.  Each student was asked to pray during the week for our area priests and keep track of how many prayers they said.  At the end of the week, letters were sent to the priests telling them how many prayers were said by our students on their behalf.  I thought this was such a thoughtful thing!

Our school also does a service project every year for CSW.  This year we collected newborn diapers and wipes for Birthright.  We collected a large amount of them and they were delivered today.  Birthright was very happy and thankful to be able to continue to support women with unplanned pregnancies with these diapers and wipes!

And with that, CSW is a wrap!

I love our little school.  I am thankful we are able to send our kids to Our Lady of Mercy.  I know their minds are being challenged and their souls are being nourished! 

Catholic Schools Week continues!

Catholic Schools Week is rolling right along at Our Lady of Mercy!

Tuesday was Student Appreciation Day.  It was a free dress down day for all the kids and the PTO supplied a pizza lunch for everyone.

In the morning, the Mad Scientist came to school and had four very fun stations for the lower school kids to rotate through.  I think they had a lot of fun!  At least every time I went by the gym there was lots of laughing and clapping and learning!

And the upper school kids went bowling after lunch.  I think they had fun too!





Wednesday we hosted a Pastries with Parents and invited all the parents to stop in for coffee and pastry after drop-off and then our school hosted an Open House.

This afternoon is the annual 8th Grader vs. Parents basketball game!  I will be watching but not participating.  I'm a bit of a party pooper that way!  :)  But I'm okay with that!

I hope you guys are all having a great week and if your kids are in Catholic school - a great CSW!

Catholic Schools Week - Our living/balloon rosary!

Happy Catholic Schools Week!

Our school kicked things off on Sunday night with a Taco/Bingo night.  We had a great turnout and I think everyone had fun.  I've got no photos to share but I can tell you the food was really good.  For the last two years, we've had it catered by the sweetest woman named Evelyn.  She works at a local grocery store chain that caters to the Hispanic population.

When you walk into this store, you feel like you are in another country.  It is really cool!  They source their produce locally and it's fresh and cheap.  And the food that they prepare in this store just looks and smells so good! In fact, they make their own tortillas fresh everyday.

So just take my word for it - the food that Evelyn prepared for us was delicious!

Yesterday we had a living/balloon rosary.  We've done the living rosary at our school for several years now but for the last two we've added the balloon portion which I think makes it really neat for the kids. If you are interested in directions on how we created our rosary, please click here.

The PTO spent the morning assembling the rosary and had it all ready by the afternoon:

The whole school assembles in the gym with the older kids taking a spot at each of the beads.

The older kids takes a turn leading each bead with the rest of the school following along.
At the end of the rosary, the entire school proceeds silently outside to the soccer field where the 8th grade releases the rosary to the heavens.

And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel's hand. - Revelation 8:4

And just like the smoke of the incense and our prayers, the rosary was released to the heavens....

Tuesday Funny

Remember yesterday how I mentioned that Sarah had made chocolate chip muffins from scratch and cleaned up everything?

Well, last night, after we got home form the basketball game, I noticed there was a rogue chocolate chip on the counter.  Hmmmmm...she must have missed this one, I thought to myself.

And then I did what I always do if there is a random bit of chocolate just hanging out - I popped it into my mouth.

But it wasn't a chocolate chip.  It was a .......

Asian Lady Beetle.

And for the record, it tasted nothing like chocolate.  It actually tasted very bitter and after I crunched into it, the beetle emitted a smell very similar to my other indoor nemesis - the stink bug!

My kids were relieved to learn that at least I didn't swallow it.  But they were even more disgusted when I told them that it was still moving after I spit it out.  

Lesson for the day - think twice before you eat anything that you find laying on my counter! 

It's Monday, so I got you some flowers....

Happy Monday, y'all!  It is cloudy and misty and a little dreary here (although warm so at least there's that!) so I bought these tulips this morning.  They have lifted my spirits and I smile whenever I walk past them.  Totally worth the $4.87 I spent on them.

Tulips are so simple and so pretty and honestly, one of my favorite flowers.  I especially love the white ones. 

This weekend Peter skipped his basketball game and he and Dan headed to Raven Knob with the Boy Scouts.  He earned his Geocaching Merit badge and it sounds like he had a good time.  Although it also sounds like we missed an exciting basketball game.  Peter's team won!

Peter had a boatload of homework this weekend and so did Sarah.  So after the trip he spent a lot of time working on his homework and a lot of time coplaining about having to work on his homework.

Sarah and I had lunch out on Saturday afternoon and ran a few errands.  It's always nice to get to spend time with my girl. 

On Sunday we had to record the Patriots game because Peter had Confirmation Class and we had to attend a parent meeting.  Before we left, I put some chili in the crock pot and when we got back we turned on the game, ate chili and enjoyed fast forwarding through the commercials.

