A Day Out With Thomas

You know how when you enter a contest you assume you won't win. So naturally when I filled out a slip at gymnastics class for 4 free tickets to A Day Out With Thomas I didn't think in a few weeks we'd be here...

Life's full of surprises isn't it? Like the free photo above that came with the package. 

And admission to the train museum with its model train town.

And I shouldn't leave out the petting zoo. 

MC: "What does a petting zoo have to do with trains?"

Me: "Nothing."

Of course there were plenty of opportunities to PLAY with train tables and toys. And more opportunities to BUY them. My poor kids only scored a bag of kettle corn. 

But they did get to pretend they were engineers on some old cars.

The train ride itself was pretty fun, even if we did just circle the museum grounds three times. We even had our tickets punched by an official conductor.

Passing the round house

Daydreaming

Next time you enter a contest I suggest you don't fold your paper perfectly in half. Rather fold it at a diagonal, I think it gives your slip more corners to grab from. Sometimes it works for me and I'm always thankful when it does.

Four Fun FOCUS Updates

1. Kevin has a new title in FOCUS.

Kevin is now the Director of FOCUSequip. FOCUSequip is the curriculum division of FOCUS. This includes all of FOCUS' Bible studies, discipleship curriculum, and evangelization tools. It also includes the electronic delivery of most of these items via his department's new website, FOCUSequip.org.

2. Lisa has a title in FOCUS.

After spending the last year volunteering my time to help keep our over 80 wives connected, FOCUS decided to officially contract me as the Family Liaison. Since then I've launched a mentorship program for our newer wives in addition to sending out quarterly newsletters and other small projects here and there. It's been great to have a little side project (we're talking less than 5 hours a week) that combines my love of FOCUS, FOCUS families, and organizing things!

3. Kevin's new bible study The Crux, which is FOCUS' introductory bible study is rockin' campuses.

In the last few weeks the study has been visited over 1,000 times online where people can download the leader guide. Through keeping in touch with campuses we know that thousands of students on dozens of campuses are going through it every week. That is awesome.


4. Kevin just finished helping write a document that was sent to be reviewed at a Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. 

Okay, you have to understand... THIS IS REALLY COOL. The Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization is holding a Bishop's Synod in 2012. To prepare for it, they have invited several Catholic missionary groups, including FOCUS, to attend some preliminary meetings for the Synod and to submit their thoughts on the new evangelization. Kevin was able to assist Curtis Martin in putting together FOCUS' thoughts on the new evangelization. Curtis and a few other FOCUS staff will attend meetings in October.

A Pony Party

Our niece turned 6 this week, so this weekend was her birthday party!

I love posting her parties because they are always so unique (like her princess party last year) and we all have so much fun at them.

Both of the BFF cousins have been really into ponies lately, so she had some at her party!

Nice touch with the flowers in the mane, right?

This determined little brother was probably dreaming about taking his horse into a gallop and getting a bad guy.

Everyone loved the ponies.

Oh wait. Except for this guy. He was more comfortable with the WOODEN horse. We tried, believe me, we tried. Doesn't he look sad.

The party package also included face painting, balloon animals and games.

Baby brother, wanted nothing to do with the duck we tried to put on his head. It would have been so cute too.

There was also a pinata!

Valiant efforts were made to break it open.

Have you ever seen kids actually take one down?

Birthday girl's dad had to take care of it.

Where was my son during the pinata? Watching from the living room window, no joke.

He did however partake in the safe bubbles station. And then...

He got on the horse!!! I had to ride too, but boy were we proud of him!

Happy 1st Birthday Blog!

Favorite photo of the year

It was one year ago today that we posted for the first time on the blog! Back then it was called With Hope in the Divine Will, but nobody could remember that, so we changed it.

In reflecting on the blogging experience a few things come to mind:

1. I can't believe I'm still doing it. I go through stints where I think about shutting it down, but then Grandma chimes in about how much she loves seeing pictures of the kids or some random person we haven't even met sends us an email to let us know that something we posted encouraged them. Plus, I do enjoy doing it and when I don't you'll notice big gaps between posts.

