{PHFR}

Playing with Leila and her girls at LMLD today!

{pretty}

and

{happy}

 My newly painted and decorated bathroom!  It used to be, no lie, 'grape jelly', which I loved for years, but we needed a change.  Now it's kind of hydrangea; the pic on the left is a little bright, though.

My lovely daughter Katie bought the paint and painted it for me.  I painted all the frames, and my Pete painted the ceiling.  The artwork is "Celery Art" from Pinterest.  I'm sure you've seen it where you cut the bottom off the bunch of celery and use it as a stamp.  

{funny}

This is Gus these days.  He's tethered to someone all the time to teach him that we're dominant and he has to go where we go.  He's typically sleeping at my feet.  He also flops down immediately upon coming into the house because it's suddenly so. freaking. hot!

{real}

The ladder is still in the foyer and the paint is still in the bathroom.  Days later.

Checking in...

...After that Quiet Wednesday, it has been a little busy around here!  That's what I get, right?

....I had AHG last week, followed by the Fish Fry on Friday, along with Stations of the Cross which was very nice, but I had forgotten how much it hurts the thighs!

...Saturday I spend all day with 10 American Heritage Girls on an "Adventure Day" where we did team building activities, 3 hours of archery, followed by rock climbing.  Even though I didn't participate in the archery or rock climbing, I was exhausted and sore the next day.  We'll assume that was from the Catholic gymnastics Friday night, and the really steep hills we trudged up and down on Saturday---not from standing around doing nothing.  ;-)  I was amazed to hear that Meg was not sore after all that archery and climbing the 56' tower twice!

...Sunday was unusually busy because I had to catch up on the laundry and give haircuts to my college boys who came home for spring break.  One was super-shaggy and I could hardly wait until I could take the scissors to his flowing locks!

...I'm not doing any knitting, and not much reading.  I've got Style, Sex, and Substance on my nightstand, and I want to stay up all night to read the whole thing!  But it's so good that it's much better to read just one chapter, savor it, and think about the questions it brings up.

....Another busy day begins now with the first of my 2 daily one-mile walks with the dog....

A Quiet Wednesday

I'm not sure why, but life has been a bit quieter lately.  I don't believe that it's because we're doing less stuff, though.  The only difference that I know of is prayer.  There's definitely more of that going on since I'm getting into a better routine---not perfect, but better.  I already mentioned that I'm doing the 33 days of preparation for Total Consecration to Mary, and I'm trying really hard to read Divine Intimacy every morning.  Aside from that, as a family we're adding a decade every week to our nightly decade of the rosary so that by the end of Lent we'll be doing the whole thing every night.  That's a practice I'd like to continue after Lent.  With the "baby" being 10 years old, it shouldn't be that hard to pray a whole rosary!

We got the little book Welcome, Risen Jesus!, by Sarah Reinhardt, for Lent and Easter, and we're enjoying it a lot.  The Action for the other day was to put a cross in your pocket and every time you touched it you were supposed to pray for someone.  As I put a little "tenner" in my right pocket, I thought that I wouldn't end up praying for anyone that day because I'd never stick my right hand (I'm a leftie) in my pocket.  Well, my hand seemed to be in my pocket all day!  I prayed Memorares and Hail Mary's for people all day.  A couple of sick people kept coming to mind and got many prayers that day.  I was sad to find that one of them died the next day, and I hope my prayers were of some comfort to him.  May he rest in peace.  I think that's a practice I'll try to continue because it's an easy way to remember to pray for people.

Tom has been having drama rehearsals until 5:30 or 6:00 every day for a while, so picking him up seems to free up more of my day.  I'm not dropping everything in the middle of the day to go get him.

I finished reading our current book club read---The Snow Child---which I'll probably tell you about soon.  I got Style, Sex, and Substance in the mail yesterday and I'm dying to sit down to read it, which I'm going to do for a few moments as soon as I post this!

Oh, more quiet time might also be associated with giving up 75% of my blogs for Lent.  :-/  I thought that would be hard, and I kind of hate "marking as read" those posts with furniture makeovers, but on the whole, I don't really miss them.  I've never been a huger pinner on Pinterest, either, but I've been looking at it less, and pinning much less (since there's not so much to pin on the more spiritual blogs) what with all the hullabaloo in the blogosphere about it.  I've gotten several new followers that I don't know in the past few days, but there won't be much need to follow me when I delete my boards!  I might as well.  I don't want to infringe on anyone's proprietary material, and I don't want to spend the time to clean up my boards just in case.  So I might as well cut the cord completely.

Aah, it feels so good to detach.  Even if it's only a little bit for a little while.  But I hope I can keep detached after Easter comes!  How about you?  Are you feeling good about having detached from things during Lent?