7 QTs: College Road Trip!

Hitching my wagon to Jen's  wagon train (get it? Road trip? Wagon?)

1) Waaaaaay back in December, my mom mentioned to me that Ave Maria University had decided to lower it's tuition by $5000 for the following year. This school had been on the very furthest edges of our periphery during Killian's senior year in high school, but, for various reasons was eliminated early on in the decision-making process. Given the fact that we were in the throes of a polar vortex and Killian wasn't having the most fun living at home and attending UIC, Kyle and I suggested to him that we visit Ave to "just check it out". (Yes, I was dying to get the heck out of Siberia)

2) Much to our surprise, Killian was on board with the idea and my dad generously paid for the airfare for Killian and myself (and lap-child, Will!) to visit at the end of January. Long story short, we were very impressed with the gorgeous, brand new campus and encouraged by the enthusiastic and well-educated faculty. Killian decided to apply.

3) Fast forward to this past May: Killian was accepted, all his credits transferred, and was awarded 2 scholarships! All-in-all, it was only $1500 more a year to live at and attend a better school! Winning!

The Indianapolis Speedway

The Grand Ole Opry!

4) And, so, we decided that most of us would make a week-long vacation out of the trip down to Florida to drop off Killian. (Joe and Maeve stayed with my parents, as their high schools had already begun the year. I hated that part.) You learn so much about your family on road trips. Things like, some kids are good at going long stretches without using a bathroom and some kids are good at sleeping for long stretches. Both of these qualities are seldom combined in the same child.

5) Killian's dorm suite is IN.SANE. 6 guys,  4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 huge study room. Pretty sure he's on vacation with a side of academia.

6) WE SWAM WITH WILD DOLPHINS! Apparently, a couple of the public beaches in Naples/Bonita Springs have regular visits from wild dolphins and manatees. We didn't quite understand how intensely cool this was until we were playing in the water with the kids and a pod of dolphins came to play with us! They got as close as 2-3 feet from us and splashed with their tails, swam around us, and played hide and seek! I am not ashamed to say that I had tears streaming down my face. 

7) Our last night in Naples, we took our oldest baby out for a farewell dinner. As good as we feel about Killian being at Ave and as much as he seems to be loving it there, it still wasn't easy to hug and kiss him goodbye. Some of the younger siblings really struggled with their emotions. Huge change in their very small worlds. 

We are so happy for and proud of Killian as he takes this really big step in his life! 

WWRW: Divergent

Joining Jessica because I actually read something!

Always late to the party, I finally read Divergent by Veronica Roth. In a word: underwhelming.

Since this book (and it's series) has been out for a while, I won't waste much time giving a book report. Basically, it's another young adult novel set in a dystopian future-Chicago. Some nameless war in years past has caused the society to split into 4 factions based on certain personality traits, and in Amish fashion, when a person reaches 16 s/he can choose which faction in which s/he will live out the remainder of her/his life.

We good?

The main character, "Beatrice/Tris", is revealed to be "divergent" when she undergoes the customary testing at age 16. This means she exemplifies strong characteristics of more that one faction and this is viewed as "bad". 

Blah, blah, blah. Fast forward past where she is advised to hide her "divergency", chooses a new faction, and is forced to abandon her parents and brother. 

This is where it began to lose all touch with any kind of reality for me. The violent and brutal initiation rites of the new faction, the quickly-formed rock-solid friendships, the ever-present references to physical sexual feelings (not overt, just overdone) did not feel "human" or "realistic" to me. 

For me, a story can be as far-fetched as Harry Potter, but still be "real" because the conversations between characters and the development of the characters themselves are true to human beings and our nature. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is a good example of a plot that is far-fetched made even worse by poor dialogue and an unwillingness to "act human" on the part of the characters. This was never more evident as when the book was made into a movie and most intelligent people could easily hear and see the odd way the characters acted and conversed.

So it goes with Divergent. When I spoke some of the phrases out loud, I was faced immediately with the idea that no 2 people would ever really speak this way to one another. 

Divergent was a big "meh" in my opinion and I have no desire to read the rest of the series. And, I have even less desire to watch the movie. 

What is the fascination with this book?

Five Favorites: Road Trip Lifesavers!

Joining the gorgeous Heather this week!

Last night, we arrived home from a week-long road trip to drop off Killian at Ave Maria University. (More on how he came to the decision to transfer in my 7 QTs on Friday.) It was an amazing trip; long, bittersweet, and filled with beautiful memories. 

But, let's back it up a bit to the word "long". 

Chicago to Ave Maria, Florida is a 21 hour drive. 

