Cephalophore

Last Thursday Nicholas, Stephen, and Jonathan went to a Catholic trivia thing, and one of the questions was, “Which saint walked for six miles carrying his head?”. As it turns out St. Denis, after being decapitated, immediately picked up his head and walked about seven miles preaching about repentance.

St. Denis was the first bishop or Paris, (you know, before he was beheaded) having been assigned there by Pope Fabian. He and his two companions were converting people so effectively that the pagan priests became alarmed over their loss of followers and had St. Denis and his two companions arrested. Later St. Denis and his two friends were decapitated and, picking up his head, St. Denis became the first Cephalophore. Cephalophore is a Greek word which literally means “head-carrier”.

Though St. Denis was the first cephalophore there were many other saints who carried their head. In fact 134 were counted in France alone.

Twins?

Apparently Stephen just has one of those faces. People always think they have seen Stephen before, but they really haven’t, they just think that Stephen is Nicholas, or Jonathan, and occasionally even me! Lots of times people that Nicholas know, will talk to Stephen because they think he IS Nicholas. Yep, the amount of times Stephen has been asked if he is one of our twins is astounding. I guess I can understand thinking he is Nicholas or Jonathan’s twin, but ME! We look nothing alike. I think Stephen just needs to get his own face and stop looking like everyone else.

43301993.557

So we were doing the dishes, (Christopher, Jonathan, and I) and for some reason Christopher felt the need to brag about how great he thought his memory was. So Jonathan and I decided to test his amazing memory. We told him to remember 43301993.557… and he immediately forgot it. It really was an unfair test, but maybe Christopher’s memory isn’t quite as great as he thought it was.

Grade A!

So the other day Mom saw Jonathan siting at his desk scribbling on a piece paper. When she asked him what he was doing he said he was trying to figure out what grade he got in one of his classes. So Mom asked him the percentages were, and he said 95.84, 97.21, 97.21, 93.22, 98.43, 99.49, 82.13, and 92.72. Yeah… Mom told him an A is an A no matter how you add it.

Strange Quote of the Week

So, Yesterday while I was working on cleaning my room, suddenly I heard Jonathan say, “Trapped in the bathroom forever. There are worse ways to go.” I’m not sure why he said it, or if what he said makes any sense in context, but either way I think that goes on the list of strange things I thought I would never hear.

My Phone Really Hates Me

So I recently told you guys about that time I thought I lost my Phone and blamed it on my Jacket pockets. I was wrong my pockets were innocent, it turns out my phone hates me. It keeps dropping Mom’s calls or going straight to voicemail and when I finally got through to Mom it sounded like she was abducted by aliens. The worst part was when I tried to text mom thank you I ended up with “thighight” which isn’t even a word. Then instead of deleting this my phone sent it any way so from this point on my phone and I are at war.

The Shelf

So today I finished a brand new shelf!20161122_082723

Now all Stephen’s retro Lego can sit on top of it. And Nicholas, Stephen, Jonathan, and I can all store two of our favorite hats on it (the two I put up are on the left end). As cool as it may look though it’s not as if I came up with it. Dad designed the shelf I just built it. But now we have more room to store hats and Lego. Because who doesn’t need more room for Lego.

On the Feast of the Epiphany I Gave to My Family…

Stuffed animals!

Presents Under the Tree

Actually, the animals acted as kind of a tag for the presents, but the only people who knew who got which stuffed animal were the people giving the gifts.  This way, people couldn’t try to guess what they were getting based on their box’s shape and size.

Plus, the presents looked really good with the stuffed animals on top of them.  My favorite was this one.

It just had the best combination of bow, paper, and animal.

But before I get into all that I think I should address the elephant in the room…Get off the table Dumbo!

Okay I feel better, but seriously, if I were reading my writings I would be thinking, “How did you get gifts on Friday, I thought you got presents on the Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Well we do, we give and receive gifts on each of the twelve days of Christmas (starting with Christmas and ending on the eve of the feast of the Epiphany) and we get presents on the Epiphany.  After all the Epiphany is when the first Christmas gifts were actually exchanged (you know: gold, frankincense, and  myrrh).  Thus, we receive a total of thirteen gifts for one Christmas.

Today was the last day of gift giving and as is customary the older boys took charge of the gifts (Nicholas, Jonathan, and I). Not only did we give great gifts (I’m trying to be humble here, but that was just so alliterative), but in a spurt of inspiration I took pictures of the gifts while people opened them!  I know I should have been doing this all along, but it didn’t occur to me until the last day (of course).  Since I did the pictures correctly for once, I figured I should write about them correctly and do it in the order we opened them, instead of some arbitrary order of age.

