Happy Mother's Day

My anxiety level went from 10 to about 2 when I read this post by my new favorite blogger, Leila. Like her, I am one of those who "when faced with crafts, activities, special feast-day foods, and intensive projects merely fold. We end up doing nothing. The whole thing just makes us anxious." Inspired by her simplicity, these are the lilacs we brought in for Mary. I read that if you crush the stems, they'll take up water better and last longer. We'll see!

Lent Calendar

I saw this idea last year or the year before, but don't have time to find where it was so I can properly credit the person who came up with the idea of a Lent Calendar. It was probably Karen Edmisten. Anthony has been enjoying his job of gluing cotton balls on the Lamb each day:



In addition to the Sundays, we circled the 11th so he knows how many more days to his birthday!

Advent

*Image from Florida Catholic

It is hard to believe that it is already the First Sunday of Advent! We're going to take a break from homeschooling while focusing on Holy Heroes Advent Adventure to prepare ourselves for Christmas!

We have our Jesse Tree ornaments from an exchange two years ago. We're going to set out the Advent Wreath today and put up the tree to hang our Jesse Tree ornaments on each day after we read the corresponding bible stories from our Catholic Picture Bible.

I'd like to immerse ourselves more fully in this season with more of the suggested activities from Catholic Culture's Advent Workshop and daily Liturgical Year calendar suggestions, but with a new baby on the way, I'm not planning to do too much this year...

Good Friday menu

I made hot cross buns and the kids were surprised that I used confectioner's frosting to fill in the cross because we've been abstaining from sweets through Lent. I explained that the cross is sweet, because by it, Jesus opened the gates of Heaven for us...and that is why we call it GOOD Friday. (I thought about leaving the icing off, but decided not to quibble over a little drizzle of icing on top of some buns that have eggs, butter, milk, sugar, spices, and raisins in them already! How these became "tradition" for Good Friday is beyond me...it seems they'd be better suited for Easter Sunday with all of those traditionally forbidden ingredients!)

We also made cross-shaped breadsticks and decorated our cheese pizza with little crosses of black olives for supper.



Divine Mercy Novena Day 1 for ALL MANKIND; ESPECIALLY ALL SINNERS

Solemnity of the Annunciation

Today was a lovely day and full of unexpected things to meditate on. We were playing outside in the sun and I heard the mourning doves, who have recently returned, cooing for the first time today...reminding me of the Holy Spirit that Mary conceived by. Teresa noticed the first flowers blooming today, Speedwell, aka Our Lady's Resting Place, which I wrote about last year, and which reminded me of Mary. Although we didn't plan this ahead of time, it also happens to be seven weeks before the last frost, so we planted our tomato seeds this evening. I thought it was appropriate that we had purchased, soaked and were ready to plant our seeds today, as Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb. (If you want to read about everything we are going to plant and *try* to grow in our huge garden, click over to Our Big Backyard.)


*Domenico Beccafumi Annunciation 1545, Sienna

The only "planned" thing that we did was having waffles for dinner because The Solemnity of the Annunciation is also International Waffle Day: "International Waffle Day (March 25) originated in Sweden where it is called Våffeldagen. It occurs nine months to the day before Christmas - the day the Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant." We didn't have authentic Swedish Waffles, but the Egg-Free variety because I really didn't plan ahead and we were out of eggs. Surprisingly, we liked these better than the cakey ones that require eggs.

Finally, we are going to spiritually adopt an unborn baby...or six. We'll pray for our babies and their parents each night and at the end of nine months, we'll donate Christmas presents to CSS. (A ticker for our babies is way at the bottom of the page...

Mary at home

The girls made these on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. I cut out the pictures and stars ahead of time and they got to color and paste. They practiced their numbers, 1-12, and handwriting (I think it's called copywork among homeschoolers).



"A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." Revelation 12:1

For the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe we made paper bag tilmas. I was so excited to find such an easy craft but thought the kids would love wearing them more than they did. Anthony just wanted to hang his up, so I gave him a hanger, and after putting it on his dresser, he knelt down and made the sign of the cross and I caught this picture of him finishing his prayer.



*I realized that today is my 2 year blog anniversary...perhaps I'd be more excited about it if a stomach bug wasn't working its way through the family...Anthony spent Wednesday night throwing up; Teresa threw up all of last night (but is obviously recovered completely); Catherine is in the throes of it today. Pray that it ends with her this afternoon. It is, thankfully, a short illness, but I really don't want it - I really don't want Stephen to get it; and I [selfishly] don't want to do any more extra laundry.

