Weekly Prompt Writing

From tonight's meeting.

Sebastian walked into the den to see the TV screen displaying a shot of...wait, what?

"Uh, Tony, what is that?"

Antonio looked up from the couch, on which he was lounging, the TV remote in one hand and a bowl of chips in the other. "Oh, just my project for literature. Nathan and I are making a retelling of Hamlet with Legos."

"And which scene is this?" Sebastian asked, eyeing the paused shot of a Lego robot holding a teddy-bear and staring into the water at a reflection of a human.

"It's the 'to be or not to be' monologue, obviously," Antonio said, tossing a chip in the direction Sebastian's face. "He's looking into the water, contemplating drowning himself. He sees his reflection as the man he hopes to be...or maybe the ghost of his father."

Sebastian dropped into the couch beside his cousin. "Wow, that's strangely profound." In his head he added, why the teddy bear?

This time Antonio handed him a chip. "Thanks. I thought up the frames and Nathan put together the stop-motion." He clicked play on the remote and they watched the Lego mime a stirring speech. "We'll have to talk over it," Antonio explained. "We don't have the equipment to add voice-overs."

The reel ended. Sebastian grabbed a handful of chips from the bowl and trotted upstairs to escape his cousin's geeky weirdness.

Thomas Graduates from College!

A happy occasion for all, with the added bonus of beautiful weather!

The fam minus Claudia and Isabel, plus Grandma and John Michael.

His cap had two tassels for his double-major!

I got an action shot of him shaking hands with the president of SDSU.

And Dad, processing out in his academic robes.

Some other photos I forgot to post

First of all, Thomas turned 21 on the 16th, which I feel horrible for not having posted about before! We were really busy that day so I guess that's my excuse.

On Sunday some friends were up here so we went out for breakfast with them after Mass. It was fun (and yummy)!

And, of course, the March for Life was yesterday. I wish I could have gone! A lot of people I knew were going. I just prayed for the marchers and for life during Adoration instead. 

As Chesterton put it,

All the Holy Innocents, pray for us from your spot in Heaven, closer than you ever could have been to God here on Earth!

The new year, etc.

We've been one busy family lately. Now that the house is once again empty, I can find the time to tell you about it. 

On New Year's Eve, Claudia decided she wanted to watch all the Lord of the Rings movies in one day. We have the extended versions, so each movie is on two discs. Which makes for a grand total of approximately 11 hours of Lord of the Rings. Hoofta. Well, we did it, though we didn't manage to get through all seven endings of Return of the King before it had been 2015 for about 20 minutes. 

On New Year's Day we went to the Gerdes' house for dinner, and a lot of other people were there too. It was lots of fun and LOTS of food. To end the night we had an in-car dance party to my iPod music while driving back up the Brookings.

On Saturday Claudia left so Patrick, Tessie and I accompanied her to Sioux Falls and had Vietnamese food for lunch. Then this morning Isabel left for her college J-term and Patrick flew back to Chicago  in the evening. It's very quiet now...not even Thomas is here. He's at the SEEK conference in Nashville. Tessie and I had a homework-ful evening while mom and dad took Patrick to the airport. 

The holidays were amazingly fun, as usual. Next year I hope we have a house to make it even better! 

Quiz Bowls

Once again it's quiz bowl season! "What is a quiz bowl?" you may be wondering. Wonder no more.
A quiz bowl is a general knowledge tournament in which teams of four students compete by answering questions covering all sorts of topics. The teams are made up of people from a particular school (or, in our case, homeschool group). Each team has 20 seconds to collaborate and come up with an answer for their question. If they get it right they receive a point, otherwise the other team has a chance to answer the question. It may sound boring and academic, but really it's loads of fun.
We had the first high school quiz bowl of the year on Tuesday. My team got seventh place, another of our teams got third, and the third team got tenth. Our coach always makes sure to organize the teams so we work well together and each person has a different strong point in knowledge. There was one question about the 17th amendment this time that I knew because Thomas had told me about the day before, just in casual conversation! There are all sorts of random topics in quiz bowls, which makes it more interesting than if it were just math, science, grammar, and history.

That's about all I have to say about it  right now...we don't have another quiz bowl until November.

October 1, 2014

This morning I came downstairs to this:

Aren't I lucky? 

I just happened to pick a really awesome confirmation saint...

And the roses are one of my favorite colors!

St. Therese of Lisieux, pray for us. 

Thanks, Mom and Thomas!