She's ONE!!



Adeline's First Birthday party was a blast! We invited a few friends over to help celebrate but not to many so as not to over whelm Addy with all the commotion.







Momma and the birthday girl! Fran and I made this birthday tutu for Addy.








This is Addy's cheesey camera face, not sure where she got it but it's so darn CUTE!







Opening presents.





Addy's first taste of cake or sugar. Mommy made a very yummy grain free chocolate cupcake.



Not sure she liked it :(








All her pals.

Because Addy's nickname is buggy we thought it would fun to make egg carton bugs for a craft, here are all the kids showing there 'bugs'.



PENSACOLA THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving at the Stonghold this year was great, Patrick and Francesca came all the way up from Ave Maria to be with us!!! Addy very much enjoyed having uncle and auntie around to play with and Brian and I were so pleased to have family in town. We showed them around base and spent one evening at the beach as well as the Thanksgiving festivities.  We didn't get to many pictures but I'll share the ones we did get.

Our delicious turkey the day after Thanksgiving(spent TD at a friends house so we made a 'family' turkey the next day).

Our lovely guest.

Adeline's favorite part about Thanksgiving, the turkey leg! Look how huge it is!!!

MY favorite part about Thanksgiving, the delicious apple pie Fran made! We fought over this pie the morning after :)

Hanging out at the beach.

Sisters. Miss you, Fran!

She just wants to be a momma!

 Little girls are the best! Seriously, they just want to be little mommas! I found this child's play "moby wrap" for a quarter at a consignment store sale. Gianna loves it! She is so proud of herself whenever I put it on. She bounces her baby and makes sure that she goes "nigh night". Kids are way too much fun.

 My good friend Anna spent the night recently and the kids had a blast. Here they were excited to watch morning cartoons! Love my little Peter!

Mom's Latest Painting Projects

Mom emailed me a few pictures of her latest paint projects so I thought I would share! These are both done with chalkboard paint. Pretty cool, huh?

 

I think at this point the blue tape wasn't removed yet. Looks good, mom! Notice the kombucha bottle up there? awesome. 

Fall activites with the Resi!

Rachel and I with cool shaped gourds

October was a busy month for us here in Jacksonville. We moved into our new house, which was quite the adventure. We have now managed, hopefully, all the problems we've encountered thus far(cockroaches, windows falling out when we open them, sewage line not connected to the tank) fun stuff!!!

Us singing to Our Lady at the Shrine!

We have been having amazingly nice weather. 70 degress, slightly cloudy with a nice breeze!!! We took advantage of the nice weather and all 8 of us went out and had what we called "RBD" Resi-Bonding-Day! We visited the Shrine in Saint Augustine, Our Lady of la Leche, ate lunch, said the rosary. Then we headed out a little more south to a very nice pumpkin patch and bought some pumpkins, took pictures and enjoyed ourselves in the nice weather. We then stopped to see a really cute French Catholic church on our way home for a quick visit and to say evening prayer.

Last weekend, we threw a "Holy-ween" party. The idea was to dress up as saints, only some of the guests participated. We had a good turn out of about 15 girls, here are some pictures. The costumes this year were a lot of work but very fun! I was St. Thomas Aquinas!

All 8 of us plus a girl(the one to my left in the photo) who was living with us for a short time, she is now entering a Carmelite convent!

I don't know what I was looking at but I love this photo of all of us!

Group shot

St. Thomas writing the Summa in the candlelight, He was known for being very large, hence the big belly.

One of the carved pumpkins

Hello from the Robert Gallahers.

Hi Everyone, Here are some long over due pictures of what we have been up to lately.  We had a beautiful Summer with lots of gardening and playing.  Bobby is doing very well in school and is growing like a weed. He can recognise his letters and is so happy that his name is the smae as Daddys.  that is Robert J Get-out-a-here. Joyce is super fun and follows her Daddy around like a shadow and is such a good girl for Mama. She won't say Bobby yet, she has a loud squeak that she has for him that he answered "What Doyce" (annoyed).  We find out next week what we are having besides a very active little baby. That is all for now I will keep you posted ~ ELise

Little butterfly that did not want to take a pictue and a fireman that did.

Daddy and Joyce changing the oil in the Ford

Fire man Bob sitting on a home grown 40 lb pumpkin.

pumpkin thief

Aunty Jessica had every little girl in the neighborhood excited because Snow White had come to visit.

Billy Bob and his butterfly

Building blanker forts

She loves her Dollies

Bobby's first birthday party at school

Captain Bob on our camping trip with the Navarros

A pumpkin we grew on top of the patio

She found her Daddy outside in his office.

The Dollidays: Halloween

This is our first time living in a neighborhood that trick-or-treaters come knocking on our door, so we were pretty excited. I dressed up the children before it got dark and took a few shots of Peter's first Halloween. Here you go!

I don't know if any of you recognize it, but Gianna is wearing Mom's costume that I believe Grandma Schaper made for her when she was little. So special. It needs a little repair here and there, but overall it's in great shape. I plan on using it for many years to come.

Now if I just put these pictures up I would be purposely deceiving all of you. These pictures did not come without a lot of sweat, blood and tears! (well, almost!) But seriously, this is what it really looked like:

You can see that Peter was quite confused by all the commotion. He was probably thinking, "What's your deal? At least you aren't shoved in this pumpkin!" These pictures just go to show my children's incredibly different personalities and temperaments, but we love and appreciate them both.  We then waited for the trick-or-treaters with our basket of mini parachute toys and echinacea tea. (we have colds). Most of the children were pretty thrilled to get a toy instead of candy, but there were the few that were like, "this isn't candy!". haha, I thought it was successful overall. Gianna really enjoyed handing out the toys to the kids.