Advent

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent. When we get home from visiting our family for Thanksgiving, I have a lot of last minute things to do...I have been reading about Advent traditions and activities at the following sites. I don't think I'll be posting much until after Christmas, but this list of links should keep everyone busy. I especially like Karen Edmisten's tip to make an Advent file. It might be "too late" to do some of these things this year, but you can file the idea away for later...when the kids are older.

Catholic Culture: The Advent Workshop
O Night Divine Advent and Christmas blog
CatholicMom.com Advent and Christmas Resources
Domestic-Church.com (I love their idea for making a paper bag tilma for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This is the kind of craft that I can handle!)
Teaching Mom's Advent calendar
Women for Faith & Family Advent Season
Karen Edmisten's No Panic Advent series.
The Bookworm's idea for making an Advent Box.
*Don't forget to visit the awesome St. Nicholas Center. The things they have For Kids are great!

There are also the Advent prayers and meditations that I was introduced to by the School Sisters of Christ the King.

Christmas Anticipation Prayer
A Spiritual Crib
The Incarnation, Birth, & Infancy of Jesus Christ by St. Alphonsus Liguori

Mother's Day 2008

I always have the idea that somehow I'm supposed to "get the day off" on Mother's Day, but really, as Rebecca wrote this morning, motherhood is 24/7...and I enjoyed my day being a mother:

+Getting up earlier than usual to shower and dress the girls for 8AM Mass.

+Trying to maintain stillness and quiet during Mass by myself since it is Adam's month to acolyte.

+Laundering the bedding of two children who had "accidents" last night.

+Preparing meals and cleaning up afterwards. (We went out to eat yesterday for lunch to avoid the Mother's Day rush and I made Holy Ghost Sopas for dinner to celebrate Pentecost).

+Taking out the trash and hauling the recycling to town**.

+Giving hugs and kisses to make bumps and bruises all better.

+Picking up the house...and encouraging the children to help.

+Putting some very tired boys down for a nap (and letting one very tired girl sleep in her carseat in the van for an hour).

+Reading to and cuddling with well-rested children and giving thanks together for a wonderful day.

**We went to a local nursery to buy sweet peppers (6 Better Bell) and tomatoes (6 Jet Star) for our garden. We're keeping it small and simple this year. I also have one "Aristocrat" zucchini plant, a "Golden Pear" tomato plant, a "Sweet Cluster" tomato plant, and and a container of rosemary. They were giving moms a free 4-pack of flowers, so I picked out some double petunias in pink and purple. We bought some green bean and a variety of flower seeds, including sunflower and morning glory seeds that Catherine and I promptly planted for the kids' Sunflower House. (I hope it grows). AND, while we were in town, my husband decided to wash the van. We found out it was still white!

To end the day, the Netflix movie that came yesterday was Funny Face, which is one of my favorite old movies because...well, this post is getting long enough without going into why I think this movie s-won-derful...s-mar-velous. We'll be watching that tonight and I'll catch up on Cranford tomorrow.

For my present, besides the flower and vegetable plants & seeds, I ordered some books by St. Francis de Sales that I've wanted and one that I just read about from this store...surprisingly inexpensive (they had all 3 books cheaper than I could find anywhere else) plus free shipping. That's the kind of thing that makes this mom happy!

Really, I wouldn't have changed a thing. I hope you had a Happy Mother's Day, too!

immaculate

My friend, Karen offered a cleaning challenge a couple of weeks ago. She suggested that we all have something we've been putting off cleaning for one reason or another. What? Me? Come on - my house is spotless! Or not. She set the deadline for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I was a little ambitious...I have been piling up things that don't have a home in our guest room. Out of sight, out of mind. So, I pledged to deal with all this stuff:

BEFORE:


AFTER:


You can look at my "after" picture and assume that I fulfilled my pledge. The truth is that I still have a few things to deal with that I simply moved out of the picture. But, at least the guest bed is functional as a bed again. I am trying to simplify, purge, and clean our home during this Advent season, in preparation for Christmas. "Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight His path." Luke 3:4

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

The kids woke up to softly falling flakes of snow and presents in their shoes (including a bag of traditional chocolate gold coins) from St. Nicholas. We'll be making cookies later (but nothing fancy like these...I have little kids and I need to keep it simple. We're just cutting out stocking-shaped sugar cookies and sprinkling them with red and green colored sugar to share with our friends). We'll also be playing here. Have a happy day!

UPDATE: Here are the cookies we made. Simple and sweet.

As proof that I am "domestically challenged" here is the special cookie that Catherine made with the left-over cookie dough. She did a lovely job decorating it, using the star cookie cutter as a template, but mommy left it in the oven too long. We didn't mix in cocoa. It's not bad lighting. It's burnt.