Happy Fother's Day

Below is a scan of the "Fother's Day" card Francesca gave to my grandfather (her Grand Pepere). How would you like to get a card like this one?

Everybody (except my grandfather and Francesca) thought this was hilarious.

Poor girl, she was just trying to be sweet.

Gemma's Birthday

Here is what we're doing about overpopulation.



Once again, my wife has borne me the world's most beautiful daughter.

Gemma Noelle Drapeau came into the world at 8:25 PM, December 10, 2009. She weighed 7 lbs, 6 oz and was 18" long. She is fantastico.

We named her after St. Gemma Galgani.

The Saintmakers

The kids at Boola and Pepere's house. Thanksgiving 2008.

One Little Indian

Every year at the kids' preschool there is a Thanksgiving "play" put on by the preschoolers. It's the same thing every year. All the kids are divide into groups and deliver lines every time their characters are mentioned.

The narrator tells the story of the first Thanksgiving: there's a preacher ("Praise the Lord!"), pilgrim men ("Ahunting we will go!"), Indian men ("Brave and strong!"), turkeys ("Gobble, gobble, gobble!"), and pilgrim women ("Oh, my goodness!").

This year, our Francesca (nee' Annamaria Francesca) was spectacularly miscast as one of the Indian women concerned with keeping things quiet around their sleeping children ("Shhh! Baby sleeping!").

Cute and cuddly she is, but she couldn't sneak up on a buffalo to save her life.

BTW, the kid is much cuter than the picture.

Look Who's Four!

Annamaria Francesca turned four last Saturday! Hooray for Kecka!

Smithlings

My two college roommates and I meet once a month for a group we call the Innocence Smiths (named after a Chesterton character, Innocent Smith, from Manalive, which you are commanded to read).

Last Sunday, we got our families together. We thought we'd call it a Smithlings meeting.

Here are some pictures from that event.

Easter Break in Mexico

Easter Photos

Our Recent Trip to the Zoo

My cousin Andy and his family came down from Denver to visit over the holidays. We loaded up our 5 kids and his 6 kids and went down to the zoo. Next time we'll have to remember to bring passports because the park rangers almost didn't let us out with some of the more wild kids...

New Pics of Kids

Our friend Alishia took some pictures of our family this weekend. I like this one of the two brothers. If you follow the link below you should be able to get to the others.

by alishialinn
 © All rights reserved

Just follow this link to see the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alishiahanson/sets/72157602590972643/

(If the link doesn't work, try copying and pasting it from this email into your browser's address bar.)

The Pitter Patter of Tiny Feasts

One of the best things about being a Catholic is that there's always a reason to celebrate. This week alone our family will be celebrating 3 special feast days. Today is the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux. This day is special to our Olivia Therese and she's loving living it up. Tomorrow is the feast of guardian angels, which we all have (Sophia claims she has two) and Thursday is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi--one of Annamaria Francesca's patron saints.

There are a million ways we can honor our saints and reflect on their good examples. Today we let Olivia eat off of our "You Are Special" plate and Amy made a crumb cake; tomorrow we might have angel food cake; Thursday we're eating Italian and the kids are stripping of all their clothes in public like St. Francis.

Another good thing is that we have the kids' saints to back us up on discipline/family issues. For example:

"Olivia! Do you think St. Therese ate with her fingers??"

"Sophia, why can't you be more like St. Clare and embrace poverty and fashion-backwardness?"

"Joseph! There's no way the foster father of our Lord would condone hitting girls."

"Annamaria! Seriously, kid, there's no way Mamma Mary was this stubborn."

At the moment, Max (named after Maximilan Kolbe) is perfect and, like his patron, dotes on his mother. Eventually though he'll need to be punished and then we'll let him know that his patron was martyred in prison so "Time Out" is really an opportunity to emulate his role model.

Anyway, find out who your saints are and then make a big deal about it. We do it and we love it.

Annamaria Turned 3!

Annamaria's 3rd Birthday

Click on the picture of Annamaria above to see more pix.

Ah, three years old, that magical age. I find it odd that all my children go through what I like to call "a Jurassic Park" phase. Remember the cute little dinosaurs that suddenly eat the fat guy? That's kinda how my kids are when they hit three. It goes away, but Joseph has a few scars from Annamaria that might not...

If you need reminding:

Some Pictures from Pinewood, AZ

Amy and the kids are on vacation in Pinewood/Munds Park, AZ just a few miles outside of Flagstaff. I'm mooching bandwidth from a neighbor to work remotely. So far, we're tired.

Olivia and I went for a picture walk today and snapped photos of anything that caught our fancies. She was really cute about the whole thing, but still has a long way to go...

We picked up Joseph and Sophia from drama camp and Joseph got jealous of Olivia with the camera. He took it upon himself to make things right and relieved his sister of the camera so he could take some pix himself. Both of their work is represented in the slideshow, as is mine.

I like photography. I think I'm pretty good, too, but there's a lot to learn to be great and I don't want to make that investment. If, however, a reader wishes to purchase a wide angle lens for my Canon Digital Rebel that reader would be heartily thanked...

Sophia got a main part in the play. She's Baghera in Jungle Book. Joseph has been cast as an elephant, but he wanted to be a monkey. I told him it wouldn't be acting if he was cast as a monkey

God is good.

Annamaria Francesca

 
 

So, here's our version of Marilyn Monroe just hanging out.