Spring Break

I didn't intend to give the kids a formal Spring Break, since I knew we'd end up missing a lot of school days this month due to company and my running around. But Matt took some time off, which is wonderful, and I'm just not motivated to stick to our school schedule when he's home. I'd much rather work on projects around the house and spend hours just talking with him! As a result, we've accomplished a lot around the house, but the kids aren't any better educated for it. ;) 'A' spent the last week on a service project in Czech, building a playground at a school. He had a fantastic time and came home really spiritually motivated. He really connected with the man who went as the speaker to the teens, and it's been fun to listen as he shares about their conversations.

Matt and I took advantage of having one less body in the way and, in a moment of supreme insanity, decided to rearrange most of the rooms in the house. Only the kitchen and dining room were left unmolested! Matt drove his mom to the airport Monday morning and that afternoon we began our attempt to permanently damage our bodies with extreme physical labor. (We've eliminated "moving man" from our list of possible second careers.) Our house has three livable floors and an attic for storage. The top floor has three bedrooms and a bath; the main floor has a half-bath, living room, dining room and kitchen; the basement has an enormous room we'd divided with schranks into a bedroom for 'A' and storage, a tiny laundry room, another room we used for the younger boys' room, a school room/sewing room, and a bathroom. By the time we were done we'd moved 'A' from the basement to 'K's room, moved all three girls into our room, moved 'J' and 'M' into the girls' old room and moved ourselves into the school room in the basement. The boys' old room has become the sewing room/library. (We've got to have a place to put all these books!!!), and 'A's old room has become the play room. When we realized we were still capable of small muscle movement without much discomfort, we knew we still had work to do, so we moved the entertainment center/tv into the play room and painted the long living room wall a beautiful, deep red. Friday night will be family movie night; other than that the tv doesn't go on. No movies, no games. Just sad, slightly confused children, whose imaginations need to be stimulated again. ;) I've been pushing to axe the tv for years, so I'm thrilled with the new direction! Now the living room is a quiet room people read and play games in. And we have a our own quiet place to retreat to in the basement. Far, far away from young voices (and ears). Today we'll be shopping for a German schrank to place against our beautiful red wall.

Sunday was our Priest's last Mass with us. I was asked to make two cakes for 100 people for both his last Sunday and an award ceremony for him on Monday. (Side note on the roses- Being the far-sighted planner that I am, I decided to try to learn how to make frosting roses as I was decorating the cake. Youtube has several videos demonstrations posted, so I sat at the computer with a flower nail and pastry bag and tried to copy the experts. Some of my roses actually looked like roses, but others looked like "cabbages" according to my darling husband. The next day, Matt asked if he could play with my left over frosting and tips and sat down to give it a try. I should add here that he comes from a long line of accomplished artists. His great, great grandfather's paintings are sold at Southeby's, and both his maternal grandparents were phenomenal painters. That being said, I should have come up with some story about how the pastry bags are specially fitted to my hands and won't fit me any more if someone else uses them. But no...I said "Sure, honey!" Silly me. After his very first attempt I knew I'd been outdone. He sat there turning out and eating perfect rose after perfect rose, saying "This is fun!" around mouthfuls of frosting. I guess I have a new decorator now!) So, I spend a small fortune and invested in a full-sheet cake pan. A full-sheet cake is huge. HUGE!! I wouldn't fit in anyone's oven, so I took it to the chapel where there's an industrial size oven. An industrial size oven with a faulty thermostat. It took an hour and a half for the cake to finish baking, and I had to cut the top off because it was so dark and dry. Fortunately several of the wonderful ladies in our congregation were willing to make cupcakes for Sunday and additional cakes for Monday, so I only had to make one full-sheet and cut it in half for both cakes. Sunday's cake was wonderful, but Monday's half completely fell apart. I ended up with a ridiculous looking huge mess. So Monday morning I decided I was going to have to start all over, but not having a big enough oven, my plan had to change. I ended up throwing together a spice cake (16 & 12" rounds) with apple pie flavored filling, but I'd used all my powdered sugar making frosting for the cake that flopped. The store is closed on Monday, so Youtube (my new cake making friend) rescued me once again. I found a video on how to make Swiss Buttercream, which is made from granulated instead of powdered sugar. Oh, my gosh!!! Real buttercream is to die for!! Roll me over, dump a bucket of dirt on me, and stick a flower on top! It was all I could do to not stick my head into the bowl! I didn't have time to freeze the cakes before frosting, so it stayed really soft which is wonderful for eating, but impossible to really smooth. Father Mitch was awarded the Legion of Merit, so I tried to make the medal out of frosting.

Pope Benedict's older brother, Monsignor Ratzinger (Monsignor is a title of honor bestowed upon certain priests), came up for the ceremony. He's the most gentle, joyful, little old man. He looks just like Ernie, the Keebler elf! He loved my cake and asked if he could take a piece home with him! When I started to cut it, Father Mitch stopped me and said that Msr. Ratzinger wanted the the fourth of the cake that had the remaining medal on it, so he could share it with some of the other priests in Regensburg, so we sent him home with an enormous amount of cake.

I can't get the hang of the German cake filling, yet, but my German neighbor has offered to invite me over the next time she makes a cake. (I'm wondering if something didn't translate quite right when her daughter wrote out the recipe for me.) She makes absolutely delicious German-style cakes and I want to be able to add them to my repertoire.

I think that catches us up for the week. Life is as hectic and fun as usual; and we love it!

A jug of wine, the beautiful Rhine, and Thou, my love...

