Luck of the Irish

For any die-hard fans left (I think maybe even my parents jumped ship after this 3 month absence...) hoping I'd post on the blog, today is your lucky day!  As I've written before, I gave up on letting the blog stress me out, and I don't have any expectations for myself in terms of when or how often I post.  I'd pretty much given up on things since we don't have a lot of renovations going on (or even left to do - yay!) and I wasn't sure if I wanted to totally change the blog topic.  I also - on a kick of reading about saints and their writings - wasn't sure that the only written documentation I wanted to create was about the purely material things like what color we painted rooms!

Then, last night, I happened to click over and read my old posts.  I had forgotten about so many things I talked about, and I loved being drawn into different moments in our life - finding out Anna was a girl, waiting for her to be born, reflecting on life with a newborn.  Although I've been decent (not great) at keeping her photo album and baby book updated, there were little things I remembered last night that I would have completely forgotten if it hadn't been for the blog.  So, I decided that I want to post little things (perhaps frequently, perhaps not) - if for no other reason than to remember them ourselves.

Given the aforementioned lack of ongoing renovation (although I am currently painting the yucky basement stairwell!), there may not be a lot of "finding former glory" in terms of the house, but I feel that in some way we're still "finding former glory" of authentic, simple family life.  Our culture is too busy and in so many sad cases, too broken to enjoy the simple celebrations together with family.  The modern world devalues the traditional family - and I don't just mean a political argument.  It's not "cool" to enjoy hanging out with your family.  Justin and I are intentionally trying to build a home that bucks that culture, so that our kids grow up enjoying joys here at home that satisfy them in ways that prevents them seeking fulfillment in the world's empty promises.  This doesn't mean to say we want to isolate ourselves from the world - just build a strong foundation that borrows the good things from our culture and resists the negative.  Granted, we certainly don't have it all together.  That's why we're still finding former glory - haven't reached it yet.

This weekend, my family visited from Pennsylvania, and we decided to have a St. Patrick's Day party!  In addition to my parents & siblings, my aunt & cousins drove up for the day.  We all sported as much green as we could find, and I made an Irish-inspired meal with a roast, cabbage mashed potatoes, carrots, and salad - and green lemonade!  My mom brought shamrocks for everyone to wear, and made delicious Irish soda bread.  Pandora radio (and my brother's talent on the recorder) provided the Irish jigs.