A Year in Review

Well, it's the end of 2007! A brief recap of the past year....


January

Well, lets see, me and sis Megan got our braces on, (where's the picture... can't find it), and Rebecca got her appendix out, around the same time, so we all sat and moaned in pain together. (Very fun!) Another very important occurence was watching the movies "Gods and Generals" and Gettysburg". Why important? Because those are the two movies which transformed me from someone who didn't know anything about the Civil War, and really didn't care, to a person who is fanatically interested in anything pertaining or related to it. If you're interested, I'll write more about that later.


February
My mom read the book "Mother Angelica" by Raymond Arroyo, and our lives were never the same after! First, we heard about Hanceville Alabama and The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Next... well that comes next month! :)

March

All right, next we went down to Hanceville for a Lenten pilgrimage, stopping at Shiloh National Military Park on the way down. (Shiloh is a Civil War battle site, not to mention a place with gorgeous scenery.)


After leaving Shiloh and getting lost in Tennessee at 11:00 at night, we found ourselves in Hanceville. It was very hot, and we were all sick, but we had a wonderful time at the beautiful shrine nonetheless. In fact we liked it so much that... wait, that comes in September.

April
Anthony's 2nd birthday, and we found ourselves immersed in practice for our Little Flowers Catholic Dance and Theater Troupe play "Remember Me".

May

This month was entirely consumed by the play, so I'll put a few pictures here. All of the girls (Me, Megan, Teresa, Rebecca and Mary Rose) had a great time acting with our dad!

Okay, one picture.

June

We got a camper! It's the only vehicle that I have ever seen that can make our large 15 passenger van look small. We named it "Cherry", which isn't terribly original considering it's short for 'Cherokee', the kind of trailer it is. Appropriately, the first song we heard on Cherry's radio when we brought it home was "Every Mile a Memory", by Dierks Bentley.

July

This was a really full month! The first week was spent by Me, Meg and Teresa at the Miles Jesu Ave Cor Marie Summer Girls Camp. (Referred to as 'camp'.) We had loads of fun, as always! The week we got home started Driver's Ed for me! Very fun, and it was the first time I had ever been to a public school. That's finished, and now I'm working on getting in my 50 hours of driving time. During a 1-week break that I had from DE, my family and I headed out to Gettysburg National Military Park in PA. Now that was fun, especially for a huge history and Civil War buff like myself! We also stopped at the Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg MA. But even there we couldn't get away from Civil War lore! Apparently the Union Army was camped on the grounds of the Sisters of Charity (St. Elizabeth's order) in June 1863. The sisters were afraid that a battle would take place there, so they prayed, and instead the battle occurred at Gettysburg.



August

After a lot of thought and prayer, we left the parish of Saint Mary's, where we've gone since I was about 5, so 10 years, and transferred to Saint John's, in a slightly closer town. Us kids resisted at first, but then we met Fr. Ariel, a totally phenomenal priest who loves kids, and now we couldn't imagine leaving. (You should hear his homilies! They're fantastic.)

And this is... us with Father. He's the one with the blue shirt on. (no not the one with his eyes rolled back, the other person with the blue shirt on, the one that's smiling.)

September

The Sandwich Fair! Always a lot of fun. Megan, Teresa and Rebecca were all in the fiddle contest, and I won a "Peoples Choice Award" for a photograph that I took! It's, um let's see, where is it, aha! This one.

Cool, huh?
End-ish of September we traveled back down to Hanceville for a week of dicernment. Are we called to open a Catholic campground down there, or not? We all believe that God is calling us to do this, but for the moment, that pot is on the back burner, but still simmering. We did find a piece of land down there that would be perfect for a campground though....

October

This month was more of a wind-down month, to the best of my recollection. Oh yes, I took my very first collage leval course - Puplic Speaking 101 or something like that. Fun, but the textbook was awful.

November

My blog! Need I say more? Though I must confess, I hated it at first, and asked myself why in the world I started a blog, but then I took a week's break from the computer and am enjoying this web home a lot! (In case thou hast not noticed.)

December

Well, begining of the month, the LFCDandTT did a preformance of the "Silent Nativity", which you saw the slideshow for. I was a townsperson named Miriam, and also the founder/ringleader of TASOK. (Townspeople Against Slave-Owning Kings.) Here I am with two of my sidekicks. Don't we look so fearsom?

Left to right: Havila (AKA Victoria), Miriam (AKA me) and Lydia (AKA Veronica)

And also, of course... Christmas! I haven't gotten a chance to talk about it yet, so I shall now. We spent Christmas Eve with my mom's side of the family, and at Midnight Mass, me, Megan and Teresa and Rebecca brought up the gifts! Christmas Day we opened presents and went to dad's side of the family and... opened more presents. I got Teresa the Pirates of the Caribbean 3 soundtrack, which she was very excited about, um, I think. (This year we drew names from a hat, in lieu of buying gifts for each sibling. That way they would get something more meaningful/useful.) The day before Christmas we had the Rockwood Family Christmas Party (Dad's side), and I learned from my great-aunt that my great-great grandfather was in the army during Woodrow Wilsons presidency and was one of the people gaurding the Mexican-American border. Yesterday was the Vimarco Family Christmas Party (Mom's side) and my 17 yr old second-cousin(who knows more about politics than anyone else under 35 that I know) argued politics with my grandpa, mom, dad, his dad, and his uncle for about one hour, with my great-aunt jumping in occasionally. Talk about entertainment for the whole family!

So I think I've caught up to myself. Have a Happy New Year and leave a footnote!