Hurrah for 2008!

The news has been full of retrospectives on 2008, mostly along the lines of, "Good riddance to a bad year!" However, my favorite retrospective appeared not too long ago in Mutts. I can't reproduce the comic here, but it went something like . . . "Well, goodbye to 2008!  . . . Spring came, and flowers grew! . . . The sun sparkled on waves! . . . Bees pollinated, birds hatched, butterflies fluttered! . . . What a year!"

The strip startled me into the realization that it really has been a good year--for all those reasons and more. So here is my list of blessings from 2008, in no particular order:

• B received his first Communion and Reconciliation, and gave both two thumbs up.
• J finally left diapers behind for the wonderful world of toilets (that alone should make my year)
• M's first stories and drawings are a delight
• Speaking of stories, I began work on a children's book about bellybuttons that I hope to finish in the New Year
• Mmmm, tomatoes! We had a bumper crop this year, in several different varieties
• I boxed up nearly 18 boxes of junk for storage in the basement
• Ashley Cleveland's new album, which I am listening to as I write this, is a bit of musical joy
• So many good things are happening at our local parish, including an affort to revitalize faith formation that is finally taking hold and the blossoming of the parenting group that I started with a few friends last year.
• The children continue to grow in faith. Halloween night, M said: "I want to become a saint when I grow up." B said, "Me too." And J said, "I don't want to be a saint! I want to be a mom when I grow up!" B and M have the Nicene Creed almost memorized, and ask wonderful questions.
• Hey, we're financially solvent--barely, admittedly, but at least we can claim to be better financial managers than, oh, AIG, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, CitiBank, the Federal Reserve, and the SEC. Combined.

 Yep, 2008 was quite a year. Here's to 2009.

Mutually Exclusive?

So...as we're tooling from place to place in the car on Halloween night, we start talking about the original meaning of Halloween as the "hallowed eve"--the evening before the holy feast of all saints. We start talking about the saints in general and M puts in that she wants to be a saint when she grows up. "Me too!" says B. Then J screws up her face in a contrarian scowl: "I don't want to be a saint when I grow up! I want to be a mom!"

The cherry on top of this conversation? M rebutts with: "Well, you can't be a saint until you're dead anyway."

You can read my spouse's version of this story over at the Ironic Catholic, where you can also find plenty of comments about it--my favorite of which is, "So...she's going for martyrdom, then?"

Quotable Kids: Why Santa is an environmentalist

From the mouth of M:

"Santa Claus is really worried about global warming, because he lives in one of those cold places!"