And so without further ado, I (finally) bring you what I advertised in the title of the post…

We started the unwrapping with Dad, but he shared his gift with Mom so they opened their gift together 

They got pillows!  Not just any pillows, but really good, goose down pillows.  Mom specifically told us earlier the year that she wanted new pillows, but was too cheap to buy them.Also, in case you’re wondering they got a stuffed kangaroo and dingo (you can see them on the furniture behind Mom and Dad).

Next, we had Veronica open her gift (she had a bird tag).When she opened her box, she found a poor Cinderella doll!  As soon as she saw the doll she shouted , “It’s poor Cinderella!”

So I think she knew who it was supposed to be.
She was really excited, but she then she got…another gift!This was…another Cinderella doll!  This was the rich Cinderella.

Okay, with Veronica done, we then proceeded in order of age.

Robert opened next, and was very surprised when he got a sword! Well no, he didn’t get  sword, he got two.It was a two pack of short gladiator style swords.  They come with a scabbard so you can wear them on your back. Oh, and he also got a black bear stuffed animal.

Next Christopher opened his gift. He got a raccoon! Oh, and a broadsword.

Anne opened next (she got a stuffed chipmunk (it just made sense)).

She also got a vintage style pink gingham turntable (no we didn’t get her a sword).Now she can listen to records in her room.

Nathaniel got, you guessed it, a sword.

We gave him a samurai katana, because he already owns a broadsword, (he wrote a post about it earlier).

We also gave Nathaniel a stuffed fox because Mom and Dad dubbed him a fox due to his love for eggs (don’t worry, he cooks them).
note: these pictures are shown out of order.

Now to ease any worried minds, these swords are all dulled.  Furthermore, there are strict rules in place in our house about the use of swords (everyone has rules about such things, right?).  No one is allowed to use their sword, sharp or dull on anything, but a practice dummy.

 

Next Jonathan opened his present, and no he didn’t get a sword…He got an ax! This weapon was not dull.  He also got a blue lizard (I’m really glad that he dressed to match it).

Next I opened (being older than Jonathan (Nicholas was kind enough to take the pictures).  Nicholas and Jonathan gave me a very nice pair of sunglasses.  My eyes are very sensitive to light so I always end up squinting in our new home in The Sunshine State.These shades were very nice, and very stylish.
See? I look good. Oh, I also got a stuffed hedgehog.

Then Nicholas opened his giftIt was a hat, but not just any hat, a cowboy style hat.  I looked for a while trying to find one like they wore in the movie The Man from Snowy River.

Here’s a better picture of the hat.  On the floor the children are opening their final gift of the year.

It was our old Agents Lego.  You might not know the Agents theme, but it was extremely cool and when they first came out we bought all of the first wave of sets.  We’ve owned them for some time and the little ones have always been jealous of them.

On a final note, today a piece of Nathaniel’s scabbard came off, so we returned it, but we didn’t have to send it back so now Anne has a sword too! Great ending, huh?

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas My Family Gave to Me…

Crafts!

In case you can’t tell from the picture, Dad got a coloring book for his favorite holiday movie, the Christmas classic, Die Hard!The authorized coloring book.  This was the only day that Mom took charge of this Christmas that Dad didn’t know what he was getting.  He was quite surprised

I am writing this post on the evening of the eleventh day, while my father and I watch this feel good, Christmas show and all I can think is that I should have taken pictures of the gifts individually to highlight how cool they are (I took the pictures in the morning just after we opened the gifts).  Unfortunately, now everyone is playing with their crafts (including Dad) so I will have to make do cropping the original picture.

Mom got these
A paper doll chain of robots!

Nicholas can now create puppets!Although, I can’t help but feel he got this gift because it had a cowboy on the package.

I now have four paper automatas (I don’t know what the word means either, but they’re little machines that move when you turn a crank) to cut out, fold, and glue together.

Jonathan got a connect the dot book, but not a little kid connect the dots.  No, this is a big, one-thousand dot book (the book doesn’t have a thousand dots, every puzzle does!).  To make the gift even cooler the pictures are all Marvel characters.  The only problem with the booklet is that the numbers for the dots are tiny!  Well at least Jonathan has a use for his new, pocket microscope.

Now Nathaniel got a very cool gift, he can now make fifty paper monsters!Nathaniel and I really like monsters, not that we like monsters, but we find them interesting artistically, so this was a very good gift.

Speaking of artistically Anne got these very cool mid-century modern style birds.
Yes, she had already built them ten minutes after she opened them!

Christopher got dragons and wizards to construct.
What more can I say, dragons are cool!

Now as I’m sure you noticed from the big picture someone broke the theme a little.  It was Robert, I mean Lego is a craft, but it’s not a paper craft, but Robert hadn’t gotten any Lego this year so Mom wanted to give him a set yesterday. This was a set from Lego’s new Lego Batman movie (or is it Lego Batman Movie).

With another Christmas wish fulfilled, we move to Veronica.  She got this craft set of paper dolls.In conclusion another fun and exiting day.  Tomorrow, the Twelfth Day!