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.

Hope you can open this

Max and Papi talking about Boola in Flagstaff. Filmed with my new Palm Centro phone.

Theology of the Body: Max's Song

I wrote a song this morning for my son, Max.

I wanted to express the idea that he is an unmitigated blessing to our family and that he is the result of our fruitful love. He's an absolute delight and everybody's favorite. The first two verses are sung to him as if he still in the womb. Verse three is after he's been born.

The "crying and the laughter" mentioned in the second verse is a reference to this. Olivia ("Ala" to Max) has since gotten over the fact that he's not a girl and Joseph is still especially fond of him because sisters can be wearying.

I'll put up a recording here once I figure out how to do it.

Max's Song

Verse 1:
Baby, do you know
That you are something special?
Even if you don’t,
I’m here to tell you truly,
That you are being waited
for with eagerness and joy,
The long anticipated
baby brother for our boy.

Chorus:
You were made by Love,
Conceived in love,
You were made for love,
We love you, Boy

You were made by Love,
Made for love,
And we welcome you with joy.

Verse 2:

Baby, can you hear
The crying and the laughter?
Just wait till you appear—
It’s silence you’ll be after.
The home you’re coming into
Is filled with kids and toys,
It’ll take some getting used to
Though, especially the noise.

Chorus

Verse 3:
Baby, can you see
Now that we’re together,
Now that you are here we
All love a little better?
You’re bringing out the best in us
It’s such a great surprise
To see our family’s happiness
Increase before our eyes.

Chorus

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

One Wild Place...

The Chesterton quotation I have in my header says:

For a plain, hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.

This afternoon, Chesterton was proven right yet again.

I came in from my office to get a glass of water and I spied my little Olivia talking to her mother in the hallway. From the waist up Liva was the pretty Catholic school girl I had just brought home from Kindergarten; from the waist down she looked like Eve shortly after the Fall of Man.

Why are you in your underwear?
Because.
Because what?
Because we're having an underwear picnic on the trampoline.
Ah. Of course.

Milady tells me that's also the reason the baby was diaperless and crying when I came in. Thank God we don't live where they actually have Winters...

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...

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous...

The Drapeau Men's Family Revue

Kids' Saint's Day Speeches

Every year, in lieu of a Halloween celebration at the school, our kids have a saint's day celebration. All the kids in the school research a saint and then give a short presentation about that saint's life dressed as the saint they've chosen.

The quality of the video is not that good, but I posted them fast, so no complaints.

This year, we had the following saints:

Olivia, as St. Clare of Assisi



Joseph, as St. Jude Thaddeus



Sophia, as St. Colette



For good measure, we also have Max as St. Luke (Skywalker)

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.

Domestic Safari Update

I don't have time for a long field report today. (Actually, I never have time...) I just thought I'd share a few things that struck me as funny/telling about my kids.

First, my son Joseph is on a "little league" soccer team called the Knights. This, however, is not the name he and his friend Petey lobbied for. They wanted "The Bloodsuckers". I think that's a terrifying name for a soccer team--what is this, professional wrestling? Can you imagine a horde of 7-8 year old boys screaming down the field in KISS make-up? It seriously scares the poo out of me.

Maybe they were playing off the homophony between soccer/sucker--if I go with that, does my boy sound a little more literate? Or maybe it was veiled protest against corporate team sponsorship? The back of their shirts might then read "The Bloodsuckers/Smith and Jones Accounting" or something like that...

Second, last night was, in my wife's words, "a little miracle". Why? Because the kids all played together in peace. The irony here is that their peaceful activity was creating and naming all sorts of Lego weapons. My daughter, sweet Sophia of the hook-hand dreams, was chirping out all kinds of horrific names for their creations:

Pursuit of Darkness
Day of Doom
Bloody Bud
Romeo

That last one gave me some hope that my kids weren't hopelessly morbid, but then I remembered that Romeo met his demise in a double suicide. Perhaps we should feed them Quaker Oats in hopes that they'll develop pacifist tendencies.

On a happier note, when I told Olivia that she could make other things besides weapons with her Legos, she lovingly told me that she'd make me a flower once she was finished with her "space guns".

I should probably read this again. Which, by the way, is a post that was commented upon by somebody in New Zealand. (If you're still visiting, we should arrange a house-swap vacation or something. I live near the biggest hole in the world and you live near Hobbits...)

In my next field report I'll write about the new self-defense courses my son Max (9 months old tomorrow) is offering his siblings and I might also discuss the new class I'm offering at our parish, Monday School.

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.

Here is everybody's favorite little guy, Macky. He's so cute, it isn't fair to other boys his age.