"Today for YOU a Savior is Born..and His name Is..

Christ the Lord... You will know it is He- For you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a major"

Merry Christmas to One and All!!!
Buon Natale a Tutti!!
Feliz Navidad a Todos!

Joy to the World!! The Lord is Come! Let Earth Receive Her King! Let every Heart, prepare him room!!

Good Tidings we Bring, to You and Your Kind- Good Tidings for Christmas and  a Happy New year!

Silent Night.. Holy Night.. Son of God, Love's Pure Light.. Radiant Beams from Thy Holy Face, With the Dawn of Redeeming Grace- Jesus Lord at Thy Birth!

Come They Told Me pa-rum-pa-pum-pum- A new Born king to See!!

O Holy Night, the stars are brigtly shining- It is the night, of Our Dear Saviors Birth.

He can turn the tide and calm the angry sea... He alone decides who writes a symphony.. He will take the time to hear a childs first prayer- Saint or Sinner Call and Always Find Him There! He'll Always Say, I Forgive.

Oh Come Let Us Adore Him- Christ The Lord!!!

The Newly Arrived Baby Jesus in our Family presepio (nativity scene)

  Merry Christmas  and A Happy New year!!

XOXOXO
C

Positive reinforcement from Halls..

My sister gave me a package of Halls honey-lemon cough drops to help me get through the dry cough my cold has left me with, and upon opening the package I was pleasantly surprised.

When I pulled out the first wrapped losenge, I read the following message.. "keep your chin up". That's right, my Halls was giving me some positive reinforcement. I thought this was the neatest idea ever so I took some pictures of the other wrappers I've encountered in this package for you.

Thanks Halls, for reminding me that I can overcome these physical obstacles that come with a cold :)

Definitely helped me feel better :D

Xoxo
C

P.s in case its not too clear, the first picture has the messages "you've survived tougher." And "you can do it and you know it". The second pic has the messages "march forward!" and "don't try harder. Do Harder!" . Cool right?

You know its almost Christmas because...

In our family, we know that we are nearing Christmas because the masses double, everyone gets sick and my mom remembers that we misplaced the "capanna" (manger) for our "presepio" (nativity scene) :D

We went to get our Albero di Natale (christmas tree) last week and it sat ourside for 6 days.. which is fine because trees belong outside, except as usual my dad decided to do the fresh cutting (means taking an inch off the end of the trunk so it'll drink water)on day two and then leave it outside 4 more days.. Which is exactly what he did last year and our tree barely have any pine needles left by Befana (January the 8th).

  Anyway we had to wait a week to put the tree in the stand because my parents were getting the carpet professionally cleaned.. but we managed to put the tree up on Saturday without much trouble- although my dad forgot to screw the grate onto the the trunk bottom for the stand... and like always, on Sunday we went to decorate it and we ended up having to pull the tree out of the stand and put the grate on because the tree started tipping forward.

By the end of Sunday we had the tree all decorated and lit up and my sisters and I, along with our new bro-in-law sat in front of it and enjoyed some tea and ginger snaps and christmas records- that's right records! It was really a nice way to end the evening..

We're working on the Presepio but my mom put its together so its going at her pace- pictures to follow!

Below are some pictures of our masterpiece tree- with all the old school mismatching ornaments we've had since before I was born :) and of course the lights that we put on every year after complaining we ought to change them.. enjoy!

Xoxo
C

December first and...

There's snow on the ground!!! The end of November brought the first snow fall to our little neck of the "true north strong and free" which has remained on the ground, covering bushes and benches and grass and walkways from one end of the city to the other.
Its astounding how a little bit a snow- we barely got half an inch- makes people forget how to drive and can cause accidents left, right, and centre. Oh Canada, how easily we forget  what this "broad domain"  looks like for 5 months of the year! Luckily, no one in my family had much trouble... although I believe my one of my brothers-in-law couldn't get out of a parkinglot on account of the slippery black ice and did in fact slide right back into the parkingspot from which he was trying to vacate.
Another interesting story I heard among my communication channels last night is about a dear friend of mine who left his place of work in Mississauga at 3:30pm and didn't get home until 10pm because traffic was bumper to bumper at less than 10 km/hr. And even though his unidirectional tires were on backwards, he made it safely- don't worry, he's a mechanic and knows what he's doing about tires, just didn't anticipate the snow...
Anyway, I think the city looks wonderful covered in white- even though I had to shovel it when I got home last night twice over because it was still snowing. The roads were rather icy thanks to the initial icy-rain that had fallen but the city sanded and salted valiantly so I have no accidents to report that I witnessed.
Figured you'd like to see what our first snow fall looks like. Enjoy! Comment and/or email :)
Xoxo
C

Happy Birthday To Me!!!

