Today I'm 12 Weeks!!! PHEW!

So today I find myself 12 weeks pregnant!  This is a time for me to take a deep breath!  "Pheew!"  Most studies say that we are in a much "safer" place my pregnancy now.  Baby's about 2 1/2" long and this week will begin to really develop "reflexes"  These are pictures I got of other babies 12 weeks along.  (Sad that some are actually from abortions... anyone who says this isn't a baby is crazy.  

The first one is of an 11 week old "fetus" ...baby!

(3D ultrasound... not our baby)

...this week "Baby Fullen" will make more facial expressions and be able to squint his/her eyes because reflexes are developing this week....

 ...little fingers will be bending and flexing...

...if this Baby is anything like Shaun, we've got a big time thumb sucker on our hands...

...sigh, Pretty awesome, huh?...

Tonight I go for a lil' checkup to make sure everything's ok.  Shaun's going to physical therapy (I tell him his shoulder/arm needs to be healed and strong enough to hold this baby when it's born, so he has to take good care of it!)  Say a little prayer for us ok?  .

Following in the footsteps of St. Joseph

So this past Saturday was the Feast of "St. Joseph the Worker".  Shaun & I have a very strong love of this quiet, faithful, strong, humble and decisive man who was chosen to be the "foster" father of Our Lord.  He's always been a good friend to both of us.  Shaun used to say that "St. Joseph gave you to me" and I found out later that before we were together, he had been praying to St. Joseph for me... while I'd been praying too. ...eventually He brought the two of us together in his quiet, patient way.

We began our Saturday at morning Mass and then Shaun went off with a bunch of his friends in typical "St. Joseph style" to go build some "cells" (or rooms) for the Franciscan Sisters in the area. 

He of course could not actually do much of the "heavy work" due to his shoulder injury, but instead ingeniously roped in some of his friends to help.  He worked until later in the eve for the sisters and I thought of him throughout the day working just like our good St. Joseph.  I'm very lucky to have him as a husband... just wish I was a bit more like Mary.  Not quite, yet though.  I have a way of getting into a little too much trouble at times.  My name may have changed to "Fullen" by marriage, but by birth I'm "Lokitis" (which means "Wild one".  Loki is also the Greek God of mischief.  What can I say?  The deck was stacked against me from the beginning people!!! ...but I digress.)

Following his day of work, Shaun-boy brought some company home for a late "St. Patrick's type dinner" of corned beef & cabbage... of course with the good ole' Italian pastry of Zepoles (traditional on the Feast of St. Joseph). 

During the evening I would recieve little visits to the kitchen for "I love you's" and "thank you's" from a grateful husband as well as some stolen kisses as I prepared the meal and later during the evening I found myself looking at my good husband while he cleared and did the dishes for everyone (silently as the conversation continued at the table) all the while thanking God for this man like St. Joseph.  Shaun might think St. Joseph gave me to him... but I think it's the other way around... and boy am I grateful! 

Thoughts on a Friday afternoon...

So I'm 11 1/2 weeks today.  I'm thinking about the baby all the time.  I've now told many of the classes at school and the kids are all SOOOOO excited that Mrs. Marijanna's going to have a baby!  They all want to touch my belly.   I often reach down and my shirt is sticky from someone's lip balm where they ran up and kissed my belly.  So cute.  I'm being bombarded with a million questions.  Including those from the children who are adopted and are eager explain to me that they were born in China or some other country.  I explain to them that God is helping my heart to fall more and more in love with my baby even before it's born and  the same thing happened when their mommy or daddy fell in love with them... SO much did they love them that they even traveled to another country and bring them home to be their son or daughter.  And when they met them, they said the same thing I will say when I lay eyes on my baby for the first time, "Ahh, so YOU are the one I've been falling in love with all this time!  I'm so glad you're mine!"

My really little ones in class ask me all the time how I'm feeling and how's the baby?  The older kids (by older I mean like 1st, 2nd or 3rd grade) run up to me in the hallway to hug me, bu often first come to a screeching halt, bow their heads and close their eyes... then they look up at me and say, "I prayed for you and the baby".  I'm so blessed.

