Cottage Blessings

Cause of Our Joy

Baby chuckled for the first time this evening. It was just after we concluded our bedtime decade of the Rosary. I was looking right in her face reciting the Hail Holy Queen, when she suddenly burst into lovely, lighthearted laughter--the sweet silvery notes that only a two-month-old baby can play.

I have written before about how each of the children has a special nightly prayer to recite. Now we know hers.

Twice as Adorable

In case one or two of you have not seen Mary Ellen's delightful duo, please pay a visit to The Bonny Blue House. They are perfect!

Here was the Bonny Glen

How do you have a vacation without ever leaving home? Invite the gang from the Bonny Glen for a visit, and, before you know it, you will smell the hills of heather and feel a cool mist rising off the loch.

The moment Lissa and her little ones emerged from their car, our two families embraced, and twelve children practically disappeared in a glorious world of their own for five days--a world of stories and Snoopy soundtracks, American Sign Language and original comic strips. In case any of you are wondering if Lissa and her children are really as warm and wonderful, bonny and brilliant, as they appear on her blog, the answer is a resounding, "Aye, that they are!"

My golden-headed goddaughter Beanie was on hand to give baby a kiss:

The two "best friends" finally met in person:

Put wings on Eileen and Rilla, and they would be cherubs:

What is baby Rilla beaming at you ask?

Her beloved brother, of course! His absolute devotion to her is one of the dearest things I have ever witnessed.

I caught this photo of one of many heartfelt embraces at the end of an all too brief visit. With the Bonny Glen leaving for San Diego, we all felt a bit like Laura's grandparents watching the Ingalls' covered wagon head west. Thank goodness we have phones and the internet.

So, Lissa, how soon can you come again????

Tagged Twice

It is an honor to have been tagged for a Book Meme by Lynn at Life is Beauty (a blog that truly lives up to its name) and Elizabeth Foss, a woman who needs no introduction.

Well, here goes:

1. One book that changed your life:

Sixty Saints for Girls by Joan Windham

Back in my Catholic school days, we visited the school library every other week, and I kept borrowing the same book over and over--Sixty Saints for Girls. I read it and re-read it, practically learning it by heart. Those lively stories of the saints imbibed at a young age impressed me in a way I have never forgotten.

2. One book that you've read more than once:

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Is there anything more worth re-reading than a courtly and eloquent Jane Austen romance?

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:

I would really need two books--the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

4. One book that made you laugh:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The first time I read this book, my husband kept asking, "What are you laughing at?" Each time I replied, "David Copperfield," he thought I was pulling his leg. After all, in high school, most of us learned to dislike Dickens, considering his works dry and depressing. Fortunately, as I discovered by chance in my mid-twenties, David Copperfield is one of the most insightfully comical books ever written.

5. One book that made you cry:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I know, I know--how could I select the same book for both the laughing and crying categories? Well, it just goes to show the depth of Dickens' writing. I must have re-read chapter 53 through tears at least a dozen times. It begins:

"I must pause yet once again. O, my child-wife, there is a figure in the moving crowd before my memory, quiet and still, saying in its innocent love and childish beauty, Stop to think of me -- turn to look upon the Little Blossom, as it flutters to the ground!"

[Excuse me while I grab a tissue . . . .]

6. One book that you wish had been written:

I wish there was a series of fabulously illustrated and engagingly written children's picture books on the lives of at least a hundred individual saints.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

Misty's Twilight by Marguerite Henry

This is admittedly a quirky pick on my part, but I so loved the Misty of Chincoteague series, and Misty's Twilight, written by Ms. Henry much later in life, was disappointing in the extreme.

8. One book you are currently reading:

The Latin-Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell

9. One book you have been meaning to read:

I still have not read Crossing the Threshold of Hope and several other works by Pope John Paul II, but would very much like to do so. Hmm, maybe I'll take one of those off the shelf tonight!

Tag:

Here in the Bonny Glen

Mozart & Mud Pies

Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks

kristina's world

S/V Mari Hal-O-Jen