It's the fifteenth day of the eleventh month of the year two thousand and twelve.

An hour and twenty minutes ago today, my mother was in the hospital bringing me into the world.

Today I am 23 years old.  God, thank you for giving my parents the ability and the desire to create a new life.  Mom, thank you for carrying me for nine months and for bringing me into the world.. thank you for your scars and pain. I owe you my life.

<3

I woke up and turned on my computer so I could blog and start writing my novel again... and when firefox opened up I was given a most wonderful and curious surprise!

This is what my Google homepage looked like...

                                                                             

So thanks to the wonders of connected technology, with my gmail and google+, Google in its wonderfully thoughtful (or thoughtless??) wisdom personalized my Google homepage! When I scrolled over the image to see why it was birthday-i-fied, I saw my message! I then proceeded to Google "how to take a screen shot with windows" and then I took a picture. My cell phone just couldn't capture it clearly enough... Anyway its cool and It made me smile!

I also got wished a Happy Birthday by my 3 year old niece- I don't think she's said it herself to anyone of our family members before me so.. GO Me! Who's the favourite aunt now?!?!! 

*giggles* 

Well I hope you have a great day, I am going to be writing the day away and I hope I can knock off at least 5000 words. Wish me luck! 

XOXO

C

"Working 9 to 5"

Last week one of the parishes I belong to celebrated its 90th anniversary.. which was insane!

The pastor and secretary asked me to help out in the office and were willing to pay me for some of the hours which was cool... I ended up working something like 70 hours from Tuesday to Saturday and then on Sunday we had the celebration in church and at a fancy reception hall in our city.. my brother in law sliced his hand before mass started- he was helping the florist bring in the church vases and it was wet and the lady going up the stairs ahead of him stopped abruptly and he lost his grip and the glass vase shattered in his hands... so on top of the hysterical sister I had to deal with, I still had to check with coordinators, help priests with their vestments and sing for the Bishop! My bro-in-law is fine, he went to the hospital that day and got his wound cleaned and all is well. I thought my sister was going to faint on me during the mass- its traumatic for a young bride when her new husband gets injured.. or so I'm told.

So After singing the mass with my sisters, I got roped into helping at the dinner togive ticket holders their table numbers. And as per usual it was chaos! We had 560 people, so of course it was a giant mass of unruly absurdity but we managed to get through it and there were no injuries to be reported there thank God.

Needless to say I had a busy first week of November which hasn't calmed down yet. I've been going into the church office all this week to because the mass book for 2013 just opened and its chaos in there again! We had two funerals and three masses to sing from Monday onward this week which has been great but vocally exhausing. And I also got an interview for a store in the mall I applied for back in early September which was scary but exciting. I'm still waiting to hear from the manager and I can't stop staring at my cell phone waiting for the call.

So because of all this, I've only been able to clock in 4000 words on my novel for this years NANORWRIMO but I'm looking forward to a productive weekend of literary abandon! So though tired and weak, strained and lacking sleep I shall endeavor to write on faithfully- even I don't finish my novel til Feb 21st like my NANO word count tracker tells me!

Happy writing to you all..

Xoxo

Nanowrimo: the first week

We are now just over the first week of NANOWRIMO and I've written 4000 words. Not the best start to my novel but were moving along- even if it has been at a snails pace. I am really beginning to enjoy my novel and while I haven't had much time to write it, I am going to continue trying my best to make it to the 50k finish line...

My novel is a sort of pseudo-memoire/personal history and in it you read about two people's lives that run parallel to one another's. A 25 year old woman receives her beloved and now deceased Aunt's journals and discovers much about the life of the woman she grew up loving and admiring that she never believed could be true. The recounting of her aunts life takes place in journal entry form which is not date or time stamped. The niece discovers that life for a woman in a small town (hers) and life for a woman from the big city (her aunts) are not so very different as she thought with regards to love, emotions, coming of age and change; spirituality, age and sexuality, relationships and the future. She realises that anyone and everyone can have a "tainted past" and still live honestly, in goodness and remain close to God. The young woman also learns that while in some cases (in her life and her aunts) blood runs thicker than water, it is still possible to break the restrictive and constricting ties that bind.

All in all it should be a very rewarding novel and an emotional rollercoaster for this aspiring authoress :D

I wonder if it will be on the bookstore shelves one day...

Forward... write!

Xoxo
C