Drawing of St. Dominic

(Brendan)

Recently our newest godson, Dominic, was baptized and Molly and I thought it would be a great gift to do a drawing for him. It was also a great opportunity to get back to doing some drawing; it always helps me to have a goal and a deadline :-) 

I wanted to draw a picture of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order and our godson's patron saint, so I found an image of a painting of the saint and looked at that image while completing the drawing (altering a few things to keep it simple).

At any rate, here's how it turned out (click any to enlarge)...

The drawing is graphite pencil and white charcoal on light brown Canson drawing paper.

God bless you Dominic!

Evan's ordination to the diaconate!

(Brendan)

Earlier this month we had the joyous occasion of attending the ordination of my brother, Evan, as a transitional deacon of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Evan is a seminarian at the St. Paul Seminary and, God-willing, will be a ordained a priest in May of 2012. But prior to that is his ordination as a deacon, and what a wonderful day it was! Praise God!

(Click any pics to enlarge)

The Koop clan arrives at the Basilica of St. Mary, in Minneapolis.

Evan with the kids prior to the ordination. 

Some of my pics are fuzzy (sorry, took them with my phone) but this gives an idea of the inside of the Basilica of St. Mary for those who haven't been there.

This photo was taken by The Catholic Spirit, our Archdiocesan newspaper (see here).

Evan and his fellow seminarians give their lives to the Lord in the service of the Church.

Evan is ordained a deacon by Archbishop John Nienstedt.

In a very special moment, my father, who is ordained as a permanent deacon, was able to help Evan don his vestments and greet him along with other clergy of the Archdiocese during the liturgy. Awesome!

A group photo after mass.

After mass, Molly and I pray with Evan and...

...receive one of his first blessings as a deacon.

At an open house later in the day, the kids get a blessing from Evan.

What a special blessing it is to have two deacons in our immediate family! We are so looking forward to Evan's ordination to the priesthood next year!

Henry's marker stone completed

(Brendan)

You might remember that I designed a grave marker for our son Henry late last year (see this post). Since then the marker has been created by a company near St. Cloud, MN, with Minnesota granite, and now that the ground has completely thawed the marker has recently been installed. We hadn't been able to see the completed marker until the first time we went to see it at the cemetery, but praise God it turned out just like we had thought it should.

Here was my original design...

Here's a close-up of the left-hand side...

And here are some pictures of the finished marker in place (click any to enlarge)...

(It was raining and cold, so Aidan, Max, and Francis were in the van when I took the pic above)

It is a great relief to finally have this marker in place and to know it will always be there from now on.

Great video about the Twin Cities

(Brendan)

I saw this on the Star Tribune web site and thought I'd post a link here, enjoy! It's all very true, though I'd rather not get the word out so that we don't have lots of people move here :-)

Merry Christmas from the Koops!

Here's wishing you a very merry and blessed Christmas to you and your family! Our first Christmas in our new home has been wonderful (and extremely snowy)!

We've had a record snowfall for the month of December in Minnesota...

Francis has been growing bigger and bigger (5 months old now)...

We decided to have a "Little House on the Prairie" Christmas this year, which allowed us to do some fun activities for home school, read aloud the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (great for history lessons), and keep our Christmas gifts modest and simple.

The girls got custom-made period dresses for Christmas (along with a rag doll kit)...

The boys got a football and baseball mitts, and the Dangerous Book for Boys, which has tons of great activities like how to make your own go-cart, and how to build forts and tree-houses...

We made a valiant attempt to make molasses candy like the Ingalls' did using snow (but they turned out a little mushy)...

And of course, after an Advent season of preparing for Christ's birth, we enjoyed welcoming Him into our hearts again this Christmas and had a great time decorating our tree with popcorn and cranberry garland and all of our ornaments...

Today, Dec. 1, we once again remember our Henry Blaise...

December 1 is the anniversary of our Henry's death and we continue to remember him with sorrow for our loss here on earth, and yet with great joy in knowing he is with Our Lord. If we "run the race, and finish the course, and keep the faith" as St. Paul says, we will be reunited with Henry and we will spend far greater time together than we ever lost on earth.

Our remembrance video of Henry...

We love you Henry!

For details on Henry's marker design, see here.

Happy Autumn!

(Brendan)

Somewhat predictably, now that we're past the open house I've kind of ramped down on the blogging. With such a busy house it's not a priority, but, although posting will be less frequent, we hope to keep it going for a while.  This is our first Autumn in the new house and I thought I'd post a few pictures of the tree colors and the kids enjoying the leaves (some from a few weeks ago). We hope you are enjoying the season as well!

Aidan and Maximilian (we're big Vikings fans of course, and both have a little Percy Harvin jerseys :-)

Three of our kids and two of our nephews having a leaf fight...

Eleanor on her new scooter, a present for her fifth birthday September 27th...

Clara and Francis...

And lastly, happy Feast of All Saints eve! From left to right we have St. Martin of Tours, St. Martha, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and of course St. Maximilian Kolbe.