I hope all of you have downloaded the improved blogger interface. It makes it incredibly easy to post pictures and videos. We are going to try to do a post about each of the Dollidays around here, and hope you do too!

Reading time at the Doll House

We have been reading a lot of books lately, I mean a lot. With Cyril being gone and our car broken down we spend most of our time at home! We try to walk to daily mass and occasionally a friend will pick us up for a play date, but other than that we don't go anywhere during the week. It has been a mixed blessing for sure, I am spending more time playing with the kids and they love it. Here is a little clip of Gianna reading one of her favorite books.

Addy's Latest Tricks

ADELINE TOOK HER FIRST STEPS YESTERDAY!! At 10 months old she is already starting to walk! We've been having so much fun bribing her to walk more. We didn't get her walking on video but here are some fun videos we did get this week.

What have y'all been up to this week?

A Tragic Loss for the Pro-Life World

For you who do not know already, here is what happened:

Students for Life Leader, Unborn Baby Die in Tragic Accident
by Steven Ertelt Washington, DC LifeNews.com

National Students for Life of America, the national organization for pro-life college and university students, has suffered a terrible loss, as one of its staffers and her unborn baby perish and another staffer was injured in a fatal automobile accident Saturday night.

Around 8:00 p.m. local time, SFLA field director Kortney Blythe Gordon was driving back from the Students for Life of America Georgia conference when her vehicle was struck by another head on in a massive collision. The driver of the other vehicle was reportedly speeding and passing cars on a two-lane road. Gordon and her unborn child, Sophy, were immediately killed upon impact and another SFLA staff member, Jon Scharfenberger, is in critical condition following the accident.

In addition, two local students, whose names were not released to LifeNews, were injured in the accident as well, and were in the vehicle with the two Students for Life staffers when they were struck by the oncoming car. They are injured but the injuries are not life-threatening.

We must pray a lot for the family of Kortney, she was a young, married women, so of course thats a great loss for her husband and her family. Also, the young man, Jon, who is critically injured. I and probably Fran know him personally, he graduated from Ave Maria last year, while he was there, he was very active in the pro-life group, a very vibrant great person and he is still in critical conditions.

This makes death such a reality, we must live every day as our last and always give Glory to God in whatever we do.

The little girls at 8 months . . .

Not too long ago Clare and Brian took this video of Adeline eating a chicken bone and babbling away at 8 months. It also happens that we took a video of Gianna eating a chicken bone and babbling at 8 months! Look at how sweet these little girls are! They both know how to say at least one thing, "dada!"

Testing out the video part . . .

This was about a month ago when we visited Cyril's parents in Calgary. Peter also wetn to his first football game. The Labor Day Classic between Calgary and Edmonton. It was fun! So this is new (with the new interface). You can upload your videos first to YouTube, then you can put them up here with the Insert a Video button. It would be great to see some more videos up here!

New Interface

So as many of you may have noticed it is a bit complicated to navigate the Blogger interface. Well, they have updated it and it's awesome! When you log in for the first time with your google account they will ask you if you would like to update your interface. Please click that! It is WAY more user friendly. It will make it easier for all of you to post more often! Mom and Dad LOVE this blog because they are not on facebook to see their grandbabies faces! (and their children's faces for that matter!) Please consider adding another post soon, we would love to keep this going and alive. Imagine what it will be like in 20 years. :) Thanks everyone and God bless!

- Sarah

New happenings in Florida!

Thanks so much Sarah for updating the blog, I love it!

This week, the other candidates and lay girls who live with us here at Assumption and I, are very excited and busy!

We are moving!

A generous person in the parish is donating a year of rent(including eletricity and water, I know very generous!) for us to live in a house about 8 minutes from Assumption. So this week we are cleaning it and slowly moving things over, so by friday we should be in the house for good! Yeah! I am so excited! I loved living at the school but there are definitely benefits living in a house! It's much better for apostolate sake! And we will have our own chapel!

My mailing address will not be changing but here is a picture of our house! Sorry if its not that clear, I will try and add better photos when I get them.

Here is the link, it might be better!

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=30.259493,-81.641099&spn=0.000037,0.013754&t=h&z=16&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=30.259502,-81.640971&panoid=0kCgELbHy7kSJk7bTA1ulA&cbp=12,189.77,,0,6.8


View Larger Map


This weekend also we are doing fundraising for this years Home of the Mother Youth events in Jacksonville. We have a booth at the Parish Fall Fest. We are selling rosaries, pillows with quotes on them and we have two games! I will have to put pictures up when I get them.

I miss you all and can't wait to read your blogs! Please blog!

The Allen's Visit

So since August Cyril has been traveling to Seattle monday-friday. It's been really tough so Becky came to visit to make it a little easier for us! Nathan also had training for a month in California so it worked out perfectly. :) We had such a good time cooking GAPS foods, sewing quilts, having playdates, reading good books, dance parties with the kids and simply just being silly playing with the four children all day. :) I have to admit, it did get a little crazy at times but I loved the company. Time went by really quick that's for sure! We now have stories to tell of Becky being our nurse while we all had crazy detox symptoms for a few days (not doing that again!) and then I being the nurse after Becky dislocated her knee. (im sure she's not planning on that again either!) Sebastian pestered Gianna at times and Gianna picked on Philomena . . . but they all loved and doted on Peter. He loved the attention, especially all the kisses from the girls. We did not take many pictures, but the last night they were here I made sure I had some evidence of their visit! Here they are: