Happy Birthday, Blessed Mother!

The party started with 8:30 Mass followed by our regular weekly Novena to the Mother of Perpetual Help, then continued with breakfast. Bacon, eggs and pancakes with Nutella. And big coffees for the big folks.

Then the two older kids and I played what could be best described as an extended harmonica jam session. Around the same time, coincidentally I believe, mama left to go shopping. (Hey -- didn't she just go shopping a few days ago?)

Later on we'll make a cake with strawberries, the kids' favorite. Strawberries are a symbol for the Virgin Mother because they are simultaneously "in fruit and in flower". So there you go.

Paties rock, and my kids know how to party. If I were a poet like Wordsworth, I'd write something llike this:

MOTHER! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

But I'm not a poet, and I know it, so let's party. But go easy with the Nutella -- it's supposedly a mild laxative.