A Day in the Life: Second Day of Lent

The weather here: It's snowing again and reeaallly cold. No playing outside today!

The ugly old shed behind the windmill serves to illustrate the cold grey day, the dismal February snow, and the general feeling of  "bleh" quite nicely... 

 Not even intrepid Gabe wants to go out!

Here's Gabe a couple days ago, posing inside his own hand-built "duck blind."  Pretty cool, huh?  Now we just need some ducks.  And maybe a rifle.  Or maybe not.  (At least not until this little man's a bit older!)

What we're doing: Here's what we actually do on any cold snowy day, Lent or not.  The dining room, next to the big wood stove, is always warmest in this drafty old house, so this is where everyone congregates.

 Everyone's finished with their school work and lunch dishes have been cleaned up. Theresa is reading The Robe, by Lloyd C. Douglas; William is hosting a Summer Olympics for his stuffed animals who have come into the dining room looking for the snack bar; Anna is playing solitaire; Cathy is drinking tea and ...  not doing much else; and Gabriel is writing a book about the adventures of  his good old friend, the monkey, Lester...

 Check it out.  Doesn't his story just look neat -- with the over-sized first letter (we studied Illuminations and he remembered about that!) and the perfect likeness of Lester in his illustration on the side? Such a Renaissance Guy, Gabe!  Duck blinds, artwork, and novels -- all before the age of twelve!

Here's an exerpt (copied exactly, though it's way cuter in his own handwriting):

Once there lived, and still is living a monkey named Lester.  Lester is what you would call different from most of the monkeys in the world.  Lester is different because he would rather watch a football game than groom himself.  In fact bannannas aren't even his favrite food.  Lester's breed of monkeys is the chinse golden monkey, a verry rare monkey.  Chinse golden monkeys are especially rare because they are only seen once a year in the mountains of Narin near the capital of China.

In fact every year when the Chinse golden monkeys travel to the foothills of Narin the people that live on the foothills of Narin worship these monkeys.  Chinse golden monkeys are called that because of there unusually blond fur and the fact that they live in China.  Chinse golden monkeys are extremely skiddish of people (because) we only see them once a year.

I can't begin to tell you how Lester is not shy.  

One particular morning (September 28), Lester noticed something moving in the tall brush.  Lester only being 9 months old and not knowing much about the jungle wondered what it could be.  Lester, ran down the tree to see what it was.  Lester noticed that it sounded like no other monkey he had ever heard before.  It seemed to sound like vrooom vroom!  Lester's curiosity took him.  So he jumped on to the moving thing.  Lester thought it was a huge moving watermelon.  It was actually a jeep full of zoo scouts (zoo scouts are the people that capture the zoo exhibits).

Lester just sat on the jeep in wonder, while the person sitting in the passenger seat pepared a dart gun.  Before Lester could react Lester saw a dart coming straight tords him.  The last thing that Lester remembers is everything going black.

To be continued...

Update

Dapper William
Taken some other day,
definitely not this day.

As I've been writing, things have transitioned just a bit.

Hearing explosion noises and the sound of things apparently being torn asunder, we asked  William about the Summer Olympics going on in his room -- and were informed that "it's turned into more of a civil war!"  Which is what it sounded like was going on in there...

Anna has not won any games of solitaire, and moved on to building card houses, which keep falling down -- when Theresa turns the pages of her book... or anybody breathes...  or  anyone thinks too loudly...

Cathy just now got up and turned on Cotton -eyed Joe and is trying to rouse everyone from their seats to do calisthenics in the living room. We'll see how that goes over!

After exercise, it'll be rosary time at 4:00, then we'll read a couple chapters out of The Magician's Nephew, then all-hands-on-deck to make spaghetti and bread sticks for dinner before Daddy gets home at 6.  Then after all the dinner dishes are cleaned up, we'll all sit in the living room and read our saint books (or whatever Lenten reading everyone has chosen), the boys will work on their Altar Boy Latin...  then we'll likely just chew the fat a bit (figuratively), listen as Theresa plays the piano -- only Liturgical music as a Lenten thing she's chosen  (I may very well just fade away during Lent without Clair de Lune...), someone will probably get out the cards, maybe the chess set...  but, it'll be quiet and cozy, peaceful and beautifully dull.  And then we'll go to bed.

Anyone who needs more than this is missing out.

These are good days.  God is good to give them to us.