Day around the house

Not much was accomplished in the garden today, since I started out the day getting Thomas and myself ready and taking him with me to the grocery store.  We were in dire need of a cart-full of produce, some formula for bottles for Matthew, and eggs.  The eggs contributed to a breakfast of french toast (one of our favorite weekend breakfasts.)  Then I headed out to do some catch-up work before a meeting that Suzanne and I had at Father Pat's rectory about Why Catholic. Then Mass, then I made a spectacular (if I do say so myself) dinner of lime-garlic-catfish soft tacos with fresh guacamole, chipotle salsa, and lettuce, served with a side of black beans.  Then Thomas and I went for some boys' time at Starbucks. He sweet-talked them (through many "food, please... food, pretty please, sugar on top..." trips to the counter) into some free samples of food that made his night.  Then I brought him home just in time for Suzanne to feed and put Matthew to bed while I bathed Thomas and put him to bed.

But even though I had a busy Saturday, the plants keep doing their thing... the spaghetti squash sprouts are just starting to poke through the soil and every one of the varieties of lettuce keep growing like weeds.  I imagine that within a week (or not much more) I'll have to figure out a way to move the lettuce outside in a protected way.

The bird feeders in the side yard provide a real treat in the yard.  Suzanne has really started to fall in love with the smaller birds that head for the bird feeder further out with the thistle seed.  She's commented on them several times.  Thomas loves the big birds that come to the feeder closer to the dining room window.  I've started to notice a rhythm in the times of day that the birds come to feed.  It's almost as if they actually have set "meal times" that they drop by and visit during, and they surprisingly fall closely in line with our own meal times.  Call me crazy, but it at least seems that way.

Today the Church celebrates "Divine Mercy Sunday", a beautiful feast that's relatively new in the Church's life (although it's been going on for several years in various localities, it was just made a part of the Universal Church's life in 2000 when Pope John Paul II declared it as such.)  It's a beautiful thing, in my opinion, to reflect - on the Second Sunday of Easter - on the boundless mercy that Christ has on all of mankind.

Also making this weekend special is the fact that this is the weekend that the Church proclaims the Gospel of "Doubting Thomas" - the Gospel (and Father Doody homily) of which led us to name our oldest son "Thomas."  Of course we look at it from the point of view of the faith that Thomas exhibited in his proclamation of "My Lord and my God!"  (And the fact that he was actually the only apostle who wasn't scared into locking himself in the upper room.)  But I suppose that's another entry for another day...