Chiara - What a mess!

Chiara - the girl with THE BEST facial expressions!




I'm not sure when she got so messy this day...

Thankfully, Tide washes out just about anything!!

And, look! On Pentecost Sunday, Chiara decided to fix her own hair :) :)

Thankfully, she did let me help her a bit after I took this picture!

Dinner entertainment

The girls have been learning the first chapter of the Gospel of John in Latin. To help them memorize it, they created a chant/song to go along with it, and they were chanting at the end of supper the other night.

Cati finds a treasure

One morning after Mass, Cati found some Robin's egg shells in the grass outside the church. She was very excited!

Here is the picture she drew about the event in her nature journal.


Here are the shells.






When she got home she looked up "Robins" in a book about birds.

I should have taken a picture of the present state of the egg shells :) Cati was able to keep them safe until Papa got home from school that evening. Today, they are crumbled up in a small ziplock bag and taped on the refrigerator with a note to identify them :) :)

Perhaps I'll have a picture on another day.

What's Elena up to?

I'm sorry that it's been so long since I've posted! I've had some videos that I've wanted to put on the blog, but Blogger hasn't wanted to upload them. Well, I finally converted them and made them smaller, and now it works!

Elena is now 13-months- and 1-week-old. She's definitely becoming a toddler!

In this nice picture of the inside of her mouth :) :)
...you can see that she still doesn't have many teeth. She cut her first tooth right before her birthday, and she now has two bottom teeth.

She recently started climbing!!

(Those are not happy exclamation points.)
She climbed into this chair herself, so now we have to hide the chair since she's rather dangerous with it. Last night she almost climbed into the bathtub by herself while I was bathing Chiara! She also climbs stairs - there are lots of baby gates up around this house! Needless to say, we have to keep a very close eye on this little one these days!!!!!

Her favorite game is peek-a-boo. In fact, "boo" is one of the few words she says. She can also say "Mamma" (though not often) and her newest word is "there!" which she says when she points at things :)

A couple of weeks ago Elena learned to feed herself. Unfortunately, she not only puts food in her mouth (any food - she's not picky) but any small thing she can find including tissues, dirt, grass, paper, and small toys. We're now being extra vigilant keeping the floor picked up!

This weekend she has starting standing up by herself without holding onto something. She can only stand a few seconds, so I haven't been able to take a picture of her yet. It won't be long before I'm posting of video of her first steps!

Here is a video of Elena on the day after she started feeding herself, Ascension Thursday. Since it was a feast day, we were having chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast - yum!! Also, we did not school that day and the kids got to watch a movie that morning, which you can hear in the background. See if you can find out which movie they were watching!

Here is Elena playing peek-a-boo with Maria and Chiara.

Here is Elena rocking in that chair she climbed into.

Here she is doing several things...walking while pushing the infamous rocking chair, crawling, pulling up, and playing peek-a-boo with me!

Family Sacraments Poster

Yeah!! I did it! Do you know how it is when you get a project in mind, and you think about it for a long time...and then you actually do it ?!?! For instance, I decided to embroider a prayer book cever for a 1st Communion gift for Cati --- oops, that was 2 weeks ago and I still haven't finished it :)

This is about a project that I DID complete! When we arranged our prayer room a few months ago, I thought about how nice it would be to have pictures in there of Sacraments that we have received along with all the information about them. Well, this past Thursday (Ascension Thursday) I spent the morning going through photos and ordering 4x6" collage photos from Walmart for all of our Sacraments. Then, I typed up the info about them - names, dates, places. Today, I put it all together and hung it on the wall. Now, we won't forget any of these important anniversaries throughout the year!

You can see that there's still space for future Sacraments (and future kids!). Maria has completed her Sacraments of Initiation, and Cati only has Confirmation left to receive. The 3 younger children have only received the Sacrament of Baptism. I'd also like to get the dates (and perhaps photos???) of Dany and my others Sacraments when we were children.

Summer School :)

We've begun our summer school schedule (even though you would NEVER believe it's summer by stepping outside our house right now!), so I thought I would update my curriculum links on the side of my blog. If you're interested in what we're up to, please take a look!

While we school year-round, we do plan several breaks this summer for visits from good friends (Can't wait to see you, Pamela!!) and to go see family and friends! I imagine we'll take some impromptu breaks to enjoy the nice weather that only comes around here for a few months each year :) :) I know the summer will just speed by!

Cati's First Holy Communion

On Sunday, May 2nd, Cati received her 1st Holy Communion at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Greensburg, PA!

It was a beautiful day!!



We were blessed to have my parents and our good friends, the Rosamonds, visiting us from out-of-town for the occasion! Here are Matteo, Luke, and Isaiah.

Our family...Chiara was not in a picture mood that morning :)

Here is Cati with our priest, Fr. Tom, and her good friend who also made her 1st Communion.

Here is a big picture of both the Arcara and Rosamond families! John Paul is normally a lot more animated, but he fell asleep during Mass :)

We tried to get a picture of only Dany and I with Cati, but Chiara was not happy with the idea.

Back at home we had a yummy lunch with family and friends.

Then Cati opened presents...

And we had cake :)

Thanks be to God for the wonderful graces He bestows on our family through the Sacraments.