We chose to break it down into a 2-day drive each way. That makes it just bearable. Our 2 high school kids had already started back to school, so they stayed with my parents, while the 4 youngest (and Killian!) came along. Knowing that I would have those younger kids to entertain without the help of fun older siblings, I began furiously pinning road trip ideas back in April, and I found some real gems!

I would love to share my 5 favorite sanity-saving road trip ideas with you today....

1) The dollar store is your BFF. I bought small cookie sheets for each child to use as trays for snacks and activities. This idea proved even more ingenious when I found magnetic games for the 4, 7, and 11 year old. But, what about 2.5 year old Will? Read on!

2) Magna-Tiles are from Jesus. I have sung the praises of Magna-Tiles before, but I have never loved them more than I have this past week. Will can play with them for long stretches of time, and because they are magnetic, the cookie sheets were the perfect "play table" for them: no dropped pieces! They also were a nice, quiet toy to play with in boring hotel rooms.

3) Pack intelligently. We knew that the first couple of nights we would be moving from hotel to hotel to hotel. I decided that I would pack a couple of outfits for each person into a smaller suitcase, so we could leave the bigger suitcases in the car until we arrived at the hotel with the longest stay. And, always include swimsuits on top! Hotel pools were the perfect way to get kids to work off the restless energy they had built up all day in the car.

4) Take the free breakfast! No matter what, choose a hotel that serves a free breakfast! Aside from the money-saving feature (we figured we saved $42 each day), it's super nice to stumble down from your hotel room to a ready-made breakfast (some of us may have dined in our PJs...).

5) Ain't no shame in bringing a potty chair and a roll of paper towels! Will was at a crucial point -- no turning back! -- in his potty-training when we embarked on our trip and hadn't yet mastered "holding it". Having his little potty chair in the car saved us from having to stop eleventeen-hundred times that first day. And, the roll of paper towels sure came in handy as poor Will puked his way through Atlanta on our return trip! 

I learned lots of other tricks -- as well as, some ideas that did not work so well -- and I'd be happy to share those if anyone is interested! Just ask away in the combox!

More on the decision, the trip, and beautiful Ave on Friday!

Theme Thursday: Google Me

Cari chose today's theme to prove that my name is as common as my face...

Kidding. (Right, Cari? You didn't, did you?)

Anyway, I googled my name, clicked "images" and got this:

Nope. Not me. And, no offense Other Mary Kate Dempsey, but I don't want to look like you.

A few more pics and I got this:

Strike dos. Although, I would love to have a room that looks like this.....once the kids are grown and moved out and bring the grandkids dressed in hazmat suits. 

Soooo, where the hel-eck-eck-HECK am I? 

There I is!! 

8 pictures down. I'm so famous.

And, for the promised bonus points, here is the screen shot:

(As you can imagine, googling my name

also elicits a lot of Olsen Twins images. I liked Full House, so I will forgive Mary-Kate Olsen's use of a hyphen, but Ashley? As my husband says, "she's a no-talent hack.".)

Happy googling!!!

Five Favorites: Do You Have Hello Kitty Weed?

Linking up with the perfectly perfect Heather for a round of Five Favorites.....

A little backstory first:

Last Friday, I had my scheduled abdominal hernia surgery. It's been something I've been happily avoiding since Will was born, nearly 2.5 years ago, but it was time and we really like our general surgeon, so I scheduled it.

 It was supposed to be same-day surgery, which was a huge relief to both Kyle and I, but it very nearly ended up not being that way. 

Apparently, I wasn't very cooperative about lying still while under heavy sedation and kept asking for Kyle, so they put me under general anesthesia. Also, the hernia was pretty large. 

After recovery, they gave me the option of staying for a day or two, or going home. You bet your sweet bippy that I got as dressed as fast as I could and made Kyle take me home!

Some interesting things happened during recovery and over the last few days, and they are fast becoming my favorite stories to share ---- also because I'm home-bound and this is the only material I have.

1) As I became more awake and lucid during recovery, my nurse leaned over and asked me "do you remember what you said to me when you were first coming out?". Of course, my answer was "um, no??". She gave me this huge smile and said, "you said, 'Did you guys give me Abs of Steel?'".

credit here

2) Since I've had 7 c-sections, I know a little bit about recovering from surgery, and I tried to have as much of my surroundings planned out and prepared beforehand. Staying hydrated is really important, especially when you are taking painkillers, but it can be difficult to move your body in order to actually consume beverages. That's where this comes in handy:

The "Catholic" part is optional, but why take the chance?

3) Kyle generously took a week's vacation to stay home and care for me and the kids, and I tried to have a few things planned out for them, so they wouldn't go stir crazy. In all of my preparations, I forgot about entertaining me! Fortunately, my awesome youngest sister showed up the night before my surgery with an armful of magazines and bags of bite-size candies! 