2. Have we really had 36,400 page views in the last year? That's pretty cool to me, but probably not to someone who actually knows something about blogging. The goal of the blog is to keep up with our FOCUS mission partners (those wonderful people who tithe directly to our family so we can continue to work for FOCUS) and spread the news about FOCUS. It's been neat to see how God has used it. Through people visiting our site I've done interviews for Catholic publications, kept up with those I've met at speaking engagements and in the fall one of my crafts will be featured on Parents.com.

3. I'm excited about turing this thing into a printed scrapbook. You can do that you know. I like this because I am bad at printing pictures and none of my kids have a baby book, but at least they'll have our year documented from the blog. Now I don't feel as guilty. Not that it keeps me up at night or anything.

4. I really need to get a cool fancy-pants header and border type thing. I know there are real names for them, but I can't recall them. I could just google that, but google seems so far away in cyber space right now. Point being... I have been dreaming about sprucing up the site, changing some of the side bars and making it more our own, but for now, you will have to continue to suffer with my lack of ascetics.

5. You may have noticed that Kevin isn't blogging here much any more. He is now in charge of a cooler website focusequip.org. They have really neat fancy-pants header and border type things. You can find some of the bible studies he has written, like Living Gospel: 7 Highly Effective Habits of Catholics, for FREE! You can use them for personal study or with a group. There are also audio talks from people like Dr. Edward Sri and video clips from people like Jeff Cavins, for FREE. You should really check it out.

5. Some of my favorite posts from the last year:

Those pertaining to faith
Living Liturgically Audio Talk
Kids and the Rosary Series
Making Daily Prayer Work as a Mother

Those pertaining to FOUCS
Welcome to FOUCS New Staff Training
The 1st Ever FOCUS Equip Conference
How to Properly Welcome Jeff Cavins

Those pertaining to thrifting
How to Cut your Grocery Bill in Half
Kids Consignment Sale Week

For those of you who keep up with us on the blog thanks for stopping in. We hope our thoughts and stories have been a blessing to you!

P.S. Yesterday afternoon at 4:00 I received a call from Padre Pablo. He's from Argentina and is a member of Incarnate Word. I met him 7.5 years ago in Argentina when he was a seminarian. He lives in the States now and last year we hosted him and 20 sisters as they came through Denver.

He and a fellow priest needed a place to stay for the night.  In typical Argentinian fashion he was giving us 2 hours warning. It wouldn't have been too crazy... IF we weren't getting the house re-carpeted the next morning... AND we were in charge of moving the furniture before the workers arrived. Well, we pulled it off and managed to make them a home cooked meal. But spending time with people so dear to me and starting off the day with mass in your own living is totally worth it.

Padre Pablo and the fam in our empty living room.

Super Fun Aunt Kelly Gets Married

Last weekend the Cotter siblings were completed with the final addition of Uncle Tom! Everything about it was beautiful and I can't help but pass on some highlights!

We were super busy from the moment we arrived beginning with a wine and chocolate night to finish up crafting! Kelly came up with all kinds of ways to add a personal touch to each part of the wedding as you will see.

But first we feasted at a ladies luncheon the next morning.

All of the Cotter women

Since we were ALL in the wedding the rehearsal that night was a big test. Paul and Mary Clare made it down the aisle, although Paul looked very concerned the whole time.

But isn't his little sign adorable!

One of the cousins wasn't too keen on Pop-Pop walking down the aisle without him.

The rehearsal dinner was near the union station, so the kids got to watch the trains go by every 20 minutes or so which was sheer brilliance and kept them entertained the whole night!

Saturday morning was spent primping as you can imagine, but Mary Clare was there with her ponies to keep Aunt Kelly company.

I don't have any pictures of the ceremony because it is frowned upon to bring your own camera with you when you walk down the aisle, but here is what happened.

Mary Clare when down the aisle without hesitation. Paul made two valiant efforts that got him about 1/3 of the way there, but ultimately decided to decline the invitation. Lots of people + non-visible Mom and Dad + no nap = uninterested. He then proceeded to fall asleep within the first 5 minutes of sitting in his pew and that was that.

Fortunatlley he woke up in time to ride on the trolley to the reception.

3 generations of dapper Cotters

MC loving the trolley ride

Kelly works for the Conservation Fund, so she had a park theme for the reception. When you arrived you picked up your name tent and took it to your National Park.

Dinner was delicious and we loved the photo booth!...

Congratulations Tom and Kelly!