Matt and I had a wonderful 3-day getaway this week! His darling mother stayed with the kids and we headed West to the Rhine. In the almost 6 years total that we've lived over here we'd never seen the Rhine. Heard about it, seen photos of its castles and ruins, even enjoyed the occasional glass of wine grown on its steep banks, so a Rhine exploration trip was long overdue. We had a wonderfully, relaxing time hiking to and through castle ruins and meandering the halls of those that have been restored. Had either of us been camera savvy enough to think about changing the light meter to compensate for the cloudy weather, we would have ended up with far fewer blue photos. (I'm hoping Photoshop can fix our goof.) Our 19th Anniversary is coming up next month, so this was like an early celebration trip for us. The riverfront towns were beautiful to look at, but not all were worth exploring. Our favorite castle was the Marksburg, which has the distinction of being the only Medieval castle on the Rhine that was survived the Napoleonic and subsequent wars completely intact. Its setting, on the top of a hill overlooking the Rhine, is spectacular! The tour was in German, but with a guide book, a passable working knowledge of German, and a very expressive tour guide, we did just fine. One of our favorite parts of the tour was the explanation of the medieval punishment masks housed in the castle dungeon. This first one was used on people who were charged with exhibiting excessive pride. Because of the length of the mask and the weight of the iron ball hanging from the end, the person's head was pulled to the ground and they were made to crawl on the ground. Hence, the term "pig-headed". What fun it must have been to live during Medieval times! There was an iron mask with long, exaggerated ears for busybodies who listened in on other people's business, and a gossip mask with an iron bulb that fit in the mouth so the offender couldn't speak. What a hoot! Our hands-down favorite little town was the town of Bacharach (as in Burt). Narrow, cobblestoned streets lined with houses built in the 1300's. The 1300's!!! (Sorry about the blue!!) We found a fabulous little restaurant there that was run by a couple who had been married for 51 years. We ate dinner there two nights in a row and thoroughly enjoyed visiting with the wife. She shared a great soup thickening trick she uses to make an outstanding, simple vegetable soup. Yum!! Our god parents will be moving to this area later this year, and Matt and I are already planning the places we want to visit with them! We've found a couple of definite gems along the Rhine to share with them and can hardly wait!! :) They're going to love it over here! "Do you hear water?" "Yeah, I think it's coming from over there." "Huh. I wonder where this little path leads." "Hey, Babe, come check this out! I found the water!" "Back there?" "Come on! There's a creek running between the houses back here! How cool is this?!" We ended up wandering around in people's back yards before finding our way back to the street! What a fun little town! We enjoyed the small village feel so much that we checked out of the place we were staying in and rented a room in an older couple's home for the night. The cute little old lady didn't speak any English and kept gushing about how good my German was (yeah, right!). In the morning she'd set up a table in their living room and covered it with linen and china so we could have a private breakfast. Her other guests ate in the breakfast room, so we assumed she didn't want us to feel awkward being the only English speakers in a room of Germans, and gave us a place where we could talk without feeling rude. She was so cute! She had a jar of fresh honey on the table and proudly told us her husband keeps bees. It was so good, we brought a jar home with us! That's definitely the way to travel; tromp around through town and stay with people who let rooms in their homes. Who wouldn't want to stay somewhere this cute! Thank you, Mom, for blessing us with a wonderful time away!!

No such thing as too much Polish pottery!

Mom R. has been visiting for the past couple of weeks. We were so happy that she was able to come for Easter again this year, but the weather has been the pits! It started snowing the day she flew in and kept snowing off and on for the first whole week. Yuk! It looked pretty, but was too cold to go out and do much in. We had one nice day the next week and have been rained and drizzled on ever since. But no self-respecting Polish pottery aficinado would let something as insignificant as horrible weather prevent her from making a run to Poland, so off we went! We spent the night at our usual stop, the Elim Christian Center, affectionately called "The Mission". The Mission is centered in an old palace built in the 1500's by a German nobleman. It had fallen into near complete disrepair and was purchased several years ago by a Christian mission organization. Volunteers have spent countless hours and money slowly working to transform the building into a viable retreat center. The hosts are wonderful and we always enjoy visiting with them. Spending time in such a poverty stricken country is always eye-opening. We have so much! And take most of it for granted. But due to the skyrocketing prices of the pottery, Mom and I did our best to help the local economy. :) I was stunned by how much prices have increased in the 5 months since I was over there with my Mom. I'm not sure if I'll be able to continue shopping like I'd hoped to; it's no longer the bargain it used to be, but I just love the stuff! On our way to the factories we stopped to explore one of the local cemeteries. I was so saddened by the neglect and obvious poverty. Rusty, slipshod iron crosses and toppled grave stones on the few marked graves. By contrast, the cemetery in the next little town is always well tended and bedecked in colorful flowers. I've passed this cemetery on every trip and am surprised each time by the explosion of color. Poland is definitely a country of contrasts. If anyone is looking for some Polish pottery, let me know soon, before it's no longer worth it to make the trip! Better yet, come over and we can go together! :)

First Communion

A's Sunday School class celebrated their First Communion last week. It was wonderful to see all the children dressed up in their beautiful white clothes to receive Communion. Here's our little princess... 'A' received her First Communion with the rest of us last fall, when we entered the Catholic church, but was allowed to participate with the rest of the kids her age. It was a beautiful, special day for her! She fairly glowed! Again, I did the cake for the after church celebration. White, with a layer of lemon curd off-set by a layer of vanilla cream.