That's a good way to watch the game but I had to avoid all social media and my phone in general to keep from finding out the score.  The Patriots won!  Sorry Billie Jo.  I hope we can still be friends!  ;)

We watched some of the Falcons/Packers game and it looks like the Falcons are going to be tough to beat but we are looking forward to the Super Bowl.  Although no party for us.  If you've been reading here for any length of time, you know my husband's rule - if the Patriots are playing in THE BIG GAME, he will not be attending a party.  He says he can't watch the game with a bunch of people around.  Which is fine with me.  Sometimes, sitting at home with the family and a giant bowl of Queso is exactly what I want to be doing.  :) 

Sarah made a big batch of chocolate chip mini muffins from scratch last night AND - the best part of all?  She cleaned up all the dishes afterwards. They were really yummy but now they are in the kitchen calling my name.  But, too many carbs so I've got to stay away from them!


Sarah has Girl Scouts tonight and Peter has a basketball game so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the homework load is light tonight. 

And that's all I've got for you today - except a couple of loads of laundry if you want to come over and help me fold!

Words of wisdom by Chip and Jojo.

You guys know I love me some Chip and Joanne.  However, I am woefully behind on my Fixer Upper viewing.  But since HGTV replays all their episodes ad nauseam, I will be able to get caught up in no time.  And I do have On Demand but I save my time-home-alone-watching-On-Demand for The Bachelor and This Is Us.  Priorities, am I right?

Anyway, I did not call you here to discuss my television viewing habits.  I called you here to discuss Chip and Jo.  As you probably know, a few weeks ago, a BuzzFeed article slammed the pastor of the church Chip and Jojo attend because he preached against homosexuality and gay marriage.  And then the article mentioned that a gay couple has never been featured on Fixer Upper.  Sounds like someone is just trying to stir the pot and get my BFF's riled up.

BUT!

My besties were not having it!  This is Chip's response taken from his blog.  I'm sure you've already read it, but if not, please read it.  This is just even more reason to love the Gaines family. 

Also, I recently signed up to receive a daily devotion from Joanna that is based on Psalm 62.  As I was reading the devotion this morning, this stuck out to me:

"..our prayers will become more powerful when our hope is placed in God rather than the answered prayer itself." 

Y'all!  That 's a lot to chew on.

We have to put all of our hope in God - trusting and knowing that he will answer our prayers in His timing, and in His way.  That can be a hard pill to swallow because I think most of us think we know what's best.

But if we put our hope in Him and not the answer (that we want) even we we don't get our way, we can rest in the knowledge that whatever does come will ultimately be the best thing for us.

"May your hope come solely from Him."

Happy Weekend, y'all!

And Go Patriots!!

Tuesday!!

The nice thing about a long weekend (other than the fact that it's long!) is that today is already Tuesday! 

We had a full weekend.  Friday night was the 7th and 8th grade Winter Dance.  I helped the other 8th grade moms set up for the dance on Friday afternoon.  It was an easy set up because the theme was simple - Winter Wonderland. 

One of the moms comes from a family of florists so she brought these three beatuiful flocked fir trees that had lights on them.  We hung twinkle lights from the ceiling and we had silvery white spray painted branches in vases.  The vases were filled with silver, gold, and white Christmas balls and snowflakes were hanging from the branches.  And one of the walls was covered with paper snowflakes that another mother had made.  Each of these snowflakes was absolutely beautiful and each one was totally different than the other. 

And of course I failed to get pictures but the cafeteria looked really nice when we got done.  And I love working with this group of ladies.

Here are my kids before the dance:

They always want to do a goofy one for fun.  Look at Sarah's face!  HA!

After I dropped them off at the dance, I waited for Dan.  He had to work late but he finally got there and off to dinner we went.  I wanted to try a new restaurant.  We arrived there at 7:35 and there were only a few cars in the parking lot.  NOPE!  (I later did a little more research on the restaurant and learned that they only have one seating per night and it's by reservation only and the 5 course menu changes nightly.  So, if I really want to experience this restaurant, it will probably require a little more planning on my part!)

So we headed downtown to try another restaurant we had never been to. The wait was 30 minutes so we headed to the bar to get a drink.  It was a restaurant and WINE bar so they only thing they served at the bar was wine and cocktails.  NOPE!  (And I'm sure they had a few bottled beers, but I didn't see any and I really didn't want to be standing around a pretentious wine bar with a glass of beer looking like the redneck girl that I really am!)

So we headed to restaurant number three which was also packed but we waited and had a really good dinner.  And by the time it was all said and done, it was time to pick up the kids.

They had a great time.  Sarah danced with a boy (her friend Oscar) and Peter was happy to report that he danced with NO girls.

Saturday morning found us headed to a basketball game.  The boys won and every single boy on the team scored!  I love this team that Peter is on.  (Every time the second string scored, the first string boys cheered and hooted and high-fived.  It was so sweet to see.  Especially when one of the boys on the team who has never played basketball before this year scored a basket.  They were all genuinely happy for him!)

Saturday night we watched the Patriots play.  They won but it wasn't pretty.  I think all the hype about how badly they were going to beat the Texans got into their heads. But they won so - whew!

Sunday was Mass and lunch with my family and Dan had a Boy Scout Committee meeting and then it was Monday.  We slept late and then moved a bunch of stuff from the bonus room to the basement and actually took quite a few things to Goodwill.  There's still a lot of work to be done up there and down in the basement but - babysteps!

And with that, it's TUESDAY and time for me to head to the grocery store.  And laundry - there's always laundry!

Enjoy your short week!