Just thought I'd put this video on.   It's Friday (THANK GOD!!!) I always think of the sacrifice Jesus made for us on Friday to give us "birth" into life.  He wanted so much that we would live... really live our lives to the fullest with Him.  I can't help but think now about what an awesome thing it is that He is doing in me.  May He bring it to completion.

Happy St. Patty's day!

So, today is that famous Irish Holiday where all feel the need to go out and drink and party themselves into oblivion... right in the middle of Lent.  I never quite got that... perhaps I'm not Irish enough.  I'm actually not Irish at all.  (Lithuanian & Croatian) But Shaun-boy is... and so is this little one growing inside me.  I think that's so awesome.  I don't want to seem negative because I actually LOVE the Irish and everything Irish... Irish pictures, Ireland, Irish music, Irish accents, Irish sweaters, Irish looking children, even those Irish tempers (think Maureen O'Hara in "The Quiet Man" ...always have. 

Every year I read to my school children book after book about St. Patrick & remember what a great Saint he was and what an interesting story he had.  Amazing how someone who's actually from Britian could become the patron Saint of Ireland. 

Kidnapped as a youngster (after living a typical youthful life of mischief), he was brought to Ireland where he was sold as a slave and made to heard sheep for his master.  Upon being taken away from all luxuries and family he was accustomed to back home, he began to pray a LOT until God became his everything.  He prayed to be saved and after 6 long years of prayer and slavery... eventually escaped (after first having to walk 200 miles to the ship which would rescue him).  He went to France upon his freedom and studied to become a priest and then was made a bishop... where he was renamed "Patricius" (or Patrick... some say his original name was Maewyn)  When he was home he would have dreams where the people from Ireland would call to him to "Come walk among us again" and he knew he was meant to return.  (Can you imagine going back to the people who made you a slave???)  He did.  He returned and built churches and schools.  Although many times he was met with opposition and his life was sought after frequently... many people grew to love him and become converted to the Catholic faith from his kind example and God's grace working through him.  He died on March 17th... thus the reason we remember him on that day.

I just think he's a pretty awesome Saint and great example of perserverance and missionary heart.  St. Patrick... pray for us!

Chloë Agnew - Nella Fantasia

Life with Teenagers... already!

So this weekend we recieved a visit from Shaun's nephew, Martin.  (I didn't take pictures this weekend, but found some from when he visited for the Portuguese Feast this past Summer)

Here he is with Shaun's Mum.

Some of his siblings & cousin, Cheyanne.

Hangin' w/ Mom on the Hammock

Hogging the Hammock

and with his lovely gal, Jenna!

Martin asked "Uncle Shaun" to be his confirmation sponsor recently and we wanted to have him down for a visit to talk to him about getting ready to be confirmed and just get to know him a little better.  Turned out to be a BUSY weekend for a visit... more like a "Lenten Retreat" for this teen... and NO that wasn't planned, just happy coincidence.

Friday night Martin came down with 5 of his 6 brothers and sisters.  He's the oldest of 7 awesome "Fullens" and was probably shocked with the quiet time.  After everyone left, he and I talked music & he seranaded me with his new Mandolin! 

(He's very musically gifted & plays THREE instruments!)  He promised to learn one of my favorite musical pieces "Nella Fantasia" that uses Mandolin & Oboe (turns out his girlfriend Jenna plays Oboe... looks like I'm going to have to learn to sing it!)

Saturday we went out for breakfast at my FAVORITE breakfast place ever, Cobblestone's in New Bedford (the BEST ever)...

& then off to Adoration at the chapel to fill in for someone's holy hour.  

After that we all went "Antique Shopping Browsing", out for nice weekend drive and then out for Ice Cream & "hang out time".  I had practice and the 4pm Mass to Cantor, so Martin tagged along and got to hear "Auni Mariani" sing for the first time.

We headed home to get ready for the teenagers piling in to our home for "Movie Night".  We had about 15 Youth Group members sprawled everywhere on couches, chairs and floor.  They sucked Martin into their group, broke out Guitar & Bongo drums and made him an honorary "band" member.  I LOVE it when these kids hang out and couldn't help but hope my little one ended up SOMETHING like one of these guys or gals. 

They are awesome kids... but have a teenage sleep schedule.  (tough for this 1st trimester mommy)  Kicked the rest of them out around 11pm and headed to bed to try to quickly adjust to the time change before our early holy hour (we let Martin sleep this time).

Sunday morning I sang the 8:30am Mass and met Uncle Shaun & Martin for our monthly "Prayer day".  We were all wiped out after that (Praying is beautiful but can be exhausting...well... everything's exhausting for me lately).  I needed a nap, so everyone crashed for a few hours before heading to dinner & some deep conversation about Martin's upcoming confirmation and "goals in life".  (I'm so impressed with him and his faith.)  We headed home to Worscester and I felt so blessed to have been able to share our weekend and lives with these awesome teens.  I know they say "teens are tough" but I just love them & am so inspired when I see parents who have worked so hard to instill the faith in their young ones through a consistently solid example... and then it actually pays off!  I always learn how MUCH these kids are watching their parents (...I know everything!!!) and either desiring to be like them or scandalized by them.  I have so much to learn... and SOON....Thank you guys for the lessons in parenting!

Ben Stein's Final Column

Ben Stein's Final Column

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called
''Monday Night At Morton's.''  (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.)  Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life.  Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonline FINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it.  I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even  recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it.  On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened..?  I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?  Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be  interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.  A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked  his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq .  He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets.  Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad .  He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station.  He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded.  He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad ..

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines.  The  noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I  do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human.  I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin or  Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald.  Or even remotely close to any of them.

But, I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me.  This came to be my main task in life.  I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help).  I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years.  I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York ...  I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can.  It is knowing that God will.

By  Ben Stein

First comes LOVE... Then comes MARRIAGE... Then comes...

(Shaun's first comment when he saw the Ultrasound was... "What's THAT?" ...to which I indignantly said, "That's YOUR child... and I worked REALLY hard to get it to look like THAT.  He tried to recover by saying, "And you're doing a great job!")

Sooooo... We're having a BABY!!!  We've been dying to spill the beans to everyone, but wanted to wait until the first Ultrasound to officially announce.  Wednesday I went for my first ultrasound to check & see how many little ones I had in there.  (We both have multiples on both sides of our family and I was getting pretty big pretty fast... or so I thought)  There's just one little Fullen in there though.  Healthy so far at almost 10 1/2 weeks.  The right size & strong fast heartbeat (THAT was cool to hear).  We couldn't be happier.  In case you're wondering, No... we don't know what we're having and we've decided not to find out.  Please keep us in your prayers for a safe & happy pregnancy.

I told my little ones in class yesterday and they were all so excited touching my belly and making the funniest comments when I declared that "Mrs. Marijanna has a baby in her belly":
 
Eamon: YAaaaaaY!!!!  (big squeeze) My mommy does TOO!
Ryan: (staring intently at my baby bump) Ok... I can kindof see it now.
Owen:  You're going to get bigger and BIGger and BIGGER until... you EXPLODE!!!
Thomas:  Of course you'll be able to tell it's a girl if it has LONG hair... like you.
Eamon:  Your hair's like... a ROPE.  I think the baby's gonna climb up it.
Molly:  We have to be very quiet if the baby is resting (to which I thought... Hmmmm... this could work to my advantage)

They make life SO much fun! 

We've known "for sure" since 5 weeks and It's been SO unbelievable to check each week and see what's happening with that busy little person inside of me.... NO WONDER I'm so exhausted.   Heartbeat, Organs & Brain forming, Eyes, Nose, Mouth sucking, Hands waving, Fingers, Toes, ...fingernails and fingerprints already and more.  It's AMAZING to think that I'm cooperating with God as He "knits this little one together in my womb".  It's been pretty awesome.  More updates to come soon :)

Getting ready for Lent!

So... today is Ash Wednesday ... ashes adorn my forehead and the exhortation "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return" is ringing fresh in my ears.  It has officially begun.  Lately, Shaun & I have been talking a LOT about Lent and what we should do together during our first official Lent as husband and wife to help each other grow in holiness.  I find each conversation makes me appreciate and love him more.  We've talked about everything from how to make our confessions better, what book we should read together, how to improve our prayer life, what to "give up" and where we should give our tithing and how to be more generous. 

I feel so blessed to be in a marriage with a husband who is "on the same page" so to speak in regards to growing in the faith.  Most of the time I feel like he's lapping me, but that's ok, because it just makes me want to keep up!  We find ourselves often times praying more honestly for each other and for others in our lives who are in need of God's help right now.  Especially in their marriages or with their health.  Each prayer makes us more grateful for what we've been given.  It's true... it really does change YOUR heart!

We've decided that aside from trying to generally be more faithful to our prayers with each other, and giving up different foods and snacks, we'll be giving up TV all together (and I've become quite addicted to Law & Order, Bones & Criminal minds... as well as Survivor and any sort of "survival" show... Shaun was getting pretty into "Fishing" shows... even to the point of taking notes)  We feel it will give us more time to read, pray and just spend time with each other as well as return phone calls to friends we haven't spoken to in a while, finish writing wedding thank you's and catch up on some letter writing.  So... here's hoping it's a Holy Lent!  We'll be praying for you!!!

P.S.  I just read one of my friend's blogs and was so inspired by her "Real Mom" Lenten resolutions as well.  Feel free to check out here: http://martinfamilymoments.blogspot.com/

Happy St. Valentine's Day!!!

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”

My apologies!!!  It's been a crazy month and I've been TOTALLY out of the loop on the blog and I am so sorry to those of you who are looking for pictures from the wedding.  I should have a BUNCH up next week (I'll have more time during February vacation).  Here are a few of my favorites. 

I figure the best way for me to just POST... is to put up a little bit by bit, so here's the beginning...

The morning of...

Turns out that Our Lady REALLY knows how to plan a wedding... and provide the best makeup artist & hairstylist the morning of.  Two very dear sisters (and their Mum), Courtney (whose son Colton I teach) and Lauren came at the crack of dawn to meet a very sleep deprived Marijanna & crew and turn us from zombies in need of a makeover into beauties!  Lauren owns a buisiness called "Bobby Pins on the Go!" and if you're interested in her services she comes right to the house at a more than reasonable price and works her magic!

Here's her info:

Bobby Pins on the Go

"Great Hair Styles... Minus the Miles"

Stylist - Lauren Larsen

508-742-7399

Here's Lauren transforming me from this...

And Courtney using alot of THIS to transform me...



 To This...

 Even I was surprised!!!

Then the dress...

my little "Glass Slippers" ...well they're not glass, but they do have sparkle!...

Some devoted bridesmaids...

 Some divine intervention...

 Now the veil...

 Some finishing touches...

And now THIS!!!

(Hillary was the BEST flowergirl ever!!!)

Off to meet my prince!

There was a LOT of drama leading up to the wedding day and even I, who tried so hard to maintain composure was reduced to tears more than a few times.  It was literally like all hell broke loose!!!  Yet... with the help of some MORE than wonderful friends ...who I have no way to ever repay or thank ...all went beautifully and we made it through the other side, Man and Wife and SO grateful to all who have more than proved their worth over this trying time.  You know who you are and we love you more than we can possibly express.  I found myself the morning after the wedding in Adoration, yet again reduced to tears ...this time, though the tears were those of of gratitude ...I simply could not believe how many graces upon graces were poured out upon us to lead us through this day and how well we were loved and taken care of.  It was truly beautiful and overwhelming!

Thank you card

Picture More Berry 5x7 folded card

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Shauns Card

Pop Heart Valentine's Day 5x7 folded card

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