4) Kyle has been doing all the jobs I normally would do this week and that includes a lot of driving. In Illinois, you are required to use a hands-free device with your cell phone while driving. So, Kyle has been using his voice recognition texting to send messages. The technology may not be perfect. Here is a sample of his texts to me:

And my sister texting me after receiving his texts:

Joe was working at the pool's concession stand and Kyle wanted to ask him about the funnel cakes. This is the text Joe received: "Do you have Hello Kitty Weed?", to which Joe replied, "No, we don't have weed of any kind. Sorry."

5) One final not-so-favorite: a prayer request for me. Apparently, I have contracted a staph infection in the vein where my IV was placed. I'm on heavy-duty antibiotics, but staph in the bloodstream isn't anything to mess around with, so prayers for a quick healing would be very much appreciated. I promise to offer up any discomfort for your intentions! 

Theme Thursday: SWIM!

Woo-hoo!

"Cari is back! With her own invention! Camera grabs an image tightly! I am clickin' daily and nightly!"

(Yes, I just commemorated my friend and her link up with a Vanilla Ice song; so what?)

This week's theme is "Swim". So apropos!

We've done a lot of swimming and splashing over the last few weeks -- at the pool, the zoo's splash pad, and in our little lake. So, without further ado,

I give you The Dempsey Swim:

Twenty Years: The Gift of Platinum

Tomorrow, --June 18, 2014-- marks twenty years of the most joyful, growth-filled, spiritual, nail-biting, infuriating, hilarious years of my life. And, I am privileged to have shared it all with my (yeah, I'm going to say it!) soulmate and best friend, Kyle.

Hallmark tells me that the modern day gift for the twentieth anniversary is platinum. Now, I don't know about you, but I really knew nothing about the actual metal, so I looked it up. Among other things, platinum is 'a dense, malleable,ductile, highly unreactive, precious, gray-white transition metal. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina, which is literally translated into "little silver".'

Some of those words easily define the past 20 years: "precious", "transition". But...

Ductile?

Malleable?

"In materials science, ductility is a solid material's ability to deform under tensile stress; this is often characterized by the material's ability to be stretched into a wire. Malleability, a similar property, is a material's ability to deform under compressive stress; this is often characterized by the material's ability to form a thin sheet by hammering or rolling."

Whoa. 

Yes. Oh, yes, my friends. Kyle and I have been stretched and rolled thin, re-formed, --at times, deformed-- stressed. What couple married for 20 years hasn't been?

We have co-created 10 souls. Ten immortal beings who will forever be our most precious and permanent gift from God and to His kingdom.

Three of those gifts forever reside with Our Lord.  As painful as it was to lose them, we completed our task as parents and got them to Heaven. Those three, I don't worry about. They are platinum. They are saints.

Seven of those gifts currently reside with us. They are maniacs. Beautiful, talented, loving, funny, demanding maniacs. They are platinum, as well. One day, they better be saints, too.

When Kyle and I became engaged at the tender age of 19, we met with a substantial amount of objections from various family members and friends. Not all, but many more than we anticipated. I say this not to "rub their noses in it", but as a reminder to myself and to all of you that not one of us can ever know what the graces of God's sacraments can do in our lives. 

As confident as Kyle and I were in each other's love and in God's plan for us, there was no way we could have known how much we would come to rely on His Grace to follow His Will. There was no way we could have understood how we would have been tested and stretched and rolled. There was no way we could

have known how all of that would make our love for each other and our love for God stronger and more beautiful. And, there was no way that any of those concerned and disbelieving people in our lives could have known any of this, either. 

Some days, 20 years feels like 40 years. Some days, it feels like only one year. 

Some days, I'm amazed at how we've somehow cobbled together this beautiful life. Some days, I'm amazed that it's still evolving.

If I've learned one thing in the past 20 years, it's this: we aren't finished learning. We will continue to be tested and to grow. We will welcome new joys and face new struggles. And, guess what? I want it to be this way! 

That's how the metal transforms. That's how it shows what it can be. That's how it comes more beautiful. That's how it grows stronger. The transformation isn't the beautiful part of the process, though. It's fierce and sweat-producing and difficult. Along the way, you begin to see glimpses of the finished product and it makes you appreciate the effort even more. It makes you willing to keep going. It brings joy into your soul.

So, to my wonderful Kyle: I love you. You are the perfect complement to my insanity. For our children, you are the embodiment of God the Father's love here on Earth. For me, you are the embodiment of Jesus' love for humankind. We always have known that choosing each other was "right", but is sure is nice to see it unfolding so beautifully. I'm glad --so glad-- to have this life with you